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North Carolina Adventure

August 17, 2017

This is a tale of the Yoder family’s 2017 adventures in the North Carolina Smoky Mountains. I adore my family and treasure any time that I’m able to spend with them. :) This year we stayed at a more secluded cabin than our previous time in the Smokys, so we had had fewer destinations, but stuck with a favorite swimming spot, favorite hiking/mountain spot (Max Patch on the Appalachian trail), playing games and hanging out at the cabin (hammock game strong), and more movie nights (with the Secret Life of Walter Mitty now a family vacation movie necessity).

Here are some of my favorite people. It’s my family–plus one & minus one. Enjoy the photos! :)

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Smoky Mountains

February 22, 2016 in Tennessee

Good family time is always a treasure, which these past handful of years has been rare, considering that the 8 of us are now spread between Pennsylvania, Arkansas, and California. But starting last year, an adventurous family vacation is now a yearly tradition that I’ll try to keep going for as long as possible. :) This past July (yes, I’m late) we all stayed in a cabin near Gatlinburg Tennessee and explored the beauty of nature that is the Smoky Mountains. Here’s a brief chronicle of our 2015 Yoder family adventure!

I’m a big fan of nature, but the family time is what I’ll treasure about this time the most. :)

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Pacific Coast Adventures

July 17, 2015 in Oregon

This is only exactly a year late, but this is the extended version of the Pacific Northwest Adventures of 2014.

It all started with an idea to road trip up the cost with my California stationed sister. My sister Felicia is always up for adventure, so of course was down. I don’t know exactly how the conversation developed, but we soon arrived at the idea of seeing if the whole family would want to join us. This for me felt pretty crazy since my family is pretty frugal with money and we’ve never done anything similar to this. I was also skeptical that our whole huge family with everyone having different jobs and things going on would be able to travel to the west coast  for 10 days at the same time. But then…

Everyone said yes!

After that, a sketchy craigslist RV, and a bunch of Southwest credit card sign up bonus miles later, we were off!

Our chronological destinations included:

  • Whiskeytown Lake in Redding, CA (swimming, paddle boarding)
  • Crater Lake (sunrise hike, exploring & hiking)
  • Silver Falls State Park
  • Portland, OR (visited some good friends, ate some good food)
  • Vancouver…WA. Meant to make it up to the Canadian Vancouver, but we didn’t want to rush the rest of the trip to do so. A quick drive across Portland’s Columbia river brought us to a town of the same name. So yes, I’ve been to Vancouver.
  • Cape Kiwanda beach, OR. The whole coast south of there is the most wonderful stretch of road that I’ve driven — Hwy 101. I was constantly blown away by how beautiful everything was on this stretch. We probably pulled over 5-10 times for different pretty stops along this highway. I mean…I wasn’t going to just drive by! :)
  • One of these unscheduled stops–that happened to be one of my favorite places ever–was Cape Perpetua and Thor’s well. Such a cool place.
  • Redwoods State Park (lots of hiking & exploring)
  • Finally, back to Nevada City -> Sacramento -> Home

It was grand. I absolutely recommend a trip like this to everyone. :)

Here’s the photo diary of the trip…

This took a lot of planning and was not without problems and dilemmas, but these 10 days turned out to be some of my favorite travels of my life. Looking back on all the good memories and seeing my family so happy makes it all worth it.

I guess you could say that this trip kinda brought back the trend of having a yearly family vacation. This weekend we got back from a week in the Smoky Mountains. I plan to blog that in less than 12 months. :)

If you’d like to see part 1 of my favorite images from this trip, here’s the post Pacific Northwest Abridged.

Invest in memories, not things.

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Pacific Northwest Abridged

August 29, 2014 in Oregon

These are a few of my favorite photos from our family trip to the Pacific Northwest! I plan to do a part 2 post with a lot more photos and a lot more writing, but this is my official start! :) It was quite an incredible trip with the entirety of my family adventuring in some of the prettiest places I’ve ever been.

It was wonderful.