So, after all that, we decided to cut our vacation by a day-- we weren't going to spend another night nestled up against rude, loud neighbors. Last night had been a Friday, and the entire campsite was now inundated with weekender yahoos who, having no need to pack six days of food, used the extra space to bring the lights and noise of civilization to the wilderness. If we were going to be in the midst of civilization, we may as well go back to it for real.

We ate a quick breakfast and packed up. We were on the road by 1, and home by that evening. Everyone dove for the showers, and then we just relaxed, which was kinda nice. Disappointing, but nice.

Tags: camping, life
Current Mood: annoyed

( Lots more pictures )

Tags: camping, family, kids, life
Current Mood: happy

Biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham has proposed that cooking was a necessary step in human evolution, because cooking breaks down fibers and improves the bioavailability of many nutrients we don't normally extract from raw foods.

But more than that, we cooked over woodfire. And I would not be surprised at all to learn that cooking over a woodfire is engrained into our genes in a way that, say, cooking with gas or electricity is not. As we camped, we were always cooking with wood, and damn if it didn't make everything we ate taste better. Even pancakes and scrambled eggs. There was something to the smoke that was utterly wonderful.

Tags: camping, cooking
Current Mood: full

For no other reason than because I want to, I hereby present all the flowers Kouryou-chan spotted and identified on our hike over North Sunrise Ridge, around Frozen Lake, across the Berkeley blast field and down into Berkeley Meadows, July 16th. These are all alpine and subalpine breeds growing on Mount Rainier. All identifications were hers, so if they're wrong, well, we did our best.

( Lots of pictures behind the cut )

Tags: camping, flowers, hiking
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah

Packwood, WA is the first town on State Road 12 out of Rainier National Park, and one of the few places where you can go to buy supplies if you happen to be out in the woods, casually roughing it.

Packwood is a funny little town. It has exactly one radio station, KACS Christian Radio, no cell-phone coverage, four coffee shops, five churches, and everyone seems to have high-speed wi-fi. The sporting goods store has a huge, faded Obama "Yes We Can" poster hanging from the rafters. The view from the grocery store includes Mt. Rainier in the distance; these people see every day what Seattlites spend good money and put good effort into seeing once or twice a year.

There are two gas stations, a Chevron at one end, and a Shell at the other. The Shell has a fast-food restaurant inside it and a lot big enough for tractor-trailer rigs. The Chevron has full service at all the pumps, provided by an elderly gentleman in a clean, pressed Chevron uniform straight out of the 1950s. The woman behind the cash register, likewise. The bathrooms were spotless, and my windshield was clean when I got back. The pumps are mechanical, not electronic and require a key to reset and operate. The prices on gasoline between the two stations are the same.

The biggest operator in the area appears to be "Four-U Real Estate," a big wooden building at the far end of town, which sponsors the local newspaper as well as the aforementioned radio station. There were dozens of "for sale" signs lining both sides of SR12 as I headed into Packwood, all of them belonging to Four-U, including one at this kitschy "Bavarian-style" restaurant, which was locked and boarded up from the other side. The restaurant was next to a locked up motel of the same architecture but no for-sale sign. Still, the paperwork on the front of the motel suggested it had last been open in April, and as far as I know there are no ski resorts on this side of the park.

Aside from the funny Jesus statue and the radio station, Packwood didn't seem particularly religious. The guy with the Obama poster also had a truck with the bumper sticker, "Driver does not carry less that $20 in ammunition." At the grocery a pair of artist/hipster types were greeted by the clerk, who clearly knew them as if they lived there, and later I saw them drive off in a beat-up Volkswagon Bug with Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker.

Tags: camping, seattle
Current Mood: curious
Current Music: Dave Matthews Band, So Much To Say

We started out late. Far from being the first one up, as I usually have been in the past, this vacation I seem to have consistently been the last one to finally drag my butt out of the sleeping bag and get ready for the day. I didn't bring any coffee with me this time, just hot tea, but it's good and it gets us going in the morning.

Omaha made oatmeal, and then we made PB&J sandwiches, loaded up the trail mix and water supplies, and headed out for Olallie Creek.

