My Miscellaneous Musings: Cooke City 10th Anniversary

10 years ago our dear friends, Mark and Malinda DeBry invited us up to his family cabin up in Cooke City, Montana near the NE entrance of Yellowstone. Since then, every summer we make our annual trip up to "The Cabin". I think this is the one of the most consistent family traditions we have. We always look forward to it and it is probably the highlight of our summer. It is especially important since our families now live in different states and this is our chance to reconnect and spend time together. Feels like family.

We were supposed to drive up on Ken's birthday, but he had some work things come up. He worked about 30 hours almost straight. We finally got on the road about 5:00 in the afternoon. Now it is an 8 or 9 hour drive up to the cabin, so we weren't totally sure if we would stop somewhere or drive most of the night. We ended up driving through (after a birthday dinner stop in Casper at the Poor Boys Steakhouse) and got in at 4:30 am. Long night. Pretty lousy birthday for Ken. But on the bright side, we didn't hit any cows this time but there was plenty of deer, a coyote, and even a bear that crossed right in front of us. It was nice to sleep in that next morning.

This year we went horseback riding, shot bb guns and slingshots, the kids played in the creek, played games, late night converstions, and the adults did our traditional lunch out to the Beartooth Cafe. The boys had a big project this summer. They built a very nice railing for a new staircase that goes up to the loft playroom. We were so inspired that we spend one of the evenings cleaning out and rearranging the upstairs family room. Usually it was so cluttered with toys that there wasn't much room, but we took a lot of the toys up to the new playroom and made new conversation areas. It was also exciting for the room to be opened up more with a bunch of floor space. The kids tested it out by playing a rousing game of duck duck goose. :)

Oh how we LOVE the cabin!