Three fun things the 3rd week of September

Presidential Leadership Award
On Tuesday, we attended our Boy Scout Council Coordinated meeting where I received an award, the Presidential Leadership Award.  It came in the form of a new council patch listing the award and a new neckerchief with a patch award on it.  It's an award our council  has created to recognize different volunteers.  Two weeks before receiving this award I had received a phone message from the D.E. (professional scouter) in charge of day camp stating that he needed to talk to me.  I called him back but had to leave a message.  Before he could call me back, I left on vacation.  I went on vacation wondering why he called and worried that someone was complaining about something that happened at day camp or that someone got hurt at camp and was now suing the council, or that I needed to take the day camp posts on my blog down, something bad like that.  Part way through our vacation to Winthrop, he sent me an email that they wanted to give me some kind of award.  Big sigh of relief!

Duane Rhodes, Scout Executive, Scott Suchan, Council President, me

Dode wanted to go with me to get the award so he, the littles and I went to the meeting.  I felt like a real dork walking into a meeting that I didn't belong at to receive an unknown award.  The night started with a dinner.  I wondered if there would be a vegetarian option but it turned out just fine.  Cold dried out spaghetti with marinara sauce, yum!  After a bunch of announcements by different committee heads, it was time for the award.  At this point I still didn't know what or why I was receiving an award.  The council president, the highest ranking volunteer, began by explaining how he created the award to recognize volunteers who don't just have great ideas, but that get things done.   Then called me up.  He explained that he'd visited my day camp and found it to be a "well run machine".  So, for my 10 years of running camp, I was receiving an award.  I've been involved in scouting for 12 years and hope to be involved long enough to earn my Silver Beaver, the highest award a council volunteer can receive for "outstanding longtime service to youth".  You have to be nominated to receive the award.  Maybe someday?!

Quick date to the beach

Dode is involved in a GIS tribal user group which gets together quarterly to discuss what they are working on in their departments and to receive training.  They take turns hosting the event and this time it was hosted by the Quinault tribe.  Their reservation is located on the Washington coast at the northernmost end of Hwy 109, a town called Taholah.  It was a four hour drive to get there.  The meeting took place on Friday.  Since it was such a long drive, the Tulalip Tribes paid for Dode to spend the night before coming home on Saturday.  I'm always game for a trip to the beach so after arranging a bunch of logistics with the children, I tagged along with Dode.  We left the house at 5:30 am in order to give us some wiggle room in case we encountered traffic.  I dropped Dode off at the meeting at 10:00 am and decided to head to the beach.  I headed down to Moclips where I could drive onto the beach and rolled down the windows a bit so I could enjoy the sound of the waves and the salty air while I read a book.  On the beach it was a densely foggy day where I couldn't see 100 feet away from me in any direction.  After a while, I put on my coat and warm hat and set off on a walk down the beach.  I walked from Moclips to Pacific Beach, a distance of about two miles that took me about an hour.  There weren't many people on the beach, just a few individuals walking their dogs in the fog.  I told myself that on the way down to Pacific Beach, I would just enjoy looking at the water and watching the shore birds and on the way back I'd check out the houses along the beach.  I also guesstimated at which beach access point was for the hotel we were going to stay at and left a love note for Dode in the sand near it.  I went back to the car and planned to visit the tiny Museum of the North Beach.  Unfortunately, when I got there I found they had closed early due to illness so I headed back to the beach where I did some more reading before driving back to pick up Dode.  We forgot the camera so all the photos had to come from Dode's phone once I saw him again.

Once I picked up Dode, we checked into our hotel.  We stayed at the Ocean Crest in Moclips.  We knew the tribes hadn't reserved the best room in the hotel and were kind of surprised when we found the door to our room.  It seemed to be backing up right to the ocean.  We walked in and  the big reveal was underwhelming.  There was barely room to walk around the double bed and the one window in the room (about 3 feet beyond the foot of the bed) looked out into the hallway several rooms used.  The first thing we did was close the curtains so weren't 100% on display.  When Dode checked out the next morning they said, "Oh, you stayed in our closet!"  It definitely felt that way!  

Our "closet".

The description for the room said, "This comfortable room is perfect for the couple (or individual) on the go. It offers all the comforts necessary to be a wonderful nights sleep at the end of a long day of seeing all that the area has to offer."  

