A little piece of heaven - McCall!

The girls had only been home from girls camp for two days when we headed up to McCall after church on June 22nd.  We arrived at the condo with the high temp of 57 degrees that day.  It was chilly when we went to bed that night and we eventually had to turn the heat on.  We started a puzzle that night and played some games before bed.

Monday morning We went into town for lunch at My Father's Place, groceries, and some wondering around town.

Because the weather was so cool we played pickle ball nearly every afternoon.  The girls are getting pretty good.  The two of them beat me in one game and Emily beat me one on one several times.

The fancy cups made yogurt parfaits extra special.

A mother merganser with a dozen babies made for good entertainment.

And of course every night we had to go moose searching - we failed most of the time but did find a marmot.

Thursday morning we went into town for breakfast at Stacy Cakes and then rented e-bikes and biked the 18 or so miles around the lake.

The western side of the lake was lovely and less familiar to us.

We had to take it slow by the meadows to look for our friend, the moose.

After North Beach the trail was unpaved for a little over three miles.  It was definitely less fun and that fun got a little farther away when Lily wiped out on a slightly down hill section.

She scraped up her hands and knee pretty good but thankfully we were less than a mile from the condo so we walked our bikes back and got her all bandaged up.  We ate some lunch then Emmy and I finished the ride back into town while Lily watched tv.

We dropped off our bikes then drove back to the condo to retrieve Lily and her bike so we could end the journey at Ice Cream Alley.

We had a fun early morning chat with Andrew from our beds - can't believe he will be home so soon.

On our last evening moose hunt we spotted this guys crossing the river, making Emmy very happy.

Greg had planned on joining us Friday night and going hiking Saturday, but his plans changed and he wasn't able to join us so we went hiking on our own and lucked out to see this cross fox with a squirrel cross the road right in front of us.

Emily did the research and found us a great hike to Boulder Lake.  Luckily it wasn't too hot and we just enjoyed the scenery on our way.

It was a beautiful hike and we finished just in time to make it back to McCall in time for the Saturday market then home to pack and clean...until the tire pressure light came on.  Apparently the rocky road had punctured my tire.

We were treeing to get the jack set up when a kind man and his wife pulled over.  He got our spare on and would take no payment - we were so grateful for his kindness.  We drove to Les Schwab, dropped off the car and walked into town for lunch (we had missed the market by this point).  We enjoyed our sandwiches at Stax and the girls got ice cream on our way back to the car.  My tire had a puncture wound large enough it couldn't be patched.  The tires in McCall were $800 more than in Middleton so we were going to drive home on the donut.

We packed up and did some cleaning then I let the girls swim while I napped and finished the clean up then we hit the road.  It was a lovely week filled with time together, time outdoors, exercise and relaxation - fabulous.