September 10 on 10: Our Spokane Vacation

 Every year, my family take the same vacations. We go to the Adirondacks of NY and then at the end of July, we go to Spokane Washington and Idaho to the 'lake'.  During both of these vacations, we are visiting our extended family. Living in Indiana, we have no relatives nearby. This year, my mother-in-law had some health problems, which prevented her from being able to travel to the lake (she is fine now), so the family decided to gather and stay in Spokane. Although we missed going to the lake, it was fun to be all together and to explore some different parts of Spokane.

We did not do a whole lot because it is hard to get everyone organized, but we did manage to go on a couple of hikes in the area. The weather was good, except for being hot and dry.

We did one hike with the whole family. It was short but a little steep and there was not much shade. Still it was worth it to get everyone out of the house

There were lots of rock structures to climb which made it fun for kids and adults alike:

Here is the whole gang on the way down:

Everyone else had to leave a couple of days sooner that we did, so we had some time there with just us and my mother-in-law. We dragged the kids on one other hike. This one had a pretty interesting landscape--rocky from ancient lava flows which made the whole area covered in balsaltic rocks:

It was fun to climb on, even if a little tough:

 Overall, I did not do a lot of photography on this vacation--at least not the type I usually like to do where I get up early in the morning to try to capture some interesting nature shots, but I did enjoy doing some close-ups of interesting bark on the trees here and there:

 Well we missed out on going to the lake this year but we plan to be back next year, of course, This is part of the 10 on 10 blog circle. Please follow the circle and see what the talented Kristina Rust has been up to.