I think they were trying to say, "this room is best for people who only want to use it to sleep."  We were fine with it once we adjusted our expectations down a bit.

The wonderful view!

After exploring our fancy room, we headed down to the town of Pacific Beach where we ate at Paddy's Perch.  It's a little mom and pop restaurant.  While waiting for our food, Dode noticed his favorite type of wall art, a survey map, which he enjoyed studying.  They're famous for their pies and I really wanted a chocolate one but they were sold out.  I settled for pear custard, OK but not worth the calories.  Arriving back at the hotel with full tummies, we headed down to the beach where I casually walked near where I'd left my sandy love note and sure enough, he saw it, read it, smiled, and told me I was a silly girl.  For some reason  he thought, "I  love you Dode" was intended for him and not some other fellow!

This is the stairway that went from the hotel down to the beach.  We're about half way to the hotel in this photo.

We'd planned to spend the entire day Saturday enjoying our time together before heading home but late the night before we left I'd gotten a phone call that one of the children in my primary (Sunday school) class was being baptised on Saturday and they wanted me to give a talk.  So, instead of spending a lazy day at the beach, we ate a late picnic breakfast overlooking the ocean and headed towards home.  It was a beautiful day, so we made a quick stop at Vance Creek Park near Elma, WA to walk around the ponds there.  I've seen it on my way to and from the ocean many times but have never been able to convince the children that stopping would be a good idea.  Dode was perfect company for the walk.

We could see the never used cooling towers for nuclear reactors in the distance from the WPPS project (nicknamed Whoops by many who grew up in Washington).  These are monstrous concrete towers hundreds of feet tall.  Dode has all kinds of ideas for how he could turn those unused cooling towers into a high adventure facility, with zip lines between the towers, climbing holds up the sides of them, a huge fan for indoor skydiving, you get the idea!

And it is even for lease!

After enjoying our stop in Elma, we headed home to Seattle where we ate at the Loving Hut vegan restaurant.  In trying to decide where to eat, I offered up Taco Bell (cheap and something for both of us) but Dode insisted we eat somewhere I really wanted to eat.  I was worried he wouldn't find anything he'd like but he had chow mien with three different mock meats and ended up really liking the mock chicken.  He even told me he'd be willing to eat it again!

The tasty soup I got.

After lunch,  it was time for the vacation to be over and the work to begin again.  Someone had been in charge of produce that morning so I had baskets of produce to put away, a baptism talk to finalize, and assorted parenting issues to deal with.  Dode took off to pick up William, and returned home again for just a couple of minutes before leaving again with Elizabeth to take her to the library.  It sure didn't take long to transition back to real life!  I'm feeling pretty lucky because Dode is going to Portland for four days in a week and I'm tagging along again!

Tribal Perk
One of the perks we get from time to time due to Dode's employment is free seafood.  An email went out during the week that there was free wild salmon to be had at the marina.  Dode headed right down. They have an ice machine right next to the dock so it was easy to fill up a garbage bag with ice, add the fish, and keep it fresh until he got home.  We had tasty salmon for dinner and had enough to put in the freezer for at least four more meals.

Picking up salmon on the dock.

Dode's boss digging into the ice machine.

A mapmaker? Hasn't the world been mapped already?

When people ask Dode or me what he does for a living, we tell them that he works in the mapping department of the Tulalip Tribes.  We often get the following response, "Hasn't the world already been mapped?"  We always smile and say, "Yes the world has been mapped, we know where all the continents are, but the kind of mapping Dode does is more detailed than that."

We're all familiar with using paper maps on road trips.  If you were traveling through Washington and trying to find a certain address, you might need a Washington State Map to get you close to the town and another city map to get you to the address.  Now days we all realize how useful "live" maps like google maps are.  You can zoom in and out on the map.  You can choose to view the map as a traditional map, a satellite view, or a street view.  Someone had to make that happen.  Enter the map maker.  Dode is creating living maps of the Tulalip Reservation.  And, because he's a surveyor, the maps he's creating are going to be accurate!  Once the maps are complete, someone can choose to view the whole reservation with just the infrastructure they're interested in showing.  Maybe they want the water meters shown.  They can zoom in on just a few water meters.  They can click on individual water meters and get information like, "identifying number, date last visited, photo".

