Aug 9 2020

Bear Valley Lakes, Idaho

Posted on August 9, 2020 by Karin

This weekend Corey and I had the opportunity to hike to Bear Valley Lakes. Bear Valley Lakes is located in the Lemhi mountain range in the Salmon National Forest. It was a 3 hour drive from our home to the trailhead. Once at the trailhead it’s a 6 mile hike up to the Bear Valley Lakes. We hiked the whole 6 miles in 3 hours. It is a continual upward climb gaining more than 2000 ft of elevation. It wasn’t too difficult but my legs were fatigued by the time we made it to the lakes just from the constant upward climb. The trail itself was a little rocky and made it difficult to hike on at times. The scenery was beautiful. There is a creek that runs for the most part all along the trail. We often came upon little waterfalls. Once at the lake there was a little wind that made a hot summer day feel really nice and cool. The lake is a glacial lake so it was pretty cold. I soaked my feet in it and it felt really refreshing. Corey spent his extra time up there fishing (he caught 3 fish) and I spent my time finishing a book. The best part of our trip is that we had the whole lake to ourselves not another soul in sight. The only time we saw someone else was as we were packing up to leave another group of people and livestock arrived.

Selfie in front of a waterfall on our way back

Beautiful majestic peaks around the lake

Mar 20 2020

Good Day!

Posted on March 20, 2020 by Karin

Yesterday was a really good day! After getting up and moving I spring cleaned the oven/stove, microwave, and fridge. It’s amazing how much grease and grim builds up over time. I do keep things pretty clean but things really do need a deep clean every once in a while. What’s the difference between a routine clean and a deep clean? I look at it as taking a few steps farther into your cleaning routine. For the microwave not only do you wipe the inside clean but also the outside especially the underneath side. That’s where the grease from the stove likes to hide. I didn’t need to clean the vent this time but normally I would clean the vent too when I spring clean.

The oven wasn’t too hard because I had already cleaned the inside a couple of weeks ago. My husband, however, baked an apple pie in there this week and didn’t get it sealed all the way so there was a mess on the bottom. I just made sure to turn the self clean on the night before and was able to wipe it out the next morning. I did take the extra time to scrub the glass top and back where the dials are. Grease likes to settle onto that.

The last thing I did was clean the fridge. This is my absolute dreaded chore! I hate cleaning the fridge. I definitely don’t do it as often as I should. Last year when my husband and I went to Japan my mother-in-law watched our kids for us. To my surprise, and a little embarrassment, when we got back she had cleaned my fridge for me. I was super grateful but also pretty embarrassed that she had to see the yuckiness that was my fridge. So while I was cleaning it yesterday I was thinking of her and how it would be nice for her to do it again. I took out all the shelves and wiped both the inside and outside down. I also pulled the fridge away from the wall and cleaned the back(yuck!). So glad it’s all done. It took me about 3 hours to clean the fridge, oven/stove, and microwave.

It was such a nice day that I finally convinced my kids to turn off the screens and go outside. My daughter rode her bike around and my son and I played some basketball horse. It was really nice to get outside! To my dismay this morning when I opened the blinds it was snowing. So probably not going to get to go outside today. I think I may take a day off of cleaning today and maybe settle down to read a book. Who am I kidding the new game of animal crossing is coming out I’ll be the first to play it!

Mar 18 2020

Extended Spring Break!

Posted on March 18, 2020 by Karin

With the craziness that is happening lately I thought it would be good to keep track of what we are doing to keep busy. My kids school got cancelled yesterday for the COVID-19 pandemic. So far the plans for reopening are March 30th but who knows if we will actually send kids back by then. My mom who lives in Oregon told me their schools have planned to stay closed until April 28th! I choose to believe it’s an extended spring break for us in hopes that school will start up again by the end of the month.

This is what I’ve started to keep us busy. My kid’s first day without school was yesterday. I had them clean their bathroom and pick up their rooms. I spent the day scrubbing and oiling cabinets. That’s right we started spring cleaning a little early this year! I figured each day they are home we could do a little spring clean up and hopefully our home will be sparkling in time for them to get back to school. My kids aren’t excited about this little endeavor of mine but I figured it would be good for them to spend a couple hours cleaning instead of playing video games. Plus this will teach them to appreciate their home and maybe take better care of it. Who am I kidding they probably view it as slave labor.

