I have wanted to drive up to Lion’s Rock for awhile now.  It’s just north of Ellensburg.  I think it’s a big rock, and that there is an incredible view.  I don’t know for sure because we still haven’t made it.

I had the great idea for us to drive up there this morning.  I have been wanting to take a new family picture, and the fall colors are so pretty right now.  So we loaded up and took off.

Ellensburg is at an altitude of about 1,500 feet.  We drove up into the hills and up the mountain to about 5,000 feet.  It was a quick climb.

It just so happens that it is also the height of elk hunting season.  We must have seen 50 trucks filled with men dressed in orange. It was one goofy clueless little family and jillions of hunters.

When we left Ellensburg, it was a beautiful sunny day, and it was about 50 degrees.  We climbed up a ways and it looked like this.

Fifteen minutes later, the temperature had dropped 30 degrees and it looked like this:

The road had gotten slushy, and we had to put the truck in 4 wheel drive.  I had no idea we were going to be driving into winter. We finally saw a sign which said we still had 3 miles to go.  The road was getting pretty bad so we decided we’d better turn around.

There was a big fire – two summers ago I think, and it left a lot of trees charred.  It was sad to see but beautiful in an eerie way with the snow.

We went back down part of the way and stopped a couple of times to take some pictures.  We should probably have worn orange.

Trying to get a picture of this goofy kid is not the easiest, but we got a few nice ones.

The family picture was tricky too.

I tried to get a picture of Davey and David, but Davey was not real interested.

And I think it might be wrong of me, but this picture makes me laugh every time.

I figured it might be the last year I could pick him up for a picture, so I wanted to try once more.  I did get a better one which I like but which does not make me laugh as much.  I like catching the not so sunny parts of Davey’s personality.  He is sunny most of the time though!

It was an exciting beautiful drive into winter.  Although we didn’t make it to Lion’s Rock, we managed to avoid the hunters, and we had fun (mostly!) taking pictures.

I have not blogged in almost a month. That feels very strange. It’s definitely time!

So today, I went with Davey’s class on a field trip to the fire station. It’s not far from his school so we walked there. This involved crossing a grassy field, walking down the side of a road for a short distance, crossing onto a gravel trail, and then shortly after that, we arrived at the station (we came in from behind!).

Davey and his class learned a ton of great information.  I did too.  For example, I learned that your nose doesn’t work while you are sleeping.  You can have someone stick a big freshly baked pan of brownies under your nose when you are asleep, and the firemen told us you won’t smell it.  That’s why we need working smoke detectors.   I found that fact fascinating.  It’s probably the one fact that I will not forget.

They talked about escape if there is a fire.  Davey got the chance to be rescued from a bedroom.

Davey had told me this morning that he thought firemen were kinda scary when they had all their gear on.  I guess the firemen were used to this because one fireman demonstrated putting on all his gear and then showed us how he breathed like Darth Vader when he had his air tank on.

The kids thought that was pretty cool.

We had to get a picture of our little group!

We were waiting to see the ambulance when all of a sudden they had a call to go to a house fire.  All of a sudden, they were putting on gear and hustling like crazy.

They started their sirens –

and then they were gone!

It was really neat to see them in action.  The kids got to see how quickly they prepared and were gone.  (although I do feel bad for thinking it was neat to see them in action because that meant that someone needed them which of course wasn’t good.)

Such a fun trip.  Davey couldn’t wait to come home and tell David all about it!