Camping with Uncle Gary and Aunt Valene

So my aunt and uncle live about 10 minutes from us, which is nice. They are basically our only friends here, and I'm just fine with that. We went camping a last weekend and instead of writing my paper, I played in the forest. This is Gary and Val with their three fearless protecters, Abby, Jake and Joey.

We stayed at a new state park named Stubb Stewart State Park. Matt applied for a job there when we first moved here, but it didn't pan out so we tried to hate it, but it was hard to hate this place. They had a great trail system, nice campsites, wonderful bathrooms and of course, amazing trees.

So, Matt charted our course on one of the trails. The map said it would be about 3 miles round trip and off we went! (Minus Gary and the dogs, poor little Joey had to be carried back to camp after about a mile of walking). Our goal was to hike to a loop that went down by a creek. We hiked and hiked and hiked and made it to the loop to find out the loop itself was 3 miles! We ended up hiking about 6 miles all together. Our little stroll in the forest ended up being a 5 hour expedition. When a mama grouse jumped out on the trail and made mean hissing noises at us and puffed up her feathers I thought for sure Matt was going to get attacked by yet another bird. So I got the camera ready, but it ended up that she went to the other side of the trail pretending to be hurt to distract us from her chicks. Matt, very grateful for being spared this time, muttered a small thank you under his breath and kept on hiking.

Probably the nicest thing about hiking in the northwest, is being covered by the trees. Don't worry, I still worked up a sweat but its much cooler hiking in the shade. Its also nice to have a husband that carries everything in his backpack so I'm footloose and fancy free.

And I must give mention to my aunt, who is almost 60 and just kept going and going. I hope I'm in that great of shape when I'm 60...

There were loads of these wild orchids along the trail. So that plus the fact we were in the northwest made me think of Harry and the Hendersons. Remember when Harry eats the teenage girl's orchid corsage? That Harry... And Matt is pretty convinced he has found evidence that Harry's people (aka Big Foot) exist somewhere up here. He kept pointing out trees that could only be formed a certain way if a Big Foot bent them like that. And Matt's information comes straight from our friends the Bagley's and Enz, who both went with the Big Foot Research Organization to an undisclosed area in search of the Big Fella.

And I call this picture, find the snake! I LOVE SNAKES!!!!!!!!!!!!! Matt almost stepped on this little guy, but I saved his life (the snake's not Matt's.)

So that's another adventure of the Mendenhall's documented blog style. Ciao for now!