The trail was up the whole freakin' way! 4.3 miles, all of it uphill, to get to the creek and its attendent campsite. This was one of those places that the trail guides admit is "rarely visited," because it's a short enough hike that hardcore hikers push on to the next camp, but for a day hike there's nothing to it-- no vast Rainier vistas, no beautiful meadows, no amazing waterfalls. Just a lovely little creek slightly above the summer snowline, in the midst of a forest that rarely has human visitors. We refilled our water bottles often from the little streams that line the mountains; my Pur water filter pumps is one of the best investments I've ever made, and I'm down to my last replacement filter, and Pur has long gone out of business.

There was snow above 3900'. The girls were very pleased. At one point we stopped alongside a stream to rest and the girls were utterly fascinated with this tadpole clinging to a rock, wiggling back and forth, its ultimate goal utterly unknowable. There were a lot of trees fallen across the trail, and we had to climb them repeatedly, scraping our backs going under or risking our necks going over.

When we reached the campsite itself, the girls took off their hiking shoes and dunked their feet into the river-- and then Kouryou-chan succeded in dunking more of herself in, making herself very cold.

One of the things we found up at the campsite was one of those horrific, but still absolutely necessary, vault toilets. This one had a surprise-- a geocache stored about two yards away. It was a green ammunition box, locked with a padlock that was not marked with the US National Park Service mark on it, as all the other padlocks I'd seen on Rainier are. We're not sure what was in it, obviously, and geocaches are illegal in national parks, so what it was doing there and why, we have no idea.

Equally distressing, a snowpack covered the trail leading to the toilet and obscured the path, and someone had apparently chosen not to quest up the snow and done their business right there on the side of the trail. Gross. We reported all of this to the park rangers; dunno what they can do about it.

Home was downhill, blessed be. We went home and had the bean & beef premix that Omaha had made before we left-- very high in protein and carbs, and damned yummy, despite Yamaraashi-chan's complaints. It's one of those things you only ever eat while camping.

After that, bedtime. And we were all ready for it.

( Family pics of the day )

Tags: camping, family, kids
Current Mood: happy

We awoke to the sound of hammers and chainsaws. The bathroom in the "B" loop, where we were, was being rebuilt, and the rustic, log-cabin look required a lot of archaic machine tools.

I spoke to one of the construction workers there and it turns out that this is all they do. They're all Federal employees, and it turns out that the kind of log cabin construction that goes on in Rainier is so specialized that only about two dozen men are trained to do it, and this is what they do: go around repairing bathrooms and the "historic buildings" made from logs cut with saws and fitted with chisels.

I was pleased to note that my back doesn't hurt nearly as much as I feared it would. Omaha made a great fire and we all enjoyed a morning breakfast of warm cereal. The items that I listed as missing, I ran into the nearby town of Packwood to pick up, and then returned to get ready for our first hike of the day. We made tuna sandwiches and packed trail mix and then we were ready to be on our way. I caught a glimpse of myself in a bathroom mirror before we actually hit the trail: ack, with my Ironman glasses and REI overnight pack, I'm a stereotype: Pacific NW Hiker, Bulky Athletic Type.

We walked up the Silver Falls trail (about 3½ miles) to the falls (the big panorama in my previous post is at 46°45'18.86"N, 121°33'36.10"W and, p.s., Google Earth now runs fabulous in Linux!), which are huge, beautiful, churning, and then up the west side of the falls to the road, across the road to a picnic area set aside for day trippers. We stopped to picnic. Our sandwiches and water contrasted well with the family next to us, who downed huge sandwiches along with buckets of potato salad and even an open tub of Cool Whip-- what it was meant to accompany, I know not.

Then another ½ miles in to the Grove of the Patriarchs. The ground was so packed we walked it barefoot, except for Yamaraashi-chan, and that was delightful. Along the way the girls stopped and played in the river along with a couple of other families. Omaha was disappointed to see that all of the elk activity she'd seen earlier in the grove was gone.

Along the way we became aware of a relatively new phenomenon: agressive panhandling by the local "wild"life. In the past, we'd visited mostly remote areas (obscure corners of Mt. Baker, or the eastern face of the Olympic Range), but here, where there was lots of human activity, the wildlife was much more confident in approaching humans and expecting to get something out of us. This was especially true at the Grove of the Patriarchs, as it's a very short hike and thousands of people walk through it every day.

After the grove and it's massive, beautiful trees, some of the largest on Mt. Rainier, we walked back, taking the eastern loop. Along the way we saw that dark-furred chipmunk it the bottom image, crooning a very eerie song that faded away as we approached, but never quite disappeared entirely.

