51 Cent Adventures with Valerie Illguth

51 Cent Adventures with Valerie Illguth How to have a great vacation without spending a lot of money

I was a contributor for East Idaho Mom's Blog for over 4 years. That blog has ended and so I'm moving my content over t...
02/22/2023

I was a contributor for East Idaho Mom's Blog for over 4 years. That blog has ended and so I'm moving my content over to 51 Cent Adventures. I'll be posting one piece a day.

The first post I ever wrote for that blog was about why my family doesn't do Elf on the Shelf. (Yeah, I know, not really topical for February. But that's what you get.)

Read it here: http://www.51centadventures.com/2023/02/i-told-my-kids-truth-about-elf-on-shelf.html

05/31/2022

I told my husband I wanted him to jump off a bridge. And since we live in Twin Falls, Idaho he knew that was a GOOD thing.

The Perrine Bridge in Twin Falls is one of the only places in the world where people can legally BASE Jump.

But it's not like just anybody has the gear and skills to jump. That's why I was super excited when I found out that provides tandem jumps.

I wanted this to be a birthday present, but my husband's birthday is in November and we couldn't get that to fit the schedule. So I decided he'd jump on his half birthday.

The weather wasn't great for most of the day, and for a while it seemed like we'd have to reschedule. But conditions improved enough for the jump to happen in the evening.

Watching the jump was incredible for me and the kids. My husband says it was amazing to do. He's not sure how he'll live in reality after doing something like this.

We didn't do a mini-vacation this month. Instead it was a full blown 4 night, 5 day vacation in Yellowstone over Labor D...
09/08/2021

We didn't do a mini-vacation this month. Instead it was a full blown 4 night, 5 day vacation in Yellowstone over Labor Day weekend.

This is the first time we've been back to Yellowstone since my last day working in the park 4 years ago.

We camped at Canyon Village and quickly got back in the habit of calling it home.

We had a blast revisiting some of our favorite places, reliving old memories, and making new ones.

The kids remembered a lot of the places, but others they didn't. So I'm glad we could come back and remind them of one of our homes.

When we lived in the park the kids were 6, 6, 5, and 3. Now they are 10, 10, 9, and 7. Even our youngest is older than her big sisters were when they lived in the park. That meant we could cover more ground in less time than when we lived here. I think we hiked something like 25 miles this weekend.

Blog posts will be coming eventually, but until then here are some of the pictures I took with my phone. My camera has hundreds more.

We've had something of a revolving door of family members visiting us the past week. It's been non stop fun as we've tak...
07/29/2021

We've had something of a revolving door of family members visiting us the past week. It's been non stop fun as we've taken them to see many of the awesome things the Magic Valley has to offer.

One place we went was Banbury Hot Springs near Buhl. This was our first visit to this Hot Spring and so I'm counting this as our Mini-vacation adventure for July.

We had a great time camping on a huge grassy spot surrounding by shady trees. I worried that the hot spring would be too hot to enjoy in the summer time, but it was cool enough to be refreshing and warm enough that we didn't get cold as the sunset. The kids had a blast playing on the big log anchored in the middle of the pool.

I'd tentatively planned for our group to rent kayaks and kayak down the Snake River to Blue Heart Spring. But the ratio of adults to children made me rethink that plan. I was fairly certain that we could have made it down the river, but coming back up had me worried. So instead we just enjoyed the view as the sun came up.

We squeezed our mini-vacation for June in right at the end of the month. On Tuesday the kids and I went to Idaho Falls t...
07/04/2021

We squeezed our mini-vacation for June in right at the end of the month. On Tuesday the kids and I went to Idaho Falls to visit my friend Sarah. She and I both write for East Idaho Moms. We had a great time doing headshots with the other contributors and then being present when EIM won best Local Blog.

On Wednesday the kids and I made the most of our time in IF. We went to the Idaho Falls Zoo. This zoo has a lot of fun animals, but my favorite are the two Red Pandas.

After the zoo we went to the Museum of Idaho for the exhibit Body Worlds: Animals Inside Out. It was fascinating. This was our first visit since the museum was expanded. All the extra room is put to good use.

On the way home we continued our animal theme when we went to the petting zoo behind Mckee's in Chubbuck. This place is next to a gas station and I remembered it when we stopped to fill up for gas.

