Summer Camping

We've found our new favorite place to camp this summer at Kalispell Island on Priest Lake, ID. They are boat-to camp sites maintained by the state forest. Beautiful sandy beaches, crystal clear water, tons of wild life, lots of hiking trials and several marinas close by for ice cream runs! But watch out for sasquatch sized slivers on the marina's docks!
We've stayed there twice in the last couple weeks and are learning our way around the island. The kids attempted to build a shelter but decided they'd rather sleep in the tent.
We continued our quest in finding the perfect s'more combination. This last one consisted of graham crackers smothered in peanut butter, chocolate cake cookies, and perfectly goldened marshmallows. Delicious!!
And what's camping in the northwest without a massive rain storm?? The storm hit and we packed up in record time. The kids even helped after they were promised breakfast at McDonald's.

Videos of Cliff Jumping

Here's some videos of my brave kidos!

Videos from the Sand Slide

I can't upload videos from my phone to the blog, so I'll share the videos on different posts;

Fun in the Sand

In our exploration of new lakes and new places, we came upon what we have named the "sand slide" at Long Lake. It's basically a very steep embankment of very fine sand that flows straight into the lake. We can run, jump, climb, race, slide and we've also started to surf down it. And at the top there's also a great place for some environmentally safe graffiti.

Boat time

It's a small window of time to use our boat in Spokane. Add in the time lost as the boat sat at the mechanic's and I've felt a sense of urgency to use it as much as possible this summer. We've taken the boat to lots of new lakes and have found lots of cool places.

My love/hate relationship with motors

This summer it's seemed like every motor I've owned has had problems. I've had to repair or have had repaired all kinds of failures from my weed eater up to our boat. Here's the list:

*Weed eater- gunked-up carburator. Easy fix with some cleaning.

*Ride on lawn mower- loose drive belt. I tried to tighten up the levy, but it still only worked a couple more times. Then I replaced the belt. After turning the lawn mower upside down to fix, the piston filled up with oil. It took several hours to diagnose and fix problems. But only $10 for a new belt.

*Truck- A clogged up air fan. It took me a bit to get apart. Those Japanese really know how to make nice cars! It took me a couple hours to disassemble and even more reassemble it. I even had 5 screws left over when I was all finished (I guess that makes more effeciant if I can reasemble the dash with less parts?). I fixed the problem without having too much drama and it cost me nothing.

*Tahoe needed new brakes. All replaced for there brakes for only $68. It's good to know how easy fixing things can be at times.

*The boat. The boat was out of Commission for half the summer with electrical and alternator problems and when they gave it back, I found even more stuff wrong with it. That's a $1200 mistake I don't plan on making again. It's all better now though.

Even though I hate having things break down on me, I do gain a sense of satisfaction when I can fix it. Dealing with all these motors makes me want to buy a sailboat and only have to worry about one motor!

Cliff Jumping

This summer seems to have two themes. Jumping from high places and fixing crap. I'll explain the latter on a different post. The jumping started early this summer when we had taken the kids to Lake Coeur d'Alene and both kids stated jumping off a high dock with the other kids. That led to a hike around the lake to some cliffs (or "clifts" as Abby continues to call them). It was at those cliffs that Abby and Caleb impressed a bunch of teenagers with their bravery. They were hooked after that. Now every time we get on the boat, both kids are in search of more cliffs.

Priest Lake

I took the kids up and camped for a night on an island in Priest Lake. Mon had to work so we met up with some friends. It was our first time at Priest and now having seen it, we'll be headed there a lot.