Most of the time over the summer I just sort of sat around and drew stuff on the computer all day.
Though for two weeks I did go to Oregon, which I visit every couple years cause that's where I'm from, and my family lives there.
I visited my aunt/uncle/cousins that live in the valley area and we hiked up to Silver Falls for several hours, and our feet nearly fell off, especially when we hiked uphill. It was really beautiful though. I felt like I was walking in a fantasy novel or one of those fantasy animes with those huge forests... especially the forest in the movie Princess Mononoke.
Later a different aunt of mine drove us up to another very magical place, Crater Lake. It's actually a collapsed volcano with the bluest water you'll ever see in it. We hiked a little on the sides of crater lake, with its huge boulders and thick forests (Princess Mononoke-esque forests all over again!) and there were TONS of these orange butterflies just zooming by in the same direction, there must have been thousands, maybe millions of them. A lot. Also there are these weird stalagmite-shaped things growing along a canyon along Crater Lake, called the pinnacles.
Next up I went to another aunt/uncle/cousins' summer home at Black Butte (which is a mountain, not a butte...) and that was probably the best part of the trip. We hiked along a lake and had lunch on private property (we're rebels I know). We also played a lot of tennis, which was fun, especially since we were all horrible at it and my cousin Ethan kept on hitting the tennis balls out of the court (the person fetching these balls hated him for it, but he was always proud of himself). One evening we played this awesome board game called Quelf, which is the silliest, craziest, most random thing ever. It was so much fun. There was this one rule card, which was a "global rule" so it applied to all players (except when it was their turn) and everyone of us had to translate everything we say with sign language... and if we don't we have to move back a certain amount of spaces. There was this one card I got that was a "showbiz" card and I had to dance and chant for the gods to make it rain. The card also said that if it started raining while I did this, I would win the game. (I did win, but not because of this, no rain). And once there was another global rule where everyone had to sing to Fred the genie for a wish before we rolled the dice for our turn. And another time I had a rule card where every time I drew a card I'd have to lick my teeth and say, "Willy Wonka has arrived!" My mom also got a rule card where she had to put her right hand on her left knee and point at the wall, and she could only move from this position when it was her turn. There was another rule card I got where every time someone passed me I had to jump down on the floor and shout "you've thwarted us again you vile beast!"
in short: we had fun.
After that we went back to my Grandma's house and watched a filming of the play my uncle Earl did... It was The Pink Panther. He played Inspecter Jauque Cleaseu. His accent was perfect, hahaha. Everyone kept telling him, "you didn't have to act for this role did you, you could just be yourself!" and he just said, "yup."
Next we went to the coast with my cousin Chloe and the same aunt that drove us to crater lake. It was cold and windy there so there wasn't too much time to walk on the beach, though in the morning we investigated the tide pools, kidnapping crabs and petting anenomes. There was also an aquarium we went to where you could touch sea urchins and anenomes and these little shark-fish things. Anenomes are really soft. There was also this octopus there, which was really cool looking, and made me want a pet octopus... some anenomes and a marine iguana would be sweet too.
Anyway, my hobby I picked up while we were at the coast was counting the cigarette butts on the street. For one day I got 572, the other 617, and another was well over 1200. We just drove along the coast and looked around. It was sort of eerie looking, with all of the fog, you looked out to the horizon but couldn't see it. It was like we were arrived at the end of the world.
We also went to these sea lion caves... and man sea lions are smelly and LOUD. They were very talkative, but sounded like they just had a bunch of Mexican food for lunch along with soda and were trying to burp out a secret code to each other. By the coast in clearer waters in a really really small bay there were several seals swimming around, but they weren't noisy or smelly or ugly, they were actually really cute.
Anyway, that was pretty much my trip in a nutshell I guess.
