On Thursday morning, at the start of my zoom spinning group, looking out our second floor window, I noticed this bird above where the mystery feathers were.  With my phone, I couldn’t get a great zoom photo of it.

One of the zoom members mentioned The Feather Atlas site to use to try and identify the feathers.  So I took a new photo and measured the most distinctive one.

Unfortunately this site appears to have only wild birds rather than including domesticated ones.  It identified a peregrine falcon for this feather, but it didn’t looks quite right.  So I stick to my thoughts that this is from our peacock.

Thursday afternoon we loaded up and went to pick up the grandkids for a trip to the cabin that my great grandfather built near Cliffdell, Washington in 1927.  Unfortunately our truck, with the trailer load with motorcycles, decided to have transmission problems like it did when it was towing the travel trailer on our trip in June.  We were almost going to cancel the trip, but our son-in-law was able to get  an appropriate hitch for us and lent us their truck to take instead.  It was incredibly nice of them, but we did get a later start.  Here are Ryeleigh and William when we are finally en route.

We finally arrived at the cabin at 9:30.  My mother stayed up for us, but Al was trying to sleep.  The grandkids were quite jazzed up at this point so I am afraid we made a lot of noise.  But finally everyone got settled down and slept.

By 7:30 the next morning Steve was finally able to jump in the river.

William enjoyed walking the beagle.

We did check out a nearby cabin that had seemingly been abandoned.  Now the new owners seem to be working on it which is really good news.

Here is our cabin with the sun rising on the mountain behind it. This is heaven for me.

We explored the river a little more that morning.

The kids’ and grampa’s lunch were dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets and fries.  I was trying to limit the freezer space usage as we have an older, smaller refrigerator there.

Piper proceeded to color and solve jigsaw puzzles that afternoon.

Meanwhile William rode his motorcycle.

The front porch by the river was a nice and relatively cool gathering place.

Then the sun set fairly early, and this is what is left on Edgar Rock at 6:45.

Evening ice cream was a big hit with the kids (and some adults too).

The next morning Steve returned to the river as he did quite a bit on this trip.

William rode the Honda XL 70 quite a bit this weekend.  He ended up putting 110 miles on it.

 

Lunch was Tom’s famous (to the grandkids) grilled cheese sandwiches. Here is Piper taking hog shark bites out of it.

The neighbors’ dog Archie kept visiting which was upsetting to Steve and Ryeleigh.

Saturday afternoon we decided to hang out at the river on the other side of the old bridge.  It was really nice there again.

Craig and Amy (my uncle and aunt) had joined us by walking across the river.

This apparently was a tiring day, and Piper was sleeping on our oldest rocking chair by 5:30.

Kyle, my cousin, joined us, and Tom, William and him went out for a sunset motorcycle ride up the nearby mountain.

Piper did have an emotional meltdown later in the evening, missing her parents.  But she was able to call and talk to them and then (with my, William’s and Tom’s help) draw a picture of the cabin for them.

Sunday was more dog walking with the kids.

In the afternoon, at Piper’s request, we drove to Jim Sprick Park near Naches and thoroughly enjoyed the playground there.

There is a CCC building there, built in 1934.

The sprinklers were a big hit too.

Then, back at the cabin, we enjoyed water squirt guns.  Sunday was the hottest day, getting up to 98 degrees on our thermometer.

That evening I somewhat stupidly made turkey pot pies for dinner.  I had prepared the ingredients at home partially using this recipe before we left (using our lard, turkey, green beans and carrots), but it was still somewhat challenging rolling out the crusts and baking them at 425 degrees on a hot day.  Here they are before the baking.

During the baking, Tom measured the grandkids on the wall where 4 generations of kids’ measurements are kept.

My cousin Kyle really seemed to enjoy William and Piper.

Steve was enjoying himself as well.

The Whistlin’ Jacks campground had filled up nicely during the holiday weekend.

Sunday evening there was a last visit to the river for the kids and dogs.

And today we packed up and headed out over Chinook Pass.

Mount Rainier was quite beautiful yet again over Lake Tipsoe.

I managed to catch a glimpse of someone painting it.

Here is my offline map of our course at this point.

And a view of the valley to the south.  I will never tire of the views from this pass that I have been seeing since I was a toddler.

That was our weekend.  It was over way too soon, but I believe we all had a great time.