We go on two kinds of vacations in our family. The vacation we typically take at the beginning of the summer is a driving vacation where we drive long distances, stay in one place just a night or two and head off for another area. These are great vacations for exploring and seeing lots of new things. They feel great at the beginning of summer when I have itchy feet and a desire to get out and go. The other kind typically happens in September and involves driving a more modest distance and parking ourselves in one spot. This type of vacation is the perfect way to end a busy summer. We have lots of "down time" to sit and enjoy relaxing and watching the kids play.
We finished off our summer with a week in Winthrop. We've been going every September since 2007. (Except last year when we went to Disneyland instead!) Looking back at old photos, the kids have grown up a lot since then!
2007 and 2011
Miriam, 2007
Miriam, 2011
William, 2007
William, 2011
Elizabeth, 2007
Elizabeth, 2011
Anastaya, 2007
Anastaya, 2011
Isaac, 2007
Isaac, 2011
Jacob, 2007
Jacob, 2011
We like to go the week after Labor Day weekend when we have the lake and the state park to ourselves. We'd packed the week before (I hate packing!) so that as soon as Dode got home from work on Friday and had a bite to eat we could take off. I used my trusty
packing list and we didn't forget a thing! We left home at 6:00 pm and arrived at our camp site at 9:30 pm. We tried to be as quiet as possible setting up camp but with eight people trying to put up tents and blow up air mattresses and find their way around in the dark while having various arguments, I imagine it wasn't very quiet. We usually stay in the same site each year but I'd put off making reservations to work around a work conference for Dode (that didn't happen) so we ended up in the site next door to our traditional site. The lake was really high this year which was disappointing. There is usually a beach next to our campsite where we spend hours sitting and reading while the kids swim and play in the sand. This year, the trail to the beach dead ended in the lake, no beach at all. It made our prime site not so great.
We do A LOT of playing in Winthrop which means we have to haul A LOT of stuff over there.
The van? Packed
The boat? packed! The front cabin is full floor to ceiling. There is a black cargo bag on the bow stuffed full, the rest of the boat? Full!
Our site empty
Our site occupied. Dode took this to show the ducks who started hanging out in our site to snatch up dropped food, but you can get an idea of our site as well. I'm back there brushing Elizabeth's hair, not a quick process!
We woke up bright and early on Saturday (think early dawn) to the sound of a chipmunk screaming at us. I lay back and thought, "Yep, I'm in Winthrop!" They were kind enough to be our early morning alarm clock each day. They must really dislike us because within 12 hours of putting up our clothes line, they'd chewed through the rope in two places!
The weather treated us great. It was near 100 for the first four days. Then, the weather got cooler each day with the day we left in the low 70's and the kids complaining about the cold. It usually gets really windy in the afternoons but this time, we only got strong winds one evening. Of course, as luck would happen, the kids were out on the floating island when the winds picked up and the waves floated the island off the anchor. The kids thought it was a grand adventure to float down the lake. The waves were pushing the island towards the boat launch dock so Dode just went down there and waited for them to float in. We've had things float away before in the winds but we've never had the kids on them when they do!
You know you're enjoying good weather when they're still in their swimsuits in the dark. She's not cold in this photo, this is her "cool" pose! (The family ski boat in the back ground.)
On Saturday morning, Winthrop had a classic car parade and show. We went down to view it. The favorite of the kids was this old school bus.
It was a bit ironic that the people who own the bus actually live in Arlington. When I looked at the photo, I had to laugh. Notice how William isn't content to sit in the bus and get his photo? Nope, he needs to fiddle with it!
We try to keep our Sundays low key. We went up to a waterfall that is on the Chewuch River Road.
Miriam being a mermaid
Winthrop is a great place for "van served" mountain biking. Meaning, we drive to the top of the trail and let the bikers off. Everyone gets to enjoy the down hill without the effort of the uphill. We always do Pipestone Canyon and the trails at Sun Mountain. Isaac didn't have any trouble navigating the mountain on his bike with a cast. We did notice that his cast managed to "cheese grate" the grip on his bike handle. On one of my rides down the mountain, I looked ahead of me at my children and had a moment of amazement that I was flying down the hill behind these amazing individuals that I had a hand in creating. Once I cuddled them close and they were totally reliant on me. Now, here they were holding their own on a mountain bike. I realized that I can't claim complete credit for Anastaya but I'll take a bit. Lucky me!