He is helping to create a huge living map that will eventually include all the infrastructure on the reservation:  roads, sewers, water lines, water meters, fiber optic cables, man holes, utility vaults etc.  All those things are targets of his research.  Some things he can go out and physically locate just by looking for it.  The water meter project was one of those.  (details here) Some things are hidden from view, like sewer lines.  To get the information for those takes research.  Dode has a lot of places he looks while doing his research: county records, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Health Services, National Archives, other surveyors, timber companies, departments within the reservation.  He uses the information he gleans from his research to visit the location and identify if things actually are in the location they were intended to be placed in.

Now that I've maybe convinced you that there is still a need for mapmakers in the world, I'm going to share a surprising fact that is not unique to the Tulalip Reservation.  The boundary of the reservation still needs to be identified.  (Which means the boundary of the city of Marysville still needs identified too!)

You could ask anyone who's lived in Snohomish County for a while where the Tulalip Reservation is, and they can tell you "West of Marysville".  Ok, but where is the actual boundary?  The western boundary of the reservation is the Puget Sound, but where does the land end and the Puget Sound begin?  Obviously it is where the water starts.  But is that at high tide or low tide?  Is that yesterday's tides or today's tides?  The treaty that created the Tulalip Reservation said the reservation would extend to the low water mark.  There is no legal definition for the low water mark, in fact the tides don't leave a mark on the shoreline at the low water line like they do the high water line.  Dode found a court case for another reservation that had the same language about the low water mark.  That court case stated the reservation boundary extends to the extreme low tide line (the lowest low tide in 18.6 years).  But, the actual location of the lowest tide is always moving due to shifting sandbars.  In some places the lowest tide is only 50 feet from the top of the beach and other places the lowest tide is a quarter mile from the top of the beach.

The Tulalip Tribes owns the beaches, but individuals own the land above the beaches.  The line separating the Tribe's ownership from the individual ownership is more problematic.  Everyone who has beach front access wants to build something along the water (bulkheads, piers, docks, etc).   The line that separates the ownerships is the average high tide as measured over an 18.6 year period.  That is a little too long for people to wait, so the individuals and the Tribes keep fighting over how far out individuals can build and still be on their own property.

While you might think identifying and mapping the western boundary of the tribe sounds complicated, with determining where the low tide is, it is the eastern boundary where things really get ugly.  Most people erroneously believe that the freeway (I-5) is the Eastern boundary of the reservation.  The reservation was created in 1875.  The freeway didn't come along until 1969 and they did not follow the eastern boundary of the reservation.

The United States government defined the reservation boundary in the 1870's by placing monuments every quarter mile around the reservation, then dedicated all the land inside the monuments as the Tulalip Reservation.  In other words, the boundary of the reservation is defined by connecting all the monuments together with a long line (just like doing a dot to dot drawing).  Establishing the boundary of the reservation relies on finding those original monuments placed in the 1870's.  Dode has done extensive research to find where the original monuments might have been placed and has taken numerous trips into the field to locate them.  You can read more about that here.  There hasn't been good evidence of why people have placed property corners in different locations as the land abutting the reservation has been sold off.  Complicating matters is the fact that the surveyors on the reservation used a different system to divide up the land than what was used on adjoining parcels (as required by federal law but that's a whole other mind bending story).  To complicate it even further the original survey done in the 1870's was done fraudulently.

Some people ask, "But won't he work his way out of a job?"  Highly unlikely.  It will take years to add all the infrastructure to the living map they are creating and to resolve the boundary of the reservation.  Even when that's complete, he would only work his way out of a job IF the land remained the way it is right now forever.  That just doesn't happen.  Property is continually being developed, divided, changed.  With those changes come changes in infrastructure, changes in property corners, changes that need mapped.  As long as individuals continue to live and work with the land on the reservation, there will be a need for up to date maps.  As long as people continue to buy, sell, and use property, there will be a need for mapmakers in the world.  It's a job that fits Dode well.  Part time detective, part time outdoorsman, full time mapmaker!

Winthrop 2012

We just returned from our annual September trip to Winthrop.  We'd packed earlier in the week so as soon as Dode got home from work Friday and bolted down some pizza, we were ready to pull out of the driveway.

