Happy 4th!

We had a great weekend up here, bbqs, friends, food, camping, the works. Brett had us over for a bbq on Thursday night at her place, then Friday we did our usual 4th of July event at Gasworks. Even though it is very crowded, it is really relaxed too. We showed up at the park an hour or so before sundown and spread out a blanket. The fireworks start shortly after sunset, this year we were treated to a performance by the SeaGals and the Seahawks drumline, Blue Thunder. They were up on a short stage, not even 20 feet from us! Some photos of the night:

The next morning we headed up to the mountains just to get one night of camping in. For whatever reason we have not been able to get out and go camping yet this year until now. It was a lot of fun. Rocky got to swim for a bit in the lake, we had a campfire and made hobo pies for dinner...

Then on Sunday, we wanted to go up into the mountains for a little fun in the Jeep. We scouted out some possible future camping sites and saw some pretty amazing things. We drove along sheer cliffs, which always seemed to be on Rachel's side of the Jeep and made her a little nervous. We even had a brief encounter with a bear as we rounded one of the corners and it ran like hell to get away from us. Near the end of our adventure we were lucky enough to come to a washed out bridge. I say lucky because now we REALLY got to have some fun fording the substantially sized creek in my Jeep, YIPPEE!!! We made it safely across and poor Rachel was gripping the dash so tight she couldn't high-five me, she is such a trooper to let me get away with crazy things like this.

THE CREW

THE VIEW

THE "ROAD"