Pipestone Canyon with hoodoos in the background
facing downhill at Pipestone Canyon
I love biking through this tall grass
Isaac at Sun Mountain
For most of the week, we were the only ski boat on the lake. The water was absolutely smooth in the mornings. Dode tried wake boarding and got up pretty easily. Anastaya spent most of her time trying to do a 180 on the knee board and grab the handle with the other hand. Her ultimate goal is a 360 but she first needs to be able to change hands on the handle. She never mastered it but she sure tried. She also tried water skiing for the first time. After some spectacular crashes, she called it quits. (Nothing like a lake enema to knock some of the wind out of your sails!)
Elizabeth is always afraid to go fast on the knee board. She's so light, she can knee board while the boat is just putting along, the boats nose angled way up in the air. She likes the boat to be traveling about 10 miles an hour and closely listens to the sound of the engine to catch Dode any time he speeds up a little. She decided she liked to let go of the rope and coast across the water. She realized that going fast gave her a longer ride. So after working out a hand signal that she wanted to speed up so she could let go and coast farther, Dode would slowly add speed until she would let go and see how far she could coast across the water. Much to our surprise we had her up to 35 mph before she'd decide it was time to let go! Those glides got her a bit more relaxed with faster speeds and Dode can now get the boat up on a plane and the rope is no longer dragging in the water for normal play. Miriam spent her time knee boarding body surfing. We can't convince her to put her knees under her, maybe next year. William loves being towed in the ski tube. He spends his time back there with an arm straight up in the air, giving us the "thumbs up" sign. When we went to church on Sunday after getting back, we learned that one of our friends had been at the lake too and had enjoyed watching us playing on the water. Our friends asked why the kids always had their hands up while riding. We explained that while the kids are on the tube, they like to sing songs with hand movements that gets their hands in the air. It makes the ride even more thrilling!
Dode on the wake board. He said it's a pretty fine farmer tan he's sporting!
Elizabeth
We always float the Chewuch River and this time was no exception. We take our inflatable rafts, secure them to the boat trailer, drive down the highway to our launch site, remove them and head down to the river. It probably looks pretty funny going down the road, a big trailer and a few small rafts! There is a deep fishing hole on the river and it's always fun to get down close to the water and spot the fish swimming by. Miriam told me that there weren't enough bumpy spots for her. Dode says that he can't wait to get that little Adrenalin junky on skis! We always go down the river twice in a row, with each trip taking about 1 hour. Dode has always been our driver and he usually has a little person waiting with him. Our take out place is at a park in Twisp so the little ones can play while they wait. He said it felt strange this time to be all by himself waiting. For the 2nd trip down, he got to go down the river, his first time ever! This is the first year that I felt comfortable enough towing a trailer around to be able to take the empty trailer down to the pick up spot. I even stopped by the grocery store while towing the trailer! I'd told him that part way down the river he'd encounter a farm implement of some sort in the water as well as an old engine. I was letting him know about those hazards because I'd gotten stuck on them. Well, they were floating along and the kids started saying, "That rock over there is the one mom got stuck on." Dode thought, "Oh well" and steered right for it. Turned out, he was steering for the farm implement and managed to rip one of the rafts.
Vacation wouldn't be the same without eating lots of ice cream. We alternate between two shops to spread our money around. Everyone gets a kid sized cone which is just the right amount for a treat. I'd been looking forward to getting a tasty eclair from the Duck Brand Restaurant for the past two years. The first chance I got, I headed over to indulge myself. Unfortunately, their baker quit and they haven't replaced them yet. No eclair for me!
dairy free strawberry sorbet for William
going mini golfing ...
and getting our photo at the Old Time Photo Shop. It took at least 45 minutes to get us all outfitted. Miriam was so serious about her selection. Then, when it was time to pose for the photo, she was again very serious and focussed. Jacob said he doesn't see the appeal but look how handsome he is...
Isn't this a great look for Jacob?
