Road trip Trip to Whitehorse!

I really wanted to go fishing this weekend, but Holly was down in the dumps and needed a pick-me-up.  And truthfully, so did I.

So while we were celebrating Ashley’s birthday party, I told Holly to find someone we could car-pool with on a road trip to my once-favorite getaway: Whitehorse.  With Elisabet in the family, we needed more passenger capacity, as each of our cars only seats five people

We asked ray first, because he’d expressed interest earlier and has a large car, then we asked Fontenot.  He declined the trip but offered up his ‘stealth vader’ customized van for us to drive!  Cool, with a van like that we can seat seven people and we didn’t need to carpool with anyone.  Holly also invited the new counselor,

Lindsey Moore and the music Teacher Danielle Cousino, and they both decided to come  along.  In the end, the Chapin’s decided they wanted to wait until their mother could come along and so they loaned us their six-man tent to camp in.  Elisabet took this wonderful Picture of me playing with John Caleb right near one of the hot inputs from the hot-spring–it’s tack sharp too.

One of the big draws of WH, for families, has always been the Tahkini Hotsprings as it has a nice bunch of campsites (of varying quality), it has a nice pool filled with hot water year round, is affordable, and for little kids, they empty it every night, so it becomes a huge toddler wading pool in the mornings.  Lindsay brought a four man tent for the girls to sleep in and we used the Chapin’s tent for our family.

We got a late start due to the impulsive nature of the trip and so by the time we got in to the hotsprings we just had time for some serious fun and then go to bed. 

Of course WH is in the interior and so it has a much wider range of weather than Haines does and some of us were not prepared for the sub-freezing temperatures.  In the photo above, you can see the van we borrowed from Mark and Lenise (thanks!), Lindsey’s tent, the pic-nic table and three fold-out chairs Chapin loaned us, and then Danielle’s car behind the van.

In this night photo, we’re sitting around telling stories and eating S’mores.

After swimming, we found that someone stole Elisabet’s towel so we were a towel short.   Then the younger boys were so tired that the fell asleep in the van before we could get them into their sleeping bags in the tent.  Holly slept with Luke and Mark in the van, I slept with Mark in the big tent, Elisabet and Lindsey slept in the smaller tent and Danielle opted for the comfort of the back-seat of her own car. 

In the middle of the night, Elisabet opened the van door and asked Holly where her warm socks were, but of course it was pitch dark and she didn’t know how to turn on the lights, so she just told her to climb in the van and sleep on the bench-seat in the back with her and the younger boys.

Of course no trip to WH would be complete without a stop over at McDonald’s to sample a burger, a shake, and some fries.  One of the main things I like about the golden arches is the play areas the have that sometimes allow the parents some peace and quiet.  In the picture above, Mark shows John Caleb how to spin the ball spinner that’s on the second level.

On the first morning we bumped into the Boron family, who have twin girls in Mark’s Class: Haley and Hannah) at the pool in during the toddler  time and Luke almost drowned in the deeper section after it filled up, but Holly saved him while holding John Caleb the whole time.   Always watch your kids.  Luke, we love you.  Yikes!

On the second day, Holly and I took the boys to the playground and met up with the Boron’s while the girls, Elisabet, Lindsey, and Danielle, went shopping.  Then we went to the Pizza Hut, then it was back out to the Hotsprings for one more round of fun in the hot water.

On the way back, we stopped along the road a couple of times to shoot some fun shots of the kids running toward the camera down a path.

The most memorable part of the trip occurred on the way home about twenty miles past Haines Junction.  Holly said, “Let’s find your coat with the passports in it so we can go through the US border quickly without waking up the boys.  So we started to look all over the van for my Apocalypse jacket that I’ve had for about ten years.  They couldn’t find it as I drove along, so  I pulled over at the nearest wide spot in the road and emptied the van out into the gravel in about 30 seconds.  Sure enough.  The jacket was not in the van: No passports. 

So we turned around and headed back to WH.  When we got to Haines Junction, Holly needed to go the bathroom so we stopped in at a gas station we had just filled up at and they called Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, and the Hot Springs and we located the jacket with the passports at the Hot springs.  Whew!  The agreed to send it to us via mail and I gave them my visa number to pay for that.