Brandon had to work so he wasn't able to go our adventure, but it's okay because I'm sure we'll be back on that side of the state again soon.

Our May mini vacation was to Bruneau Dunes State Park. This is a little more than an hour west of Twin Falls. This was o...
05/23/2021

Our May mini vacation was to Bruneau Dunes State Park. This is a little more than an hour west of Twin Falls. This was our first time in a tent this year. We've stayed here in May before and the weather was fine, but this year the weather was cold and a little rainy.

Still, we had fun sledding on the small dune, and hiking to the top of the big dune.

When we hiked to the top of the big dune my 7 year old kept saying that it was too hard. But she was saying that as she kept climbing. I kept telling her "You are saying this is hard WHILE you are doing it. You can make it!" She was so proud of herself when she made it to the top.

I'll admit that I was feeling like giving up a few times too. I'm getting over a cold and so my lungs were struggling with the climb. But I made it and it was worth it.

This was such a fun way to kick off the summer.

A few weeks ago, we decided to add Bear World to our mini-vacation for April. Back in the summer of 2018 the kids and I ...
05/02/2021

A few weeks ago, we decided to add Bear World to our mini-vacation for April.

Back in the summer of 2018 the kids and I were able to go to Bear World with their daycare. Ever since then we've wanted to go back with Brandon and his parents. But it's become something of a comedy of errors trying to get back. A dislocated knee, a broken collar bone, a move, a job loss, and a pandemic have each made us postpone the Bear World trip. So I was hesitant to make any solid plans for when we would do Bear World in 2021.

It made a lot of sense to add Bear World to this trip. Rexburg is only about an hour and a half away from Arco which is closer than we've been in the last few years. So I decided we'd put Bear World on the calendar. (In pencil and with a question mark next to it.)

Well all that waiting actually turned out for the best, because when it finally happened this trip to Bear World was about as perfect as it could be.

This was the Cub Palooza weekend so admission was half price. Score! There were more crowds than usual, but really they weren't too much of a problem. The weather was great and so we were able to stay the whole day and outlast many of the other visitors. (I made the kids drink a lot of water in the afternoon when it was hot. I told them, "Only the strong survive the 3 o'clock hour.")

We had such a fun time seeing the bears, the baby bears, and all the animals in the petting zoo. But the rides were the main thing the kids had been looking forward to, and they did not disappoint. We had a blast on the rides. I made sure to ride the roller coaster sitting next to each of my kids at least once.

The kids also had fun going around by themselves. They made such a cute group of four. I love that they are all such good friends.

We stayed until the rides shut down at 6:00. The roller coaster was our last ride, and the workers let us have a second round when the first one was over. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

The kids are talking about coming back here again, and we might do that. But I'm feeling like they've proven they are ready for the amusement park big leagues.

Our mini-vacation for April was to Craters of the Moon National Monument. We've been trying to visit this place as a fam...
05/02/2021

Our mini-vacation for April was to Craters of the Moon National Monument. We've been trying to visit this place as a family ever since we moved to Idaho, but we never seemed to time it right.

The twins came here with their awesome daycare back in 2018. In 2019 we tried to visit in March, but everything was covered in snow (we ended up driving to Twin Falls and realized we wanted to live there.) Then came a pandemic in 2020.

We finally made a trip to Craters of the Moon happen this year. We stayed in a Kamping Kabin at the KOA in Arco. This cabin had two rooms which made it feel positively palatial after the one room cabins we've stayed in on our trips the last three months.

I really had no expectations for Craters of the Moon. Most of the pictures I've seen of the place are of the caves, but those are currently closed because of instability. I wondered if there would be any thing else to see.

Turns out there is a lot! We were able to hike on an easy loop trail, climb up a cindercone mountain, and peer into dormant spatter cones. Even just driving around was really interesting.

We were on this trip with my in-laws and it was so fun to share the trip with them. In the evening they watched the kids while Brandon and I went back to do to moderate hikes. We haven't hiked as just the two of us in a long time. I forgot how fast we could go when the kids weren't with us.

We had such a great time. Now that I know how cool this place is we will definitely be back again.

Anyone else feel this way when they heard the new CDC guidelines?
04/28/2021

Anyone else feel this way when they heard the new CDC guidelines?

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Buhl, ID
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