After the old time photo, we visited the
Shaffer Museum. The buildings were closed but you could walk around and look at things in the yard. Elizabeth was completely put out that they wanted $2/person donation and we couldn't even go inside. She kept bringing it up! My favorite part was a concentrator they'd pulled out of the woods and reassembled. I'd seen photos of concentrators before and have even stood at the foundation of the one below. I never understood why they built them on steep hills.
Monte Cristo concentrator (Verlot, WA)
The concentrator runs the rocks through different machines which grind the rocks down into smaller and smaller pieces with each step. Finally, they were able to separate the gold from the rest of the rock. It uses gravity to do the work between steps, thus the hill.
posing at the museum
This year, we added a new activity for the girls, horseback riding. They were able to go on a 1 1/2 hour trail ride at Sun Mountain Resort. They absolutely loved it and the first thing they said to me when they got back was, "Can we go again next year?".
Anastaya, Elizabeth, and their guide Cody
Their guide told me that she does a lot of rides but felt like our girls were some of the best she's encountered. She told me she had a great time with them and told me I'm doing a good job as a mom. I don't know that I can claim any credit for the way they are but it was nice to hear.
We didn't have to leave camp for all our fun. We spent quite a bit of time swimming. Dode made the mistake of diving down for a crawdad to show the kids and spent the rest of the week with them clamoring for him to bring more up. He thought he was diving down about 8-10 feet to find them, following the anchor rope on our floating island. When we pulled the island out of the water, he realized he'd been diving down almost 20 feet! No wonder he thought it took a long time to swim to the surface with crawdads in his hands! Elizabeth really wanted to dive for them as well but she's not a strong enough swimming. Dode tried to make a crawdad attractor out of an empty bottle and some lunch meat but the only thing it attracted were turtles.
Elizabeth got in a lot of fishing and even caught a few fish (which the other fishermen on the dock were happy to take home for her). Elizabeth is an oddball in our family because she loves to fish and her parents don't enjoy it. She has to find surrogate parents on the fishing dock to help her get her bait on and to bring in fish. One of them was kind enough to tell her what the fish were biting. Armed with that knowledge, she did pretty well.
One proud young lady! Minutes after catching this fish, she was back with another.
They enjoyed the classic activity of riding bikes, scooters, and skateboards around the campground. The kids love getting dropped off at the ranger station and riding down the hill into camp. Elizabeth really wanted to do it as well but she only has a kid bike with pedal brakes. We told her it's just too steep. Once we drove down the hill and she saw how steep it really is, she said, "You're right, that is too steep for me." We are not used to ever hearing we're right from any of her older siblings. How refreshing! Watching Isaac on the wave board, I can't believe how comfortable he's gotten. When we first got it, he couldn't even get on. Now, he can go anywhere he wants. When there was some down time, he'd ask Dode, "Want to go get some band-aids?" which was his way of asking his dad if he wanted to wave board with him. Dode was usually game. Dode also worked on his unicycling and picked up quite a few bruises in his attempts to stay on. We watched the high school mountain bike race team from Twisp practicing in the campground. They would race down a hill and start going up again. Part way up, they'd quickly dismount and carry their bikes uphill. Once they left, Isaac had to try it out and he spent a fair amount of time practicing the new move.
Dode spent a good amount of his free time fixing holes in air mattresses and rafts and doing bike repairs. He's gotten a lot better at finding those holes and his patches look pretty professional. I think every one of our mattresses has a hole and some have many! He and Isaac also repaired the switch that makes the motor go up and down on the boat. No more hot wiring! I can use the time they spent fixing it for Isaac's high school "Handyman" class.
We used my handy dandy
PVC pipe and saw to make a new and improved handle for the rope swing on the lake. Miriam and William liked the rope swing too but they'd start their turn by holding on to the rope just high enough to get their feet off the ground. Then they'd walk, drop into the water.
getting ready to go, see our new handle?