Just some of the things we're getting ready to pack up.  We have a lot of toys: ski boat, water sports equipment, wind surfer, inflatable rafts, inflatable island, mountain bikes, telescope....

He got home at 5:20 pm and we were leaving the driveway at 5:37, I think that's pretty good! 

Our first stop was only five minutes later, when we pulled over so Dode could make sure the windsurfer was correctly attached to the roof racks on the van after hearing some funny noises.

We made it to Pearrygin Lake without any more stops, arriving in the dark around 8:45 pm.  We quickly got to work setting up tents, inflating air mattresses and rolling out sleeping bags.  Dode had made sure when he'd packed that everything that was essential for the night was on the top.  We all just wanted to pass out but we had some neighbors (five spots away from us) with very colorful language and subject matter (think an R rated movie) who were enjoying partying late into the night.  When they eventually gave up, we could finally fall asleep.  One thing we hadn't factored in was how cold the night would be.  All our warm clothing was buried in the van and everyone but William and Miriam complained of being cold during the night.  We lay shivering in our sleeping bags until the sun came up and started shining on our campsite, then the temperature got warmer quickly.  I had a strange discovery Saturday morning.  Miriam was sleeping on an air mattress next to me when we went to bed but in the morning the mattress was empty.  She wasn't on the ground between her mattress and mine, she wasn't even in the tent.  In the night she'd rolled off the mattress up against the wall of the tent.  The tent is pretty old and somehow the pressure of her body ripped the tent.  She rolled right out of the tent and was sleeping outside!

We stayed at the West Campground this year.  We'd scoped it out last year and picked out the "perfect" site.  When I made our reservation, someone had beat us to it so we ended up next door to the perfect site and yes, we would have preferred the perfect one.  Site #165, we're coming next year!

Saturday we unloaded the equipment and set up camp.  It never really warmed up but the children and Dode enjoyed some time swimming in the lake anyway.  We also went to town to watch an classic car parade.  The children's favorite was an old school bus.  Saturday night was another tough night.  Our neighbors were at it again.  Talking about things I really don't want my children exposed to with language that would give a sailor pause.  Throughout the night, I could see lightening and hear thunder.  At 12:30 am, the rain made it to us and our neighbors had to break up their party.  None of us had rain flies on our tents so we all had to jump out of bed and try to get our tents covered to keep the rain from pouring down on us through the mesh tops.  Then the high winds kept our tents noisily thrashing around so it wasn't a very peaceful night.

We got up on Sunday morning, showered and headed off to church in Twisp.  We've visited there before and found the members to be very friendly.  This time was no different.  We were invited over to have dinner with one of the families after church, the Schkrohowsky family.  They had a little girl Miriam's age, Thomasin, who Miriam made fast friends with.  I think getting to play with Thomasin was one of the highlights of the trip for Miriam!  Their little boy, Emil, was absolutely enchanted with Anastaya.  He even gave her gifts, rocks he scavenged outside.  The family lived in an amazing house with wonderful views of the Methow Valley, once the vacation house of a Microsoft millionaire.  I could have sat and looked out the windows all day!  Watching the children playing outside with the backdrop of waving fields of yellow grass in front of a backdrop of hills beyond hills was an image that made my heart happy.

Monday morning dawned cold and windy.  It was so windy we had to drop all the tents to prevent them from blowing away or breaking.  It was so windy that when Dode tried to make a sandwich for Miriam, the bread kept flying off the table.  It was so windy that as William was sitting at the picnic table eating his lunch, his plate flew away with his lunch still on it!  In that kind of wind, it's hard to stay warm.  We decided to go mountain biking.  The trails were in great shape because the rain we'd had Saturday night kept the dust down.  It was nice to be doing something active, but the wind was still keeping us pretty cold.  When we finished our mountain biking, we headed back to camp where soon, five of us were huddled in the front cabin of the boat, a triangle shaped space that's only four feet wide, six feet long, and three feet high; it is not tall enough to sit in, we just had to lay in there stacked  up like firewood.  It was pretty cramped but it was the only place to avoid the wind!  I lay in there with the children wishing I wasn't such a cheapskate.  I was so tempted to say, "Get in the van!  We're finding a hotel room for the night!"  But, I just couldn't spend the money so we all suffered through it.

