Day 12 2016

A portion of my car time each day is usually spent working on the blog. This is the view from my seat in the minivan.  This has been a great van for which we have been very thankful!  

My iPad is set up and also I have our church prayer guide for India.  This has been a great tool each day for our family.  Some days we have forgotten, but most days we have remembered.  There is a prayer focus for the people of India for each day in the month of May.

After driving all morning and then eating lunch, we got out and explored the town of Port Townsend.  As a family, we have discovered that we love hiking, and hiking these beaches has been pretty cool.  This day started pretty slowly, and honestly, I thought it was going to be a bit of a "snoozer" after some of our other days.  Boy, was I wrong!  This ended up being a really great day for us.

Battery Kinzie at Fort Worden State Park was another area the kids really enjoyed exploring.  It was deserted and a bit spooky ;).  It was the last fortification built in the Puget Sound prior to World War II.

One of the beautiful flowers that great grew in this area.

After exploring, we headed onto a ferry.  We met a man from Greensboro, NC wearing a Madeira Beach sweatshirt, which was pretty funny because both of those places have strong connections to Harvey and myself! The boys naturally needed to dab on the ferry because we have to represent our Panthers in Washington!!

Rebekah, Trey, & I walked and grabbed some local coffee before boarding the ferry and it did not disappoint :).

We were blessed to have beautiful, sunny weather.  At times, a bit chilly with the wind, but beautiful still the same.

One of our day's highlights was completely unexpected and unplanned!  We happened upon so Navy jets in training.  They were magnificent!  We pulled the car over and got out and watched them for quite a while.  They were practicing landings and take offs and it was so cool.  Between the ferry (which Jonathan has always loved powerful boats) and the noise and excitement of the jets (we felt the ground move when they took off :), Jonathan and all of us were pretty excited!!!

Another thing to pass the time is play prep!  Rebekah has a role in our homeschool group's summer play coming up, "Pride and Prejudice."  This girl is a beast at memorizing her lines, but Trey decided to help her for a while.  We were laughing so hard.  It was pretty funny to hear him reading Mrs. Bennet's lines and Mr. Wickham's lines with a Yankee accent.  Before this day, Elizabeth had been helping her in the car.  It definitely made another memory in my mind.

 Deception Pass was our next destination.  This area did not disappoint us either.  We climbed rocks and hiked trails as you will see in the pictures below.  To see all the kids hiking and exploring has been great, especially seeing Jonathan do what he has done physically has been amazing.  He definitely has to pace himself, and usually one of us stays behind a little with him, but overall he really does great.  

We are getting pretty good at our family selfies!

After exploring the beach, we went on a forest hike. Trey, Rebekah, & Benjamin went up ahead of us a good bit and by the end of the trail, they had hiked over three miles...barefooted!  Their shoes had gotten wet and they decided to go barefoot.  Oh my.  My feet never would have made it, but I am glad theirs did :).

 This water was amazing and different little "whirlpools" in various places.  We traveled on a short distance to the quaint town of Anacortes where we would be spending the night.  We were tired, dirty (some more than others ;), but so thankful for the time we spent together.