Elizabeth
Anastaya
When the sun went down each night, it was time to bring out the flashlights and look for crawdads. They don't like light so when you shine the light down through the water, they move around. One night while down on the fishing dock looking at crawdads, we heard a noise in the bushes. We were able to watch a muskrat enjoying his meal of a dead fish.
looking for crawdads
On the last day of our vacation, Jacob told me that before we went, he thought he'd hate vacation but it actually turned out pretty great. We were pretty surprised to hear that since he didn't participate in any of the activities with us! He thinks he'd like to be a smoke jumper. Winthrop has a smoke jumper base and we went to take their tour while in town. The morning we were going to take the tour, Jacob decided he was too tired and didn't want to go (10:00 AM was too early to him). We headed in to town and did our mini golfing. Suddenly, there was Jacob. He'd changed his mind and ridden Elizabeth's little pink bike the three miles into town. I sure wish I would have seen that! Jacob learned about what he needs to do (2-3 years fighting fires with the forest service) in order to even be considered for hiring as a smoke jumper. I'm glad he came along because we were able to get our old time photo with everyone in the family included.
Jacob never went swimming while we were around but one day when we got back from biking, he had this turtle to show Miriam. He'd found it and kept it in a bucket of water until she could see it.
During our trip, we made two stops at
Paco Taco so I could indulge in my obsession with their yam and caramelized onion tacos. Absolutely wonderful! Jacob thinks so too!
We saw quite a bit of wildlife on the trip. Here's what we saw: deer (lots in the campground), muskrats, beaver, ducks, chipmunks, a rattle snake (the closest I've ever been to one in my life! Isaac and Anastaya were heading down Pipestone Canyon and stopped to wait for Elizabeth and me. When when caught up to them, I heard a noise in the grass and looked down to see a rattlesnake shake his rattle and move away, not 18 inches from where the kids stood). One wildlife we weren't so excited about were yellow jackets. They definitely learned where we were and towards the end of the week, it felt like you needed a bee suit on just to cook a meal. William is one who has to have a consequence for every rule. He's been told not to touch the bees. Well, one day he said to us, "I touched a bee and it didn't sting me." That meant to him that the rule about touching bees no longer applied. The next day, we heard a holler from his tent where he was doing a little time out. Yep, he'd touched a bee again but this time, it didn't go so well for him!
these bees are clustered around a tiny drop of jam on the table
It was like this everywhere.
The garbage bag would hum like a hive and the kids would stand back and just toss their dishes in the vicinity of the bag.
We ended up heading home a day early. The weather had gone down hill and the kids were ready to be home. After a full day of playing Friday night, we left camp at 7:00. On the way over the mountain, the kids were having trouble clearing their ears because of all the swimming they'd been doing. Isaac told Elizabeth to plug her nose and blow hard. She tried and said, "It worked, and I blew so hard I farted!" That brought more than a few chuckles from her siblings.
When we got home everyone was exhausted and ready for bed. Dode noticed the light in the back of the garage was on, and had been on the entire time when we were gone. When he went to turn it off, he realized it was the freezer light he was seeing! The freezer was open and everything inside was ruined. 80 pounds of ground beef! 20 pound of peaches, 20 pounds of blueberries, 10 pounds of raspberries! 20 pints of peach freezer jam! A month's worth of greens for smoothies. The garage smelled strongly of spoiled meat. The stray moma cat and her kittens had decided to take advantage of the situation and strewn baggies of meat around the garage. It was so upsetting that tired as I was, I just couldn't get to sleep.
The next morning was a co-op day and although I had set up people to substitute for me, I felt guilty to be laying in bed while they were working. I headed down to help. One of my volunteers saw me and said, "What are you doing home?" When I explained that the kids wanted to come home early, they asked, "Were you having a boring vacation?" I said, "Well if you call water skiing, mountain biking, river floating, lots of ice cream and horseback riding boring, then yes." Then they said, "Well, that's what you get for making your home like Disneyland!" I ended up doing traffic control at the end of the road. Miriam wandered down and I asked her if she was happy to be home. We'd left sunny Winthrop and returned to drizzly Arlington. She told me, "YES!" When I asked why, she said, "No bees." Once the co-op was done, we went inside. Dode asked her what she wanted for breakfast, "Pancakes!" We had pancakes 5 times on our trip and the supplies were still packed in the boat so she had to settle for a trip to Haggen with her dad for doughnuts.
Pearrygin through the years
2007
Hart's Pass, 2007
2008
2009
2009, ice cream
