Washington: 2 Volcanic Mountains 🏔️🗻 + Paradise
More about Paradise after an Adventure Recap & Reflection:
ItsDillerTime made it to Washington and reached the “opposite corner” of our lower 48 trip. It’s been 9 months since we sold our FL home and a year since Vince resigned from a great job at The King’s Academy and we went ALL-IN on this crazy idea of pulling this family together instead allowing “things” to pull us apart. Putting 5 people and 2 dogs into a 40 ft RV for a trip around the US sounds like vacation 24/7 but think about that for a second. Have you ever gotten to the end of an amazing trip and your head hits the pillow, your mind lost in swimmer’s fatigue from the road yet still exhilarated by images of your trip cascading through your mind… ❤️ I hope that’s a fond image because it should be and everyone needs that exhausted-high so get out there if you haven’t gotten one of those lately.
Not to diminish that idyllic memory but more to try and share the tumult of the tempest in our minds as we hit the pillow…
We officially set the idea of this adventure in motion June 2024 when Vince resigned (still missing TKA and more its people ❤️🩹) and we ran the uphill sprint of getting our West Palm Beach house on the market. Our 2022 home sale in east West Palm Beach graced us with a surplus that allowed us to consider this adventure option instead of a number of expensive, yet valuable, therapeutic programs our kids were demonstrating a need for us to consider. Quick disclaimer, leaving out the details for the sake of the kids but reminder we adopted all 4 of our boys and birth-mom trauma and drug abuse is involved in each of their stories with some learning disabilities sprinkled in so package that into the natural chaos of emerging teen development and that’s captures the majority of ItsDillerTime RV Trip’s origin story. So the idea was to change every part of our script and pull closer, literally, while focusing us all on adventuring instead of … everything else. This therapeutic roadtrip isn’t a recommend to follow, more a testimony of how God led us to a fork-in-the-road and how we decided to use that fork to eat our next few meals on wheels!
Back to the house sale, June was slow and July even more tenuous waiting to sell and shopping RVs… like every RV ever created that can sleep 5 😳… all the while continuously telling the kids we have a plan but just can’t start yet. FYI kids and parents do great with ambiguity 🙃🤪 As August rolled around and our plan to home school started just down the street from the kids’ old schools with no sale in site and still no jobs, we decided the Adventure Curriculum needed the road so off we went. We took off on a 5 week test/trip in a rented SUV. If the house didn’t sell by the time we returned we would look for jobs and scrap the “Big US Loop” and be thankful for the mini version. The 15 state test trip to see if we would handle life and home school on the road. The Adventure Curriculum was/is simple yet daunting. We use the planning and execution of the trip and stops to help the kids experience (hands/feet on learning) history, geography, geology, earth science, theology, astronomy, math and language from where they are each in their development. Assignments built on the experiences and all of God’s creation was the platform for learning. We selectively document and reflect on teachable moments as we progress. Regularity is the spice of developmental success so we also used online core courses and structured reflective assignments to ensure we had some routine but this processes requires new experiences routinely so Mom/Dad scaffolded learning on a literal moving target. Fun but fun like trying to push wet spaghetti.
On the last day of the test trip with resumes going back out to find work, God brought us a contract for the house. We would sell for an hefty loss but it would open the door we felt God pushing us toward. We got the sale and move done between 2 hurricanes and with a rapid departure from Florida ahead of Milton, we started our ItsDillerTime RV mission. The start of the trip was a touch above our normal Diller crazy so we needed to settle into a routine of short stays with excursions to key sites to make this trip around the US work… no pressure 😳🤣😜 Since 8-20-24 here are a few things our pillows remind us about:
SUV roadtrip of 4200 miles through 15 states in 5 weeks.
Sold House and everything that didn’t fit into a 5x10 storage unit in 3 weeks.
RV Week 1: flee hurricane
Total ItsDillerTime RV miles ~8500
SUV tow behind miles ~12000 and the time hitched up to RV doesn’t count, that’s excursion miles
7 mechanical RV failures causing a stop on our trip, only 4 requiring professional intervention (we’re learning how to DIY more stuff 🤓
Since this is our home we have packed all we have and moved 45 times. May not be as big a move as the 1st move out of the house but it does require about 2hrs set-up and 2hrs breakdown each time the RV moves.