Dinner was hot dogs and s'mores for dessert. We tried to play Set, but we have to face reality: Yamaraashi-chan is so skilled at it that nobody else was scoring anything at all, and eventually we had to call it quits and play something else. Give Me The Brain made for a better game.

At bedtime, Omaha read to us aloud from a chapter of the children's classic, Heidi.

Tags: camping, family, kids
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Vangelis, The City: Dawn

Our annual camping trip started out with the traditional Burger King feast, a fateful reminder of what we were not to endure for the next six days. I had the new "XT Steak Burger" and it was awful. It tasted fake, as if they were trying to put one over on the diner. After a fast drive through Rainier Valley, down through Black Diamond to Enumclaw, I turned eastward onto 410 into the Rainier National Forest. All along the way we tried to find Thomas Guides, as I'd forgotten the one we had back at home and it was way out of date anyway. We were short a few flashlights so I bought some at Enumclaw, along with some new sunglasses-- I'd broken the old ones.

At the top of Cayuse Pass, we stopped to play in the snowpacks. The day had been cloudy all the way through the valley, and up here it was misty in that cold, Twin Peaks kind of way, but despite the mist and snow it was all quite beautiful.

We drove down into the Ohanapekosh Camping Area, 260 campsites in eight "loops" situated along the Ohanapekosh River, and found ours. We must have gotten the smallest campsite of all. There was only one place to put the tent, and it was less than six feet from the fire ring. We practiced tarpaulin origami to create a proper "tent footprint," as we'd been taught at REI, folding the tarp under itself so that if rain fell off the tent's rainfly it would fall on the ground and slip under the footprint, keeping the occupants warm and dry. We unpacked my sorely overburdened car; that clamshell is heavy even when packed only with the bedding, blankets and tent, and we had trouble maintaining even the lower speed limits along the twisting mountain roads. Along the way we cataloged that we'd forgotten beer, batteries, hot dogs, and tomatoes. Fortunately, on this side of the mountain there's a small town not twenty minutes away.

Omaha, the fire goddess herself, made a great fire and in no time we had pizza loaf for dinner: garlic bread sliced in half, filled with pizza sauce and shredded cheese, then wrapped in foil and reheated over the fire. They were a little blackened, but otherwise delicious.

Getting ready for bed in the dark is fun; stumbling around, "where did I put my toothbrush?", discussing how much pajamas and blankets will be necessary. It was never warm at night in Ohanapekosh, but never frigidly cold; I slept great in a pair of sleep shorts and a t-shirt. The girls preferred their usual pajamas, and Omaha wore her usual lovely jammies.

Tags: camping, family, kids, life
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: She, Chiptek: Supersonic

Omaha made a fire while I scrambled the eggs, and soon we were toasting English muffins and having breakfast sandwiches (ugh, did you know those things were invented by McDonalds? At least the ones you make yourself are tastier and better).

Don't believe the photograph. Those pants make everything look bigger.

We forgot so many things. We forgot bicycle pumps! The camera tripod, spare shoes, towels, the toasting grill. Contraceptives, not that we could have used them with our bruised and battered adult bits. We remembered food, shelter, bedding, medicines.

The campsite is full of RVs sporting satellite antennaes and other wealthy people pretending to commune with nature. Scattered among them, though, are some ordinary families, with tents and sleeping bags and campfires required for heat and cooking. Lots of kids on bicycles out here, too. I saw one group go by and wondered what kind of example Dad was setting because he made the kids wear helmets but he didn't have one on himself. The creek that runs through the campsite looks groomed, too tame to be natural, with little step-down dams of larger rocks at regular intervals as it makes its way down to the Hood Canal. There are way too many crows in the campsite, and the trash bins aren't animal safe so I guess they're not worried about predators here.

Omaha and I packed up and drove out to Spillman Camp (actually, the Oak Patch intersection, as Spillman Camp proper requires a reservation), which is a popular ORV (Off Road Vehicle) attraction. While we were unpacking, we saw a lot of 4-wheel ATV's (All Terrain Vehicls) puttering about, including one brood with three children-- everyone had their own ATV, and "Mama" was just about the white trashiest thing I've seen or heard in a long time. Her little boy, about ten or so, had his own gas-powered ATV and was cruising through the woods, and she was telling him that she'd ride with him later but right now "Mama's just smoking a cigarette." I mean, she had the trailer-park accent down. Straight out of central casting, that one.

