Family Pics and Picnics

It is not often that my family can do something and ALL of us enjoy ourselves.  For some reason, it just works that way.  But Saturday afternoon we had a great family day and all of us enjoyed ourselves!  I am so thankful that the Lord gave us such a great day.


The weather was beautiful and I wanted to get out and take some pictures.  I thought first that I would go down to the Farmer's Market in Orting and take some shots there.  I mentioned to Greg that it would be a good day to get out and take my camera somewhere.  He apparently thought so too!  But he didn't want to go to the Farmer's Market, that I knew.  But he had other great photo ops in mind!

A while ago he had shown me something that he discovered on one of his drives.  He likes to get out and just take drives.  Anyway, it's an old stone chimney.  It's the only thing standing around the whole area besides tress.  And the trees are old.  He also wanted to take me to see the trees that the beavers are chewing down by the river.  

We started out our day trip heading towards Kapowsin.  Our first stop was to get a few refreshments for our trip.  Across the street for the gas station that we stopped was a whole gang(?) (crew?, group?, flock?) of bikers neatly lined up at the Kapowsin Tavern.  Now for many of you who do not live near me, Kapowsin is basically a 4-corner town.  One corner is a gas station and another corner the tavern.  That's about it.  

I liked the looks of these bikers and decided to snap a few shots.  A few of them watched me and sat for me to take their picture.  

Our next destination was to see a huge tree that beavers have chewed almost all of the way through.  When we arrived at the spot, there were fishermen there so we decided to leave them alone and come back another time.  But I did see trees where the sap suckers are making holes to suck out sap (hence the name, sap suckers ;-P ) and I found it interesting that they make almost straight lines. 

 I was really excited about our next stop.  It was the old chimney.  I do not have a good enough camera to really get the details in my shots of this.  But one day I will and I'm going to go back.  The trees that are grown up around it are old trees, you can tell by the thickness.  So that chimney has been there a long time!  There isn't evidence of a foundation anywhere around it, so my guess is that it was a cooking chimney.  

Long time ago, kitchens were not built onto houses because kitchen fires were all too common.  So the kitchen was built away from the house.  Greg's uncle mentioned that a railroad used to go through there and maybe it was used at a camp for railroad crew or something of that sort.  There is a number on the front of it, you can't really tell what the number is by my pictures.  I don't know if it is a year or a type of address, or maybe if it was a work crew it was a number to identify them?  I don't know, but it is 2917.  That is carved in the shield.  Below the shield is a ribbon.  The left side of the ribbon has writing carved into it also, but I couldn't make it all out.  The center and right side as well had writing and says "of", but the right side was all worn smooth.  There is also an image on each side of the shield.  I don't know what they mean.

My pictures do not do it justice....This first picture shows the stone chimney hidden in the trees.

 Here is the front of the fireplace

 The shield that says 2917

 This picture below shows the size of the tree growing not too far from it.

 Greg always likes to drive on this road called Camp 1.  It is a road that trucks use for the rock quarry and I think it used to be for logging trucks too.  He sees lots of wildlife up on this road.  He's seen countless deer, elk, quail, bobcats and probably others.  With him I have also seen a baby coyote wandering around.  The kids and I don't necessarily enjoy this drive too much, but he does, so we endured for him.  :-)  I did take a few pictures on this leg of our trip and ended up with a beautiful one of a foxglove that I am going to save for another blog.  But I will show the picture that I took of a little water fall and the pictures of the foxgloves that I am not saving for another blog.

 Now it's off to more beaver trees.  I made sure to get the logs and the wood chips in my pictures because the kids loved it.  This first one I love though!  It shows the funny side of my husband.  I told them to ignore me and told Greg to pretend he was showing them something.  He did!  lol 

 This log below looked like brass in the sun.  My camera didn't capture that. :-(

Hanging out and having a picnic at the river was our last stop of the day.  We didn't get to relax and hang out quite as long as we wanted to because of some disobedience but still had fun all the same.  We let the kids get in the river where there was a calm little pool.  They certainly loved that!  Here is the path that we take down to the river.

 Bubba's strawberry with pepperoni.  YUCK!

My sexy hubby standing there with his Non-Alcoholic Beer.  

Can you see the kids playing?  It was so weird to be at a place where they could get that far away from me and I didn't have to worry.  There was no one else there.  It was just incredible.  I felt the presence of God out here in His wonderful handy works.  Very comforting.

 This rock appeared to have baby rocks stuck to it.

 I love love love putting my feet in mud!!

  Doesn't that look like a good family day?  Praise the Lord for that!!