We recently spent some time exploring the Lava River Tubes outside of Bend, Oregon. While we’ve visited quite a few caves in the last year, this one we were allowed to explore on our own without a guide. Probably our favorite way to cave.
Enjoy!
Author: Jess
We use the bed of our truck as a garage: It has some tools, some chairs, a generator, bike helmets, our BBQ, and other various items. Covering the bed is a Retrax rolling bed cover. I added yakima rails on top of that, so we could load the bikes just above the bed of the truck.
To show you how it all goes together, here is a video of packing the truck, sped up just a bit. This was recorded the day we drove away from our house in Lehi, UT. The new owners (of the house) showed up in the middle of the video actually, so I cut the piece where we were talking to them.
We take the truck bed from empty to packed, then add the rack and the bikes. On the road, we rarely remove the rack entirely, and just access the bed contents through the back hatches or between the bike racks.
Having the back of the truck has been great. While we could tow with something like an SUV, the truck gives us an ‘outside space’ to keep things. We carry a generator and a 2 gallon gas can, and those cannot be carried in the interior of a vehicle. As it stays ‘outside’ I never have to empty the gas from the generator.
The bed cover and bike racks deserve their own posts, so I’ll save the details on those for another time.
Through a local resident we met at church one Sunday, we were given the opportunity to tour the home of Seabiscuit – one of the most legendary racing horses that ever lived.
When We Visited: August 2014
Ages of Kids: 8, 6, 4
Tips: They only do tours on specific weekends, so make sure to check the schedule before you arrive! We also stayed at the Golden Rule RV Park which is on the same property. Fantastic location, quiet, and the kids loved the swimming pool!
We almost didn’t call her. A week previous during an after church “Linger Longer” lunch with the local congregation, we met Roni McFadden. She is an amazingly friendly woman with whom we instantly felt at ease with and enjoyed talking to. She mentioned she had written a book about horses, and that if we stayed at the RV park on the property, she could probably get us a tour of Redwood Ranch and help us learn about Seabiscuit. Having seen the Kentucky Derby Museum and Churchill Downs last year (Secretariat’s stomping grounds) we were pretty interested.
But then we got tired. Did we really want to stay in the area an extra day? It was time to move on. We didn’t really want to bother her. After going back and forth during the week we spent at Camp Noyo we had the magical “why not?” moment. We didn’t have anywhere to be. Nothing tying us to a particular location or schedule. We wanted to be pretty loose with our travel plans for this exact reason: if something interesting came up we’d be able to jump on it.
So we called her. And she was amazing! Roni met us on the property one afternoon and was wealth of knowledge and information about the grounds, Seabiscuit’s career, and the current operations of the ranch. It was fantastic! The kids, perhaps, were ready to go long before Sam and I were, but we had the “this one is for mommy and daddy” talk and they were extremely patient.
Inside the main dining and church area there is a collection of old newspaper clippings, artist renderings, and even the original silks worn by Red Pollard!
Cara has a stuffed horse named Secretariat (she acquired said animal soon after our Kentucky visit) and she wanted to bring him along to meet his counterpart.
Afterward, Rori gave us a copy of her book, Josephine – A Tale of Hope and Happy Endings. The book is about Seabiscuit’s first descendant to be born back on the ranch and her journey through sorrow and finally to happiness. It is a beautifully illustrated children’s book and all proceeds go directly to therapeutic riding program hosted at Redwood Ranch. She also has a book about her own life called “The Longest Trail” about her teenage years at a pack station in the High Sierra’s. Sam and I are both reading and enjoying that one a lot!
We are so grateful to have met Roni and tour this beautiful property! If you don’t know much about Seabiscuit (or horse racing) we highly recommend looking into it. Later that evening we watched the 2003 movie (and yes, we did fast forward and skip through parts for our kids. It’s rated PG-13). Also on my to-do list is to read the book by Laura Hillenbrand the movie was based on!
I’m ready for my kids to be long distance hikers. I realize they are still little (8, 6, and 4 years old) but I MISS hiking. Pre-kid and even when Rachel was little and would fit in a backpack, we would take a Saturday and do 8-13 mile hikes OVER mountain passes. It was glorious. Even better will be the day when they can go backpacking, as that is definitely our favorite way to go camping.
