Vacation May 16th-19th in Idaho

  It's May and if you know our family that's our vacation time. We planned our vacation different this year. We decided to stay home and do some much needed yard work. We had a family discussion and decided that if we worked hard together at home then by the weekend we would head to the mountains for some camping and family fun! We brought along Adrian's cousin, Brian.

THE PLAN:
  Leave Friday and head north. Camp in McCall, Idaho which is 3 hours north of here. Then continue north and head toward Orfino then over to Lewiston, Idaho. Our plan was to continue into part of Washington down to LaGrande, Oregon. The final stop will be Monday, meeting up with Ryan's mom in Cove, Oregon. It's the 1st anniversary of his dad's passing and a few family members were going by the grave site.  That WAS our plan.....

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED:
  We headed out late Friday night. We picked Brian up, grabbed something to eat, then headed north. We got to McCall in the early evening. We love camping in Ponderosa State Park. It's a nice campsite. Only when we got there, it was CLOSED! Yep, there was 4 feet of snow here and there. So we kept driving north, we found a campsite off the highway (about 2 miles).  It was CLOSED! So we kept driving north.....
  We made it to Grangeville. Only we couldn't find a campsite and add to the fact that it was so late. We decided to stay at hotel. Brian got his own bed, Ryan and I shared, and Adrian got a cute spot on the floor. He loved it. His own bed. We got up that morning and ate a yummy "free" breakfast. Mom and Adrian went swimming.  
  Saturday, we decided to head through the mountains where the scenery is beautiful. Rivers, trees, hills, animals and nice weather. We stopped in a little town named Syringa. We had ice cream. Ryan and Adrian had Huckleberry. I had Vanilla with chocolate. Cost us $1.00 a scoop. :) We made it over to Lewiston, Idaho that night. I insisted that this would be a "GREAT" place to camp. IT WAS FREAKING HOT!! We looked to the positive side and went for a bike ride. I half crashed and got all scrapped up, bike was to tall for me. There was a park and a beach which Adrian really enjoyed. We had hotdogs for dinner and hit the bed early.
  Sunday, we back tracked over to Orfino, Idaho. Ryan's aunt lives there and we wanted to see her and her family. We stopped by the Dworshak Dam. Only it was CLOSED! We viewed it from the outside. Then we headed to Aunt Barbara's place. It was so nice. We then went with her and headed down to Art and Verna's place. They have 13 acres in the mountains. Nice peace of land. We had lunch and visited for awhile. Right before we headed out, Adrian was playing with Aunt Barbara's dog and they both got to excited. She grazed Adrian's hand, leaving a little cut. That was our cue to get going. We found an AWESOME campsite up at Dworshak State Park. The campsite was overlooking the lake. Only the lake was really low. It was beautiful. The moon was full and bright that night. We enjoyed being there. We had hamburgers for dinner. YUMMY! :)
  Monday, was Ryan's dad 1st Anniversary of his death. We are suppose to meet his mom in Cove. She has been there for 3 hours already and we are just leaving. We were way late. We decide that by the time we get there she will probably be leaving, Pam (Ryan's sister) and Scott drove her there. So, we told her we would meet up with her later. We wanted to take a little longer trip hoping to see some beautiful country. We wanted to go through Hells Canyon (it's like a little Grand Canyon...or so I have been told). We drove into Joseph, Oregon. Ryan's mom was born here. It is the cutest touristy town with gorgeous mountains and a beautiful lake. I stopped at a quilt shop and gave them a donation of my money (I could have bought the whole store up).  Then we headed 10 miles towards the mountains, we were nervous because there was a TON of snow and we didn't see any cars on the road!:) We drove and tried to have faith but when we got there it was CLOSED! The rest of the road had a lot of snow. We had to back track to Joseph, then Enterprise, then a different way. We drove for hours this day!   Let me make this short....driving....through Joseph, Enterprise, Minam, Elgin, LaGrande, Baker City, Ontario and finally into Idaho.

We got in at midnight! Ryan's did all the driving. Thank you, thank you, thank you....Ryan.

ANIMALS:
We saw a frog, lots of deer, a turkey, a buffalo farm, cows, horses, blue butterflies on a beach.