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!
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).
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