We rode down Howell Lake Trail for a while until we reached the fork with something called "Randy's Water Spot Trail," which we took for a short distance, then turned off onto a trail with only an identifier: UB14. There's a trail on the map called UB Lost; this wasn't that trail, but we surely felt like it. This trail was technical, with lots of crap, lots of falls, and that momentum-robbing gravel. Parts of it were fun; I like mud, and roots (Omaha hates roots; I think she'd rather do gravel), and vicious downhill bombs. We were getting worried that we'd have to walk this trail back when, finally, it met back up with Howell Lake Trail. We decided to ride back to the intersection where we'd first seen Randy's Water Spot Trail.

Having done this half-mile of trail before, I bombed it and reached the trail marker with, I had thought, Omaha right behind me. It was a pretty easy chunk of trail-- lots of mud, but mostly downhill and no gravel or roots to speak of.

I waited for Omaha to show up. And waited. And started to get worried. I was just about to head back up the trail when I heard her coming through the trees. She stopped right next to me. "What took you so long? That was a pretty easy stretch back there."

She looked at me blankly and said, "I, that is, what I said, I mean, uh, it was..."

Oh, shit. "Did you have a seziure?"

"Little one," she said.

"Come sit down."

We sat about half an hour, sharing a Clif bar and waiting for her to recover. I know she'd taken her meds that morning, although she'd taken her afternoon dose the day before very late. We shared our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and she announced she was good to ride. So, we tried Randy's Water Spot. No go; the trail was brutal, with too much gravel and too sharp an uphill to get anywhere without porting the bikes.

We turned back, headed over to a road, and found another trail called "Paul's Grade." That was better, although about halfway in we found "CAUTION: DO NOT ENTER" yellow barrier tape had once been across the trail, but had also been cut recently. Omaha said the tape was down, we should go on, so we did.

This ride was fun. Not so much gravel, lots of bumps. Quite a few places to dump the bicycle, but we made it okay into the high "meadow" (actually, a clear-cut that had just started to grow back) and around the ridge, meeting up with the Randy's Water Spot Trail three-quarters down. After briefly getting lost and hitting a dead-ended trail (oh, did I mention that the batteries on my GPS had died? Yeah. Lost, we were) we finally dropped down onto the Tahuya River Trail, which took us back to the Twin Lakes sandpit, and it was a mile's ride on forest service roads back to Oak Patch. By then, I was in pain. My right shoulder had taken a hit from a fall, my calves were scratched to hell and back, and my ass was numb from all the brutality. My knee had been complaining about some vector and I was afraid I would have trouble walking, but actually no... it was better walking than riding by that point. We made it back to the car just in time for our water to run out. It was nice to sit down on a soft cushiony surface.

We refilled from the five gallon jug we'd brought, did ibuprofen and trail mix, and headed out for the ferry. The ride was fine; Omaha slept in the car most of the way. We got home and had dinner; wisely, Omaha had pre-cooked some brisket in the slow cooker two nights before and put it in the 'fridge, so we had dinner ready when we got there. A shower made me feel almost human. We went to bed at 8:45, how grown-up is that?

Tags: camping, life, seziure
Current Mood: tired

Omaha and I have been blessed this week to be childless. They're both packed off to summer camp for the week, and for the first time in eight years Omaha and I have found an entire six-day stretch to ourselves.

Unfortunately, that didn't turn out completely as well as we'd planned. The state-wide primaries were Tuesday, so Omaha was booked Monday and Tuesday night doing political stuff. It wasn't until Wednesday that we were free to ourselves. We went out to eat at a lovely restaurant called Bennett's, up on Mercer Island, which was pricey but delicious, and went to bed early in the hopes of getting out and onto the road the next day.

Thursday morning, we quickly threw everything we needed for a camping trip into the car, secured the bikes to the back, and rode out for Tahuya State Forest, a "working forest" popular with mountain bikers and off-road vehicle enthusiasts.

We first tried a short run called the Overland, off of a place called The Sandpit. The Sandpit was exactly that: a huge field of gravel. Gravel is the enemy of the bicycle, because it disperses all of your energy, robbing you of any momentum and making it hard to get any traction to build more. Eventually, we crossed the Sandpit and made our way onto the trail. The ride was brutal, with lots of gravel in the trail, and the trail had recently been ground up by dirt bikes. Tires slipped and slid. It was nasty. We did about two miles of that before heading back to the car, taking a shortcut on a forest road. We drove down