That said, we are starting small, but I feel like its a good time to start. Lately, our hikes have been maybe 1 to 1.5 miles tops including lots of whining from the kids about how hard it was, how tired they were and everything in between. As we started prepping them for their first 5 mile hike in Great Basin National Park we decided to try a few things and luckily for us, a lot of them worked! Time will tell how these play out and maybe in the future we’ll be able to add more items to this list!
1. Prep them beforehand. This was huge. I don’t think we had ever sat our kids down and said, “We are going to do a long hike. Its going to be FUN. We LOVE hiking and are excited about it. We know you guys can do it and we expect you to without any whining”. Cara loves to hike with me, but she knows that I will get frustrated and walk away if all she does in whine. She has to be mommy’s HAPPY hiking buddy.
2. Snacks with a goal. Bring some snacks that they love. Recently I discovered a granola bar recipe that everyone can’t get enough of. We brought some with the stipulation that we got to eat them when we got to the top. We had other small fruit snacks and other things that we spaced out along the way, but that was a HUGE motivating factor for them.
3. Bribe them. We recently started a new chore system that involves the kids earning tickets and then being able to redeem them at the family store on Monday nights. They get 1 ticket per happy hiking mile. Sam and I use Endomondo or a step tracker so we know how long we have hiked, and the kids know they only get tickets if there’s no whining. Andrew, cleverly, even negotiated for 2 tickets per mile for any hike 4 miles or longer. Sneaky little guy. There have been times where the two oldest earn more tickets than Cara because she had a particularly loud tantrum in the middle of the trail.
4. Play Games. This doesn’t always work, but occasionally we get a good 30 minutes out of playing I-Spy with the kids. Someone will start and then whoever guesses what they are spying gets to go next. Since a lot of the places we hike are either Red Rocks, or trees & dirt we generally include clothing, shoes, and anything super small on anyone hoping no one will guess it.
5. Listen to Music. Maybe this totally contradicts enjoying nature, but it really works for us. We don’t listen to music the whole time, or if there’s ever anyone near us on the trail as we don’t want to ruin their experience. I pull up the Frozen soundtrack on my phone and just carry it in my hand while we walk along. All the kids sing along (okay, I was singing too) and it lasts us a good 45 minutes on some of the steeper sections. Totally helps pass the time.
6. Have a destination. This one even helps me. If we aren’t hiking TO something its a lot harder to motivate anyone up the trail. There needs to be a lake, or a glacier, or something interesting at the “top” whether the trail is a loop or an out and back. If the trail is varied enough maybe this one doesn’t matter as much, but when we are just hiking through trees it gets a little tedious. Knowing there will be something to look forward to keeps them moving.
For many people, especially kids, learning to hike long distances is a mental exercise. The biggest obstacle that we encounter is boredom. Once they are bored, the whining starts. Finding ways to occupy their minds and keep them distracted as we hike has been our greatest success! Physically I believe they are capable, but mental training tends to be a bit more difficult. We are hoping to make a lot more progress this summer as we continue to travel!
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Where Have You Wandered This Summer?
It’s Labor Day. The annual end-of-summer holiday. I can’t believe that soon we will be feeling the crisp autumn air, eating pumpkin pie, and getting ready for Halloween.
Our travels have motivated us to ‘wander’ in the places we visit. We wander to parks, visitor centers, forests, and towns just because there is something interesting there. Our current wandering habits have helped us realize how much we missed out in the places we lived, simply because we didn’t wander enough! We lived in Lehi, UT for about 5 years, and somehow didn’t make it up to visit the Timpanogos Caves, just a few miles from where we lived! Upon our return to sell the house, we rectified that situation and got ourselves up there, and we had a great time.
Part of our motivation for blogging and sharing the stories of our own exploring and wandering was to encourage and motivate others. We don’t expect everybody to take off in an Airstream, but we DO hope that our adventures have encouraged you to explore, wander, and enjoy life just a little more.
Is there a local adventure that you have managed to miss out on? Is there some place that you are waiting to visit? GO! Live your Dream! Then share it with us.
Seriously, we’d love to hear about your adventures. Where did you wander this summer? Was it full of lazy days spent by the pool? Did you finally take that amazing family vacation? Where did you wander to?
Please share a bit of your adventure with us. If you blog, instagram, or facebook, share us a link of stuff already posted. Or email us directly (samandjesscurrenATgmailDOTcom) with some pictures and your story. We would like to periodically share the stories of others and further promote wandering awesomeness.
We hope your fall is just as amazing as your summer!