The wind delivered these prizes that the littles enjoyed chasing down, tumbleweed

Miriam crawled under a "fort" of air mattresses in our tent to escape the wind.  When Dode dropped the tent, he never looked  inside to notice her in there.  She didn't mind!  She spent hours inside the collapsed tent underneath the air mattress listening to a book on her mp3 player.

The wind let up during the night and Tuesday the weather started getting better, more like the Winthrop we were used to.  When the wind died down we found that the lightening storm Saturday night had lit three forest fires in the area (and 110 throughout Central Washington).  When we left a week later, the fires together were almost 4,000 acres and where only 10% contained.  We spent the rest of the week marinating in smoke.

At least the smoke made for some gorgeous sunsets!

Elizabeth captured this one.

We spent the rest of our week rotating through our favorite activities: mountain biking, horseback riding, swimming, boating, river rafting, miniature golf and eating lots and lots of ice cream.  This year was the first year that Miriam and William went mountain biking, riding the tag along bike down the Sun Mountain trails behind Dode.

Isaac LOVED all the mountain biking we got in.  His favorite run this year was Goshawk on Sun Mountain.  Dode is always one to notice a map on a wall.  When we went to the Sun Mountain Resort to sign the girls up for horseback riding, he saw a map they were selling of trails in the area.  It was on nice paper and he decided it would be a good addition to our playing.  It didn't take him long to experience buyer's remorse.  There were two mistakes on the map he spotted quickly and after that, there was no way he would trust the map.  As a trained surveyor who values accuracy more than anything, he sees no use to an inaccurate map.  I got to hear about the map several times over the next days and how he wished he hadn't wasted $13 on it.  

Anastaya is so competitive that she has no problem keeping up with Isaac.  Is she out of control going down the mountain?  Maybe, but she's not going to let Isaac leave her in the dust!

Miriam knows how to mountain bike in style.  A dress and heels!

Mini Golf is a yearly tradition.  We've learned to do it early in the day to avoid the heat.

Arriving at the take out spot at the end of our rafting trip down the Methow River.  You can see how smokey the valley is behind us.

Elizabeth, William and I shared a raft.

Strawberry cheesecake ice cream was Elizabeth's favorite this year.

Blackberry Cheesecake ice cream was Isaac's favorite.  He got the fedora at a 2nd hand store in town.

Getting one last ice cream treat before heading back to camp to pack up and go home Saturday evening.

We didn't get as much play time behind the boat as some years.  The boat didn't go into the water until Tuesday because of the wild weekend weather.  On Thursday it broke down.  Dode got a new part on Friday and we were back in business until Saturday morning when the part he'd put in had failed.

The part that broke, a starter solenoid.

One thing the children enjoy is having Dode dive down to catch crawdads.  This year, Elizabeth was determined that she was going to catch one too.  Unfortunately, they were too deep for her but she did get excited about finding discarded snail shells on the bottom.  Dode brought four crawdads up to cook.  He heated up some water to boil and had Elizabeth drop the crawdads in.  She felt so bad about killing them that she had a hard time enjoying them.  Both Anastaya and Elizabeth tried them but they weren't too impressed.  Elizabeth ended up releasing the remaining two crawdads because she didn't have the heart to kill and eat them.

Dode found some unexpected treasure on the lake bed, four cans of unopened soda.  He brought one up and soon Isaac and Elizabeth were determined to bring up the rest.  After repeatedly trying, they managed to bring them all to the surface.  Isaac stuck them in the bottom of our inflatable raft.  Then, he jumped in to to bring them to shore.  The force of his jump into the boat caused the cans to go flying up and two of them hit him square in the face.  After hitting him in the forehead and nose, they went flying over the side of the boat, sinking back to the bottom.  This time they were in shallower water and Elizabeth had no problem diving down to retrieve them.

Some of Elizabeth's treasures of the deep.  She's hoping to make a necklace out of them.