Yesterday while doing the cabinets my back and wrist started hurting. I find that when I start a project I often overdue it and end up hurting myself because I don’t stop until it’s done. So today I enlisted the help from two of my three kids. We did something a little less intense. We cleaned all the doors in the house. It doesn’t seem like a lot but when you have 29 doors in the house it can be when you have to do it by yourself. Having my two helpers really made a difference.

The worse doors to clean were the doors to the outside. Go figure I mean that is where our homes meet the world right!? The interior doors were better and took less time to clean. To clean the doors all I used was a wash rag, bucket with hot water and some dish soap, and a magic eraser. The wash rag and soapy water help to get the dirt and grime off and the magic eraser is for the finger smudges and black marks. It takes a little elbow grease but we were able to accomplish the task in a little over an hour. It would have taken me twice as long by myself. Once we were done all the doors look amazing!

Apr 21 2019

Day 15: Goodbye Hiroshima

Posted on April 21, 2019 by Karin

Today we leave our hotel in Hiroshima, which has been our home for the last 7 days, and say hello again to Tokyo. We are making our way back home. Tomorrow we catch our flight back to the states. Today was spent mostly on trains traveling from Hiroshima to Tokyo. After we got off the train and we were trying to find our hotel we ended up on a little street just one street over from our hotel. It looks a little beaten up and a little sketchy but it had a ton of little restaurants. We ended up finding an indian restaurant. We made note and decided that that is where we wanted to eat dinner tonight. We found our hotel and then we were off on another train headed for another shrine. We traveled to Meiji Shrine. It was loaded with tourist but we were able to find a path that wasn’t so crowded and had these really big trees along the whole path. It was a lot more peaceful than walking the more crowded path.

Our friend Yuma told us to really get a feel of how Tokyo is we should go to a main street that the young kids like to hang out. The name is Takeshita. We got there and the street was packed! So many people. We went down and looked at some shops. It’s interesting because some of the kids go there and dress up. There were some different outfits there for sure. Once we were done on that street we headed back towards our hotel and found that Indian restaurant. I thought it was fitting that since we started our adventure in Salt Lake City with Indian food that we should end it too with Indian food. This little restaurant was really good. The curries we had were super yummy. They’re not very spicy because the Japanese locals don’t care for too much spice. I watched as the couple next to us took a bite and started sweating. It worried me until I took a bite of ours and it wasn’t spicy at all.

Not sure I’ll get to blog tomorrow since we will be traveling for so long. This has been a wonderful adventure for both Corey and I. We have enjoyed the Japanese culture here. We have made many amazing memories. Despite enjoying our vacation we are ready to get home. We miss our kids and Corey especially misses his pillow.

Casks of Sake that are donated to the shrine every year

Apr 20 2019

Day 14: Onomichi & Kurashiki

Posted on April 20, 2019 by Karin

Today we traveled first to Onomichi where we rode a cable car to the top of a mountain to an overlook where you can see the whole city. It was really neat to see from way up there. After riding the cable car down we walked around a bit and stopped and had Onomichi Ramen for lunch. I guess it’s a special ramen that Corey said we had to have. We couldn’t spend a lot of time here because we had a train to catch for Kurashiki where we were meeting up with some friends. We boarded the bus to take us to the station only to find out that it was taking us to the wrong station and we were going the wrong way. We ended up missing our train and just taking the local train to where we needed to be. It was OK because we were still able to meet up with our friends.

We met up with Yuma again and I got to meet another friend of Corey’s from his mission, Akiko. Yuma showed us the old town of Kurashiki. The buildings and streets were so interesting. Most of them are white with black burnt wood as accents. It was beautiful. He took us to the shopping area and we went in and out of all these little shops. We ended up finding a Tonari No Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro) shop. That is one of our family’s favorite movies. Corey ended up getting some souvenirs from there. When we came out we had a couple of bags and Yuma and Akiko thought it was funny that out of all the things we had seen that day that was what we ended up with. I hadn’t gotten any souvenirs for myself and we saw a cool little shop that had this beautiful string art there. I thought it was really neat but Corey was afraid we couldn’t get it home in one piece. So we didn’t get it.

