Two days of extreme parenting...

With the wife being out of town, I have set out the last two days to prove I am too a Cool Dad.  Yesterday afternoon, instead of just settling to bring the girls to the pool at the apartment, I loaded them up in the truck and we headed to the new Splash and Play Park at Badger Mountain, in Richland.  Not quite as fancy as a 'Water Park(there are no big fancy slides or wave pools), this Splash and Play Park has the advantage of being free. 

The girls had a blast.

 

Today, we shifted gears a bit.  As August approaches, true summer is finally threatening to show up in Washington, with temperatures in the mid 90's expected.  I gave the girls the choice of dealing with the heat two ways...either hitting the pool in the afternoon, or having a snowball fight.  They choose the snowball fight, so after breakfast this morning, we hoped in the truck for the 2.5 hour drive to Chinook Pass.  

At a height of 5430 feet, Chinook Pass is located on the north-eastern slope of Mt. Rainier.   They get too much snow to safely keep the pass open all year, and so it typically closes mid-November, and opens again in May.  This year though, they received over 700 inches of snow, and didn't get the pass open until June 23rd...which is the 5th latest opening since the established the road in 1935.  8 miles out from the pass, I was a little worried I might be setting myself up for an epic dad fail...there was not a flake of snow on the ground to be seen. 

It looks like I didn't need to worry:

Most of the rest stop was still under 5-6 feet of snow.  Being not just a cool dad, but also a good dad who doesn't want SWMBO to chastise me, I packed sweat pants and sweat shirts for the girls to put on over their 90-degree clothes. 

I didn't plan as well for myself.

 

And now, I'm just about worn out being 'active dad'.  I suspect tomorrow might involve many more episodes of 'Just go play in your room' than we have had the last two days.