The perfect day

Today was as pretty darn near perfect as you can get. I've been wanting to take the girls to the Gorge for several weeks now. I'd actually planned to go last weekend so we could catch the Cherry Festival in a small town, but we were having another raining/snowing/hailing weekend - plus C came down with the stomach flu.

With the promise of dry, 70 degree weather, it was the ideal day for a little sightseeing. As all good women do, we made our first stop at the outlet mall. New summer jammies for the girls, new silicon bakeware for me to try. Then as we were making our way to the front of the Gap Outlet with a few sweatshirts in hand, C announced "Mom, I've GOT to get out of this store!" M immediately started chanting the same mantra. Since there was an extremely long check out line, I asked the girls if they still wanted me to buy the clothes for them, or should we put them back and just leave? P must have started coaching them about shopping with mommy, because they were undeterred in their mission to exit the store and move on to the next (non-shopping) destination.

I was surprised when we arrived at the Falls to find a packed parking lot, and almost as many cars backed up trying to find spaces. However, we finally scored a spot after I took a detour to the historic highway and the smaller parking lot that is actually closer to the Falls. It turned out that there was a search and rescue event going on with volunteers doing training/demonstrations and manning several information booths. This was a total bonus for the girls as there were a bunch of rescue dogs on hand to pet. With the permission of the owners, we pretty much have to pet any dog that crosses our path wherever we may be. My favorite was a Newfoundland that reminded me of my sweet Oso.

It was pretty cool to see the volunteers rappeling down the cliff. We even ran into a friend just as her dad was heading down. One little girl was telling C with obvious pride that her dad had come down too. It's kind of hard to see the climber in the first picture. You'll probably have to double click on it to get the larger view. Look for the red jacket about halfway down on the left side of the falls. The second photo is a teenage volunteer who got to pick up litter while doing his training.


Now here's some photos of the girls. They had a great time, and they were so good. I'm such a proud mama!

Since we were now on the scenic route, we decided to stop at one of the view points. For some reason, the skies were a little hazy, so we weren't able to get any exceptional photos overlooking the Gorge, but it's pretty amazing to see snow on the tops of the hills in the distance given the time of year.

On the way home we dropped in on some dear friends that live in the Gorge and were able to spend a little time catching up. The perfect end to the perfect day!!!