While We Drive

When we first got the Leprechaun, we had the boys' car seats strapped in to the couch and we made Allie and Jake ride at the table in seat belts.  The boys really needed to be strapped in because they were so wild and crazy.  As the years have gone on, we've gotten really relaxed about it.  The kids really just roam all over and find a comfortable spot to entertain themselves.  I guess I should be stressed about it, but it is what it is.  

As I looked through our trip pictures, I found several of us lounging in the Leprechaun.  I thought I'd add them so you can see how awesome it is to travel this way.

Mike and I take turns driving.  I like to drive, but so does Mike.  He doesn't really like to attend to children's needs, so he seems to drive a bit more than me so I can help them get food or whatever is needed.

We all take turns riding shotgun.  The floor gets super hot though, since it's by the engine, so it's pretty brutal in the summer time.  Most of this trip wasn't too bad because the weather was pretty cool.

Charlie loves two things.  Me, and sitting in the front behind someone's neck.  If I'm in the front (driving, or passenger), he finds his way to me.  If someone else is in the front, and I'm not in a comfy spot for him, he'll grudgingly go onto their shoulders. He can be such a selfish guy sometimes.  The kids all want him to love them and to snuggle them, but he really only does what's best for himself.  :)

                                         

Most of the time, Allie likes to travel up top.  She likes the view from the top window (my favorite when I was a kid in our motorhome).  

Sometimes the others are up there with her.  Jake tries to keep the area snack free.  He hates to lay on crumbs and that used to be where he slept.  So he'd keep it food free and go nuts if a kid went up there and unloaded a pocket full of sand when they laid down, or wiped Cheetos dust on the sheet.  It's happened many times.  He finally gave up and now he sleeps in the kitchen table area and brings out a fresh sheet at night so it's always clean.  :)

The kids are always pretty content until batteries on their devices start to die.  

There's always a beautiful scene out the window though and we feel so blessed to be able to see it.  Life is good.

An Osprey's Tale

We decided to go to Crater Lake National Park, so we headed that way.  Mike called at RV parks along the way and the only one he could talk himself into was one where people were packed in like sardines.  It was expensive too, so we went to an LDS church parking lot for the night.  It was in a beautiful location and we were completely secluded and so glad we came there instead of the other place.  

Mike loved riding Jake's electric scooter.

After we ate and rode around on scooters and bikes, I took Charlie around to run on the huge grass area on the side of the church.

He sniffed around and was chasing birds that were gathering in groups.  As he'd come close, they'd scatter and then gather again further away.  It was a fine game.

I saw this huge osprey nest and we could hear that there were baby birds in the nest.  As Charlie's games brought him closer to the nest, the momma bird freaked out.

She started screeching at him and diving down.  She had different pitches to her screeches and I felt like she was telling him to back off, but also calling for help.  Sure enough, a few minutes later, her husband showed up and started to assess the scene.  Pretty soon, another bird (we decided he was the dad's brother) showed up and they were all three trying to get Charlie (and us) to back off.  

They'd perch in nearby trees and screech at us.

We finally did take off and leave them alone.  It really was cool to see though.  Birds are awesome.

Fishing

I know it's random, but as I was waiting for Mike to pick up our fishing licences, I saw this sign about maintaining social distance while in the store and I thought that I needed to document a little of what's going on these days.  We don't really go into stores and in fact, aside from buying motion sickness pills and fishing licences, we didn't really go into any stores at all.  We paid for gas at the pump and just tried to stay away all together.

Mike really wanted to go fishing again, and although all the fishing companies were shut down because of covid, Mike was able to talk to the owner of a company and he talked him into taking us out on his own personal boat.  It was a perfect day.

 We left Charlie in the motorhome and hopped on the boat and left the harbor. 

We got to see some cute seals hanging out on this bell thing.

Then, moments after putting line in, we started catching fish.  Jake pulled these three all in on one line. 

 Each of the kids were catching them faster than our guy could release them, so we learned how to get them off the hook too.
We didn't want to bring home very much.

Jake ended up catching a lingcod.   It was actually trying to eat the fish that he actually caught, so he brought it in on that.  He didn't even hook it.  The captain saw that it was a tag along and he speared it and brought it into the boat.

 He left bite marks on the fish that Jake had hooked.  Pretty easy to see how...

Jason caught quite a few, but he didn't ever want to touch the fish to hold them up for a picture.  The captain kept trying to hand him fish and he'd just say "no, that's ok.  I don't need a picture".  Once we finally understood that he just didn't want to touch the fish, we kept them on the line for his pictures.

 We were mostly catching rockfish. 
Almost all of them were grey, but Mike, Jason, and Nathan each caught a canary rockfish.  I thought the color was pretty. 

 Allie caught a cabezon.  It was funky looking, but you couldn't keep that one till later on in the summer, so she had to toss it back. 

 I love Jason's face in this picture above.  He's stressing out that he'll accidentally touch one of the three that he caught on his line.

It's proof that you can fake how you really feel in a picture.  :)

 We saw this cute little seal floating out in the water.  He kept waving at us. 

  All too soon, we were tired and ready to be done.  So we headed back.  We rescued Charlie from his prison and came back to watch the captain gut the three fish we kept. 

He gave us a recipe for fish tacos that we'll have to try at home.

It was a really nice day.