Tall Chief RV Park Washington State - Blackberry Picking - 2022/07/29-08/09

It's been a great time in Washington visiting with friends and seeing lots of unique sites! Let's wrap this trip up!

We've had beautiful weather while we've been in Washington. We had been expecting rain rain rain, but lucky for us, it's been lovely! Any chance we got, we headed out to walk around the campground. 

Because all over the campground are blackberry bushes! I'm in charge of getting the difficult to reach ones. Climbing into the middle of the bushes to get those hard to reach berries. 

Or the ones that are higher and out of reach. 

And we're not the only ones enjoying the sweet berries. We came across a few black tailed deer while walking around. 

There's just so many berries here!

Ian and Alli were working hard to find only the most plump and juicy berries. They'll be the sweetest. 

Once we got home, we got everything rinsed up. 

And Theresa has a delicious idea in mind. All these fresh berries have been inspiring for lots of tasty homemade treats. 

Tonight she's making a cobbler! The batter goes into our largest pot. 

Fresh berries sprinkled in. Sugar is dusted on top. 

Yum! What a delicious cobbler! It reminded me of the fantastic cobbler that our former neighbor Abby made for us. That one was amazing. 

Add some vanilla ice cream on top. Oh man. So. good. 

My niece Emma loves doing drawings and recommended a YouTube channel for the kids to watch. Doing directed drawings will fit perfectly in their homeschooling! 

Great seal! 

Ooh, I love the penguins. 

And pandas! This is fun! 

The 85C bakery was on the way to many of the places we went. It's been so long since we had been there that we ended up stopping quite a bit. 

Earlier on this visit we sent a box to Michigan full of pastries, but it was just whatever we could find in the store. They didn't have a particular favorite (chocolate chip bowls) but we sent it anyway. 

I was curious if you could pre-order pastries and it turns out that you can! Ooh, that's dangerous. The Michigan crew and the Colorado family both love 85C... And we're not going to be near one for quite a while so...

That has to be the biggest 85C order I've ever made. Sixteen chocolate chip bowls, sixteen cheese breads, and 8 other treats. We'll be back tomorrow to pick it up. 

Jacob is here for dinner! But before we eat, we have to put him to work! 

More berries! Always more berries!

And we're learning as we go. I brought our step ladder on this trip to help get the ones up high. 

But the blackberry bushes are fighting back! 

It's been a good visit here in Washington Uncle Jacob! Great to see you so often!

The next day we were back at 85C to pick up our bounty. That's a lot of bread. 

And there was an Asian market nearby as well. Theresa picked up dried jujubees and other special treats for her mom. We put together a big box to go to Michigan and a second box for Colorado. 

Who doesn't love fresh bread! 85C is so good!

Before we go, how about one more trip to Chuck E Cheese. Ian getting jackpot after jackpot on the Monkey Ball game. 

T practicing her skills to win some jackpots. 

Alli getting some practice on SkeeBall. Going lefty huh? 

And then together we set some high scores on the two minute drill! 

By the end of our 10 days here, we had finally come up with the best system for picking berries. This claw grabber toy that the kids have was perfect for pulling down the branches that were too high to reach. And it was great at moving large clumps out of the way to reach the berries hiding behind them. 

This has been a fun activity to do while we had free time!

By our estimate, we picked about 15 of these containers of berries during our visit here. So many berries! 

Way too many to eat! I froze a few bags, but I also want to separate the juice from all the seedy bits. I turned to my Vitamix blender to help pulverize the berries. 

Then I did my best to push things through a sieve. In the end, I had lots of seeds left over. 

I froze all the rest of the blackberry juice. The juice will be perfect for smoothies!

It's been fun! Time to move on!