Dode wanted to start a new tradition of having the children swim across the lake so he offered an incentive, money.  He told them he'd pay $5 for them to swim across in a life jacket or $10 without.  We provided a raft as a support boat in case they got into trouble.  The children negotiated that if they swam there and back they could get double the money.  Isaac and Elizabeth were first to try with Elizabeth in a life jacket.  They both made it there and back in about 30 minutes.  Dode decided he'd offered too generous of a reward and next year it will only be $5 for a trip across without life jacket.  Anastaya and Miriam went next.  Anastaya started off at a fast clip but soon ran out of steam.  It ended up taking her 45 minutes to swim there and back but she never needed a life jacket.  Miriam used a life jacket and made it one way across.  As she was approaching the far shore, she said, "I don't know what hurts worse, my arms or my legs!"  She was quite proud of herself when she made it to the far bank.

The teenagers spent a lot of time trying to master the wind surfer.  Dode built a pontoon out of PVC pipe and duct tape to make the board more stable and they practiced getting the sail up and maneuvering around.  Isaac was able to get pretty good at going where he wanted to go as long as it was down wind.  Getting back was another story and we had to rescue him a few times!  The girls stayed close to camp and never needed a rescue.  We drove by a house near the campground that had a wind surfer for sale for $50.  We drove by in on Friday, on Saturday, and on Sunday.  On Monday we decided to go buy it.  It was still there but someone had come by and purchased it.  Dode said that the universe doesn't favor those who take a while to make a decision.  It would have been nice to have a second set up because when three children are all wanting to practice at the same time, it gets a bit contentious!

One thing new we had this year was a camp oven.  Our camping meals have gotten much better over the years.  I've been using a square "oven" that fits over the burner on a propane stove for a number of years but it's so small and the heat is difficult to regulate.  Costco was selling a camp oven so I picked one up.  I really like it.

It has a self igniting oven and two self igniting burners on the top.

Pizza was one of the treats we made in the oven.  The crusts I bought were a bit too big so I used the cardboard to make a template of what would fit in the oven, then trimmed each crust.

Isaac digging in.  He ended up eating an entire large pizza by himself.  

We also made chocolate chip cookies, brownies, and apple cake.  I think we are pretty spoiled while camping but Anastaya would tell you otherwise.  Throughout the week she was pretty dramatic in her displeasure that she didn't have everything she needed: mustard for her sandwich, ranch for her pizza, sour cream for her taco, and conditioner for her hair.  Each time, the thing she was lacking was the end of the world to her.  Dode and I just shook our heads.  We remember camping when our meal was instant rice covered with canned chicken and cream of chicken soup.  We were eating tacos with seasoned meat, refried beans, avocado, tomato and lettuce but because there was no sour cream, she just couldn't bring herself to eat it for a while.

Of one of the new treats we tried this year was Starburst candies roasted over the campfire.  They get meltingly good with a crisp skin.  And if you're Isaac, a bit of camp dirt from your grubby hand just adds to the flavor profile.

Isaac created this insane Starburst sandwich to enjoy.  And yes, he had a tummy ache after eating it.

This was a very common site in camp.  Miriam relaxing in a camp chair listening to a book.

Behind her you can see the yellow legs of Dode's survey tripod.  We brought it to use as a base for our telescope but it ended up working even better as a support for our clothesline.  One morning the camp host came through on his golf cart and asked Dode if he was a surveyor.  Dode told him he was and the camp host said that he was too but has been retired for two years.  He then drove off to clean the bathrooms.  Dode said it was a comfort to know that someday when he's done being a surveyor, he can be a toilet cleaner!

We spotted this deer at the bottom of one of the mountain biking trails.  She's taking no chances!

Elizabeth saddled up at Sun Mountain and ready for her ride.

Anastaya is ready to go.

Off down the trail.

The children love sticking their heads in these silly wooden cut outs.

Our poor tent!  It's one we got from Sheri several years ago when the zipper failed.  Dode sewed a new zipper in.  We noticed when we put it up this time that the zipper was disintegrating in several places.  There were also rips in the roof mesh.  After Miriam managed to rip the entire side of the tent, we decided it was this tent's last campout.  When we packed up camp, the tent went to the dumpster.  I think we got our full use out of it.  

We left as the sun was setting on the lake Saturday night because we couldn't face another night of listening to drunken partiers (the weekends seem to bring them out, the weeknights are perfect).

