Final Post for the Lava Beds Blog

This is the final post for our Lava beds blog. It was a great trip and even after we have been home for 3 days I am still finding sand in places there should not be sand. We got the pictures posted on snapfish.  There are over 1400 of them after editing and deleting over 600.  Below are links to the pictures taken on the different days.  You will need to open a free snapfish account to view the pictures if you dont have one.

Lava Beds Trip Monday

Lava Beds Trip Tuesday

Lava Beds Trip Wednesday

Lava Beds Trip Thursday

Lava Beds Trip Friday

Lava Beds Trip Saturday

HOME!!

Quote: “Every time I move a body part, sand comes out of it!!!” -Bro Anderson

Quote (and story): Brother Anderson is driving, we are listening to music, all of sudden he starts jumping in his seat, reaches over and turns off the music “HEY!! That’s the music from Jack and the Bean Stalk and Mickey Mouse!!!!!!”-… closely followed by 5-10 minutes of laughter from everybody else in the car.

5 Guys for lunch!! It was delicious. We’re on our way home, had our final devotional and testimony meeting, and said goodbye to turtle and mamma turtle. We just passed the The Dalles sign!! (where we went to the best rodeo ever last year)  Sandboarding was sweet, we went to 3 different sets of dunes and sandboarded for about 6-8 hours, with no major injuries!! (pretty amazing, really)But everyone was caked in sand, ears, nose, eyes, hair, everywhere!!! “como se llama?” – Anker. There were some kids from Mexico at the dunes, and we talked to them a little (in Spanish… mostly Anker). We are entering Washington right……. NOW! Sales tax again… oh well, we’re in WASHINGTON (and its somehow still in the 80’s out!!) We just passed a car with a unicorn in it, that was strange. Now we're passin a military convoy.

We'll be home by about 6:30. We gotta clean out da car first then we'll be free!

Max Peet going off a jump at the dunes. Im pretty sure he was the best one out of all of us.

The whole gang at da beach.

thursday, pizza, caves, bugs and blood

Quote of the day: Fat people crawl.

Items of note: We have had a fresh fruit or vegetable at every meal

We left the lava beds tonight and had dinner in Klamath falls we are heading to Moor Park to ahve a devotional and then north a couple of hours to our next camping ground.  We will be going to Florence Oregon tommorrow to Sand Boarding. 

 We got a ginormous pizza at Willy's Pizza, and promptly ate the whole thing... along with two plates of wings and some cheesy bread!

 Our group, at the top of an overhang by Garden Bridges and .

 Playin Ultimate Frisbee in the parking.  It was safer than playing in fields with rocks and assorted cave openings.  They wanted to play skins and against skins and have one team only in their underwear.  These Northwest kids want to do crazy things when they get to where it is warm all night.  We settled on skins a against skins.  They played like that for about an hour until the bugs came out them the shirts started to go back on.

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Anker found some gynormous misquitos.  However no one else was bitten

Justin twisted his ankle playing frisby, however Spencer came to the rescue.  Both are doing fine.  They are also having suntanning contest.  We have tie for the most ginger (micheal and max), the most bronze goes back and forth between justin and spencer. 

Bradley drew first blood.  It being Bradley we are grateful this is all it was.

The camp we stayed in did not have showers.  So the boys improvised.  I believe all 9 of them showered on some level here.

Tuesday went well

The lava beds are just south of Klamath falls Oregon and actually on the California side of the border.  The street the guys are standing on is called State Line Road.  Because the cent of the street is the state line between California and Oregon

Here they are in two states at once.

Spencer is in California, Frank is in Oregon and Alex is undecided.

We went to the visitors center and purchased helmets, maps and started to explore some of the caves that were close to camp.  We did pause for a few minutes and take a picture at the park entrance.

At the visitors center buying hats and maps.

This was our first cave it had a paved trail and and lights.  After this the young men explained they were now ready to go off and discover new caves that have yet to be found.

This is our second cave they spent several hours in it,  No lights, not paved walk ways and they spent alot of time on their hands and knees crawling and exploring all the different caverns and tunnels.

This was the entrance to the cave called the labyrinth.  It is 1200 feet long with over 20 different passages that extend to different levels.

In the cave.

Don't forget Alex.

The guys helmets were all yellow, white and orange so we brought spray paint and tape then let them go to town personalizing them.

I am sorry I have no explanation for this photo.  However if you would like to add a caption please feel free.

Internet coverage is really spotty so we probably wont be able to post again until Thursday night.

Alex is having a great time, he wishes you were here!

On our way to Klamath Falls, fun windy roads for 30 miles! Justin started at our last stop to call both Brother Anderson and Brother Judd “Dad”, which has been followed by everybody else. When 9 teenage boys are walking after them yelling “Daaaddd, Daaaaadd, don’t leave us here dad!! Not again!!” they tend to start walking away even faster, strangely enough. Love you mommy!! – Quinn L’Heureux

Anker Peet is freaking awesome, and I love him. -  Alex

Is that an animal or is that a rock? We’ve listened to this CD like 3 times all the way through. Those dark clouds up ahead look scary. That fence was almost falling on the road. Weird. Micheal is asleep in the back. Hahaha. It smells like skunk. My ears are popping.I love you Emily! Spanks for the letter sista! Anker Peet is awesome. Love - Anker Peet

Alex is having the time of his life.  We took a few photos to show how you can really live it up while out in the “wild”.

life on the open road is sweet

I always like to hang around Alex.  He is a great example and helps me be a better person.

When nature calss, you have to answer.

Any time is a good time for service.  Alex totally plowed that farmers field in no time at all.

Some guys have it.  Some guys dont.

Seats are for wimps.  Real men ride on the horn.

Alex wrestling a bear.  The bear totally lost.

Jet Boating Videos

Here are a couple of videos we took last night while jet boating.  It gives you a little taste of what we were doing.  More videos to follow!

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.