Visited 25 States, some twice
Visited 84 National Beaches, Monuments, Recreation Areas, Historical Sites & Parks
2 ER trips, which with our family is pretty good in that time
1 year of voluntary unemployment, pre-retirement or poorly self employed 😯
249 days of laying down on the pillow and waking without full clarity where your home is parked 🤪
Now as our heads hit the pillow in Washington, it’s with a trained tolerance to chaos and at least 2 gigs of downloadable images of bucket list level people, places and things. It’s sobering to think back and realize we have experienced things that often don’t even happen in a lifetime, let alone less than a year. We are blessed but also challenged to continue to not only see and experience more of God’s amazing creation but to keep pushing each other and our boys toward a better awareness of our created purpose. That’s some serious therapeutic outcomes ❤️🩹
So we’ve trudged the trails, climbed the mountains, crossed the rivers and studied the wildlife and fauna from coast to coast and corner to corner. Now what? Well we literally got our 2 tickets to Paradise and share these 2 latests mountain top experiences with all the appreciation the past 9 months have offered.
Thousand Trails Paradise 😎
PBA friends Brianna and Parker Owens❤️
Paradise, Mount Rainier ⛰️
Creation Museum Castle Rock, WA ✝️
Mount Saint Helens 🌋
View from entry to Thousand Trails Paradis in Silver Creek, WA. Zoom in and you can see Mt. Saint Helens on the right and Mt. Adams center. Mt. Rainier is just off to left so if you catch the angle you can get all three snow caps. None of my pano attempts worked but quite a view!
Christmas tree farms are the norm throughout the country/mountain side. Michele is my present under the Christmas tree always :)
Another Bald Eagle siting, this time at the lake on the Thousand Trails Paradis property.
Peyton at it again…
Robert found holding the Rainbow trout from the lake exciting. Peyton liked it but was bummed he didn’t catch it. A neighbor used some more tempting bait and shared her catch with us.
Our home nestled in the trees in Paradise.
This trip has been a progressive supper of our PBA Days. Briana and Parker Owens hosted us for diner and some memories. Truly a blessing to be able to reunite with a special group from our PBA Student Development Team 2004-2010.
Diller and Owens crew :)
Glacial run-off but the canyon looks like it was carved out by the finger of God. Ice, earth and downhill speed is an impressive sculptor of the Nisqually River and Gorge.
Beautiful drive up to Paradise on Mt. Rainier. According to the Rangers, Paradise has the highest average snowfall of any lower 48 mountain due to its location on Mt. Rainier, the prevailing winds and its proximity to the west coast and Puget Sound despite being at only 5400 ft elevation. Only 4-5 ft left on the mountain with tons of melt evidenced in the streams and rivers.
The Tatoosh Range from Paradise Lodge parking lot.
Another Jr. Ranger badge and some mountain education.
Snow hiking without gear can be a tad dangerous so we opted for the shorter, more level-ish Nisqually Vista Trail. Glacier Vista and Alta Vista were much more steep and required spikes and/or poles due to the icy mix.
Elevated view of the Nisqually vs the lower view earlier in the pictures. You can see the glacier at the top from this view with Rainier’s peak will hiding in the clouds.
Someone wouldn’t open their eyes for the one :)
Snow Angels… nope no angels here just more eye closed pictures :)
Added a vivid filter to highlight the Stellar’s Jay on the tree to the right. He came in to grab some apple I was eating but wouldn’t while I was holding the camera so no closer pic.
Top of Narada Falls
Bridge and top of Narada Falls
Down valley view of Narada Falls.
Some deer posing for us on our way down the mountain.
Downhill in the Nasally Riverbed. The volume of rock across this sizable riverbed made the actual river look kind of small. The boulder mounds ranged from 5-8 ft showing where the river would shift at different volumes. Crazy powerful water!
We believe these are Seep Monkeyflowers. These perennials popped up in the Nisqually riverbed in a few spots.
This evergreen found a home in a twisted trunk that at some point was washed into the Nisqually riverbed and found resting spot after gathering a few rocks. Really cool mosaic of nature.
Michele found some materials online about this Creation Center Museum in Castle Rock near Mt. Saint Helens. It’s a Christian museum focused on “New Earth” science explains how many of the geological features of Mt. Saint Helen and other glaciers and volcanoes have been observed creating strata and other geologic features that most of science says would require thousands and millions of years. The raw power of these features can supplant time itself. Some compelling science for our homeschool curriculum.
Bill the museum geologist does a great job explaining some of the material in the museum.
Just a bit of humor from our stop in Castle Rock. Note the dog in the front seat, back seat ears poking up and the bed of the truck. This made me think of my boys and how I can NEVER get them to agree on sitting in the same seat :)
Mt. Saint Helens was a long drive in but worth the surreal view of the reformed landscape. You could see how the side of the mountain literally slid off and formed the two ridges in the center of the picture, as well as the North Fork Route River, which flows down toward Robert’s head in this picture. The land was reshaped in a matter of hours in 1980 when the wall bulge then slid off during the eruption. Then again an earth shaping event in 1982 when the glaciers that had formed rapidly in the volcano were heated and a second eruption pushed mud, averaging 150 feet thick, out and downhill carving gorges and valleys as it went.