Labor Day 2012- a trip to Baby Island

Since the weather was supposed to be good on Labor Day, we planned to spend the day in the boat with the children.  Our plan was to head up to Baker Lake.  It's about 1 1/2 hours to get to the lake, but we figured it would be large enough (almost 10 miles long) to accommodate the Labor Day crowds and not end up with really rough water.  We wanted to spend the whole day playing in the boat and on the water and Baker Lake has lots of beaches where Dode could dump the little people and me off for a break.  Unfortunately, Elizabeth woke up sick Monday morning.  She didn't feel  up to going out in the boat so she ended up staying home.  The weather was cool and overcast so we decided to switch plans at the last minute and head for the salt water.  The children were really invested in going out in the boat and we figured you don't need hot sunny skies to enjoy the Puget Sound.

The children have been wanting to see Baby Island since Dode surveyed it in the spring.  (details here) You can get information about the background of Baby Island and see some historical photos on that post.

We launched from the Tulalip Marina and headed off under dark skies towards the island.  The Puget Sound was smooth and calm.  Miriam was demanding one thing, "Blow up the tube and let us play!"  I wouldn't let her because I had visions of her getting soaked and cold and then being miserable for the rest of the day.  As we approached the island, about an hour's ride, the sun broke through the clouds.  We saw some strange lumps on the beach that Dode didn't remember from last time.  A large herd of seals was sunning themselves on the beach.  There were at least 40 seals on the beach as well as 10-20 swimming around in the shallow waters all around the island.  It was amazing to see!  Dode's first comment was, "Elizabeth would have loved seeing this!"  Elizabeth is our nature/wildlife lover, it's too bad she wasn't feeling up to coming along.

What are those brownish lumps near the water's edge?

Seals!

They love to hang out in pike position, it doesn't look very relaxing to me! 

This one looks just like a golden retriever playing in the water to me.

The seal is resting on a rock that is just beneath the water.

Miriam kept her life jacket on to help her stay warm.

rocky beaches=crab hunting

We landed on the island and quickly noticed that that many seals are pretty stinky.  We made sure to remain upwind of them!  The children set to work exploring the island.  You can walk all the way around it in about three minutes!  (Dode says it can be done in one minute but it took me longer.)  

Miriam enjoyed getting to see the sea shell beach that is unique to this island with her own eyes.  We spent a lot of time watching the seals.   They liked to hang out right on the water's edge.  The tide was going out so every few minutes, the whole herd would schooch forward.

Looking North.  There is one "tree" on the island.

I was sure there had to be a geocache on the island since it seems like geocaches are everywhere.   We had nothing better to do with our day, I figured we could easily find the cache.  Dode used his phone to check, we learned there wasn't.  If I would have known that ahead of time, I would have brought one with me.

As the tide went out,  more of the sandy penninsula that connects the island to the mainland at very low tide was exposed.  Miriam hadn't brought any shoes along and was regretting it as she tried to get around on the island, hurting her feet on barnacles, broken shells, and thorns.  Once she got to the sandy penninsula, she took off running and enjoyed splashing in the water.

We lazed around on the island for a few hours before headed back toward home.  My two teenagers laying prone on the sand reminded me of some of the other island visitors!

The children wanted to tube behind the boat so Dode filled it up and they had the longest tube ride of their lives.  The water was really smooth near the island but as we went farther south, it got rougher.  They caught air more than once!  Anastaya thought the salt water getting splashed into her face tasted terrible.  As we approached the marina, Dode kept me entertained with a running commentary about what he knew about the various waterfront properties.  William was yelling up from the tube, "Dad!  You missed the turn!" as we did some touring around the edge of the reservation.

Isaac loved his wind blown look!

We met up with Elizabeth at Dode's grandparents (Sharon had stopped in earlier and picked her up) where we enjoyed a BBQ with his extended family.  She was feeling mostly better by then.  She was a bit upset with me that we hadn't gotten home from boating and gone directly to her.  We'd spent about an hour unpacking the boat, putting things away, and relaxing.

Our trip to Baby Island was a success.  We experienced no mechanical failures or rough water.  We launched and retrieved relatively painlessly (and then got to watch another group struggle and swear as they tried to retrieve their boat.  Boat launches make great entertainment!).  The children got to play behind the boat and we got to get out and enjoy the sunshine.