Day 1 BBQ, Jet Boats and Alex

The young men on our trip will be making a blog entry later this morning as we get in the car and drive to the lava beds.  I wanted to give you an account of yesterday so that their blog posts will be in better context.  Since we left we have added another name to our roster.  We stopped for ice cream yesterday at Sherm's Thunderbird and Justin won a Minion out of the Claw Game.  The young men named him "Alex" so that anyone who did not come on this trip could see what they were missing.  Since then it has been a constant challenge to find new adventures and places to take Alex's photo.  I will leave that to the young men, however I am really impressed that they actually made him a matching t-shirt.

We arrived in Grants Pass last night and camped in some really sweet yurts.  These have beds, mattresses, windows, electricity and heaters.  It also just happened to rain cats and dogs last night with lots of thunder and lightning so if we were going to have bad weather we definitely chose a good day to have it.  So while it was wet and cold outside we were warm and dry inside and did not have to worry about our tents leaking.

For dinner last night we went on a jet boat ride with Hellgates Excursions.  To say it was AWESOME would be a major understatement.  The boats seated about 40 people and drove 48 mph up the river jumping wakes, making 360 degree turns and seriously getting everyone in the boat wet.  We managed to fill the front two rows so we had the two best seats on the boat.  We had a BBQ dinner included in the trip and the boys redefined what "all you can eat" means.

Something that was not on part of our planning but worked out really well was that most of the young men got together Sunday night and stayed at one house.  They all had to be up at 4:30 and thought this was the best way to make sure that no one was late.  I showed up at 4:45 to pick them up and they were all ready to go and looking good.  I found out that they had decided to stay up all night to make sure they did not over sleep.  This equated into a really quiet uneventful drive.  We left the church and everyone was asleep by the time we hit Poulsbo.  I had to wake them all up when we stopped at the bookstore in Portland.  After we stopped in Portland they again all went to sleep for the rest of the drive.