After reading an article about the growing popularity of "Stay-cations" we figured we'd give it a try. We went online and checked out all of the touristy things you forget about when you live in the town. Boy are there a bunch of them! Since it was also Valentines day on Saturday, we decided to build in dinner out, just Ed and I. That's easy to do when your not staying in a hotel. We also wanted to make sure we had some outdoor time and that we would do something none of us had done before.
Our first day we headed to Ellensburg. It's only a half an hour away, but being even a short way out of town makes my kids more willing to try new things. We started with lunch at the Yellow Church Cafe'. The building was built in 1928 as a Lutheren Church. We have lots of friends who rave about this place. One couple we know even ride their bikes from Yakima to Ellensburg on Easter, just to have brunch here.
The food was wonderful! I could have eaten nothing more than the Heavenly Loaf (bread with cheese, herbs and garlic baked in) and been very happy. However, I had my heavenly loaf with clam chowder and a ceasar salad. Fantastic!
Just one block away is "Dick and Jane's house" These two are local artists who have decorated their entire home and yard (and fence and everything else in sight) with. . . well, with garbage. There are hundereds of patterns in the fence made out of old rusty bottle caps. One pillar in the yard is covered in multi-colored plastic pop bottle caps. The garage is covered in old hub caps. And there are reflectors everywhere. If you have been to the Sundome in Yakima, this is the man who did the reflector art that goes around the top of it. We had a great time trying to find all the different types of junk that made up the artwork. I had heard about this place for years, and it was fun to finally see it up close. Totally worth the trip, just make sure you walk all the way around or you might miss something.
The next stop on our Ellensburg adventure was the Children's Activity Museum. This was really fun. There are several rooms set up with themes like dinosaurs, the bakery, school and farmers market. There is also a stage with costumes and puppets. My kids favorite area was right up front, it's basicaly a traffic cone with a big fan under it that you can float different size balls on. Nora found another use for it however.
There were also a ton of things to climb in and on, over and around. Ahren spent a good deal of time drawing with what amounted to a suspended piece of wood. You put a piece of paper on the wood, then you swing it in a circle or an elipse, then you drop a marker into a hole just above the paper where the center of the paper would be. Then you sit and watch the thing draw. Ahren made some pretty neat designs.
The Bull statue is in a shopping area we walked through. It's too hard to pass up getting your kids picture next to something like this.
On Saturday we got up late, a must for vacation, packed a lunch and headed out Summitview Ave. to the trail head for Cowiche Canyon. We have had to stop using the word "hike" with Ahren due to an unfortunate fall he took last year on a hike with his youth group. We told him we were going for a nature walk to find things to take pictures of. Witch we did. Ed and I had both forgotten that the canyon gets very little sun during this time of year. We quickly began to wish we had all brought our boots. We did about half the trail, taking plenty of time to examine all of the various rock formations, birds nests and designs made by the slowly melting ice near the creek. We saw two hawks circling above us, and several varieties of "tweety" birds. It was too cold to have to worry about rattle snakes, thank goodness, which is part of the reason we chose to go now, before it warms up.
Sunday I woke up with a migraine and was sooo gratefull to be able to just stay in bed and sleep. I did manage to get up to go to a pot luck at the church that night and attend the evening service. Then we took Nora to a friends house for her very first sleep over away from home. She has had a friend stay over at our house before, but this was a first. She did great, no midnight phones calls, no crying just a lot of fun. It didn't hurt that there were a total of six kids, ages 2-12 in that house that night. I think they just wore her out.
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