Day 8 -- July 16, 2017

Rest Day in Wellpinit, WA, on the Spokane Reservation

Slightly Dangerous. Judy and Joel are a little
more risk taking than we'd have liked, climbing
up one of the side legs of the watch tower.
Made for cool pictures, though. 

I have never been so thankful for a day of rest before. As a whole, I’ve never seen a group of people more in need of a rest day. Sleeping in and spending the morning and early afternoon just doing what we needed to do individually is such a privilege that I had forgotten about. Which is silly, I’ve only been on this trip for a week now.

And as far as rest days go, it was really great. I got time to write, hang out with my students, made pancakes for breakfast, and then we went to the river later in the afternoon for swimming. It was the kind of swimming I was promised when I agreed to this trip, but until today had been severely lacking. It was great.

We also watched the sun set on top of the mountain from the fire fighter’s lookout tower. And I was very brave and climbed all the way up, despite being fairly freaked out by the height. It was a beautiful view and a really lovely sunset.

On top of the world. Me, Joel, Jose, and Alexis view the
world from above. It really was a spectacular view. 

WSHS. It's kind of hard to see us (I'll see if I can find a better picture), but this is me and
my kiddos on the steps of the watch tower ladder. From bottom: Taylor, Me, Christina, Jayenell
Judy, and Joel. We couldn't get Sadonia out of the car, but she was there in spirit.

The plan was to also wake up and see the Northern Lights, which were visible at some point between 12:00 and 2:00 a.m. A group of us woke up, we watched the sky for about 45 minutes, and then we went back to bed. As awesome as they would have been to see, my bed was hard core calling my name (even if I had taken a 2 hour ‘nap’ between sunset and midnight).

Monday morning means jumping back into our service learning work, so hopefully my kiddos went to bed at some point before 1:00 a.m. last night.

--KT