We went to dinner at a shabu shabu/sukiyaki all-you-can-eat place. Sukiyaki is one of the things I’ve been wanting to have since we got here. I’m so glad that we got to have some tonight. You cook the meat and veggies in front of yourself in a broth and then take it out and dip it in either a sauce or raw egg. Corey and I have had it at home but the store that sold our sukiyaki sauce stopped selling it so it’s been a while. It was all-you-can-eat for 2 hours. I got full pretty quickly. Yuma had a lot and I asked him if he ate this way all the time. He said yes. I then asked how he stayed healthy and skinny he said “yoga”, which is so funny because he’s the one who lead us in our yoga class the other night. It was a really fun day and not too strenuous. As we said goodbye to our friends at the train station Yuma and Akiko pulled out a present for me. They had bought me that string art that I liked so much. It was such a sweet gesture for them to do this for me. I’m going to be extra careful with it so I can get it home. I’ll always treasure it.

We got to see this band and these girls playing the drums. It was really cool

Apr 19 2019

Day 13 Japan

Posted on April 19, 2019 by Karin

Today we woke up tired and very sore from our hike yesterday. We decided to take it easy. We took the train to Nishi-Hiroshima. This is where Corey spent 7 months of his mission. We started to walk around but my feet hurt so much that I had to go back to the station and sit and wait for Corey to be done. He went a couple of miles and saw some of his old haunts from his mission. The rest of the day we have spent trying to rest up. We have lots to do tomorrow.

Just sleeping at the train station. Nothing to see here keep walking

7 Elevens are all over here. It’s like starbucks there’s one on every corner. No slushies though

Corey outside the train station in his old area

The place we had dinner. Udon you order at the machines outside and then take the ticket to the counter inside

Apr 18 2019

Day 12: Miyajima

Posted on April 18, 2019 by Karin

We woke up bright and early so we could get an early start to Miyajima. We rode a ferry over to the island. Miyajima has the famous floating Torii. The shrine there is called Itsukushima. We wanted to get there early one to beat the crowds and two because we wanted to hike to the top of Mt. Misen. There are three routes to the top. Our friend Yuma told us to take the farthest route because it is less traveled which means less tourist. So we did and we only saw a few other people on the hike. It was a pretty strenuous hike. I tell ya they really like their stairs here. There were so many stairs! The stairs, in my opinion, made the hike harder. It was more like boulder climbing. We hiked to the peak of Komagabayashi and ate lunch there. At that point we debated if we wanted to hike further and go to the top of Mt Misen which is the higher, more populated, peak. After lunch and resting for about a half hour we decided to hike up. After about another 1000 stairs (not an exaggeration) we made it to the top of Mt. Misen. Both peaks were beautiful but the Mt. Misen definitely had more people. On the way down I decided to count stairs from the gate and I stopped after getting over 1200 stairs. It was only about half way down too! I know we climbed a few thousand stairs today. By the time we came down our legs were jello. Since we booked it up to the top we still hadn’t seen all the things in the town of Miyajima so we walked around town and bought some souvenirs and went to the shines in town. By the time we rode the ferry and the train back to our hotel we were exhausted. It’s the next morning now and my legs are really sore. I guess all the walking and stair climbing we’ve done on this trip was preparing us for this one day. I would be happy if I didn’t see another stair the rest of the time we were here.

On our way to the top of Komagabayashi peak

Panorama view. The peak just over is Mt. Misen

Top of Mt. Misen. The flat rock area on the next peak over is the one where we ate lunch.

Cool looking rock dam. This is the more traveled path on the way down

On the docks of shrine with floating Torii in background. Tide is out and it’s no longer floating

Apr 17 2019

Day 11 Hiroshima Castle

Posted on April 17, 2019 by Karin

Today we took it easy. We walked to Hiroshima Castle and took our time wandering around the grounds and inside the castle. The castle had to be rebuilt after the A-bomb hit in WWII. They restored it in the late 1950s. It had a lot of interesting things in it. I noticed here in Japan they have certain areas you are allowed to take photos and certain areas that you are not allowed. I took my camera out to take a picture of a samurai sword but Corey reminded me we couldn’t take pictures in that particular area. It’s a little weird.

On our way back we stopped at a Japanese garden called Shukkeien. It was loaded with tourist but fun to walk around. I love all the pretty flowers that are in bloom and the intricate layout of the garden. I wish my garden looked like that. There is a pond in the middle of the garden and we were sitting on a bench and noticed what looked like turtles. Corey thought they were statues but then I saw one move. That’s when we noticed there were loads of them on the raft in the middle of the pond and the rock islands.

For dinner tonight we went to a yakiniku place. Yakiniku is where you have a hot grill in front of you and you grill meat right at your table. It was all you can eat but they put a time limit on you. You have 120 minutes to eat. It was plenty of time and we got so full. The meat was so good. You grill it and then stick it in a sauce. It was a little expensive but a really cool experience.

One of the displays in the castle. Notice the Camera ok sign

Beautiful colors and flowers in the garden

Pond in the garden. Turtles are on the raft and rock islands

Apr 16 2019

Day 10 Peace Park in Hiroshima

Posted on April 16, 2019 by Karin

We decided to spend the day in Hiroshima at the peace park memorial. What a humbling experience it is to tour the area where one of the atomic bombs hit in WWII. To see the devastation and hear the stories about what happened was heartbreaking. This museum is such a stark difference than the war museum we saw in Tokyo. At one point during our walk around as I was reading about the many innocent civilians killed and the school children’s personal stories I was overcome with emotion. While there you can’t help but hope for peace in the world. Part of the museum was closed for renovation and won’t open until next week. It was still a powerful message even if we didn’t get the full experience.

After the peace park we went to lunch at a moss burger place and shopped at the outdoor shopping place for some souvenirs for our kids. Moss burger is a japanese burger place and Corey insisted we had to have one while we were here. It has a weird sauce on it and a big slice of tomato. It was a good burger just a little different. The green drink we had with it was a melon soda. Corey has been looking for melon soda in the US since he came back from Japan. You just can’t find one so of course we had to have one. We only walked about 6 miles today but our feet are tired. Our muscles are a little sore too from yoga last night. We will see what tomorrow brings.

A-bomb dome in Peace park. The only building preserved. This is how it looked after the bomb hit.

peace flame in Peace memorial park. With the dome behind.

Apr 15 2019

Day 9 Fukuyama and Tomonoura

Posted on April 15, 2019 by Karin

We didn’t get home until late last night and we were very tired from the days activities so I decided to wait to post until the morning. Yesterday was really fun and we had some great experience. We woke up and went to the pastry shop that’s around the corner. We had some pastries for breakfast. Having that shop around the corner is very dangerous because I think I may gain a ton of weight eating there. After breakfast we had about an hour to kill before leaving for Fukuyama. We ended up walking around the river for a little while. We rode the train to Fukuyama. This is the area Corey spent 6 months on his mission at. We walked around and he said a lot has changed in the last 20 years and he can’t remember much.

We walked to the Fukuyama castle which is right next to the train station. Unfortunately the castle is closed on Mondays and we couldn’t go inside. Instead we walked around the grounds and met some of Corey’s old friends. We had a picnic lunch under the cherry blossom trees with them. They call it hana mi. His friends brought food and we all ate and talked. Well I didn’t talk much but they did. I understood about 10% of what they were saying but Corey’s friend Yuma speaks english really well and was able to translate for me sometimes.

After lunch Yuma took us around to see some of the sights. He took us to a shrine, Abuto Kannon, that is on a cliff over the ocean. It was very peaceful and I loved looking out over the ocean. Yuma was very helpful and explained a lot of things to us as we went around a little village called Tomonoura. It’s an old fishing village that was able to avoid damage from WWII. Since it has some historic buildings and streets it has become a place where they will film movies. They filmed part of Wolverine here. Yuma said he got to be an extra but they cut the part out with him in it. He showed us where Hugh Jackman stayed and walked.

From the village we rode a replica of a historic boat to an island where we participated in an onsen. An onesen is a hot spring bath. Corey was never allowed to go to these as a missionary so he asked Yuma to take us to one. Traditionally they would bathe naked but I insisted that I would only go to one if it allowed clothes. Yuma delivered. It was a really neat experience. There are three heated caves and you have steps to follow. First you sit for 10-15 minutes in the first cave then head to a heated pool outside. Back to the second cave for 10-15 min. Then outside to bathe in the very cold ocean. You walk the beach from one side to the other and then bathe in another heated pool. Next you head to the last cave and sit for another 10-15 min. Last you head to the dressing rooms and shower and soak in the last pool. It was actually very nice and relaxing. It felt good on our sore muscles from all the stair climbing and walking.

After the onesen we went to do Yoga. Yuma leads a class in Fukuyama and invited us to join. I love yoga! I wish that I would do it more often. I think the last time I did yoga was last August. I always feel stretched and invigorated after a yoga session. I think we may have some soreness today because of it.

To end the day we went to a curry place for dinner with Corey’s friends. It was really good and tastes just like what we make at home. This day was a wonderful experience and really cool to get a locals perspective with Yuma. Not to mention he took us around in a car and we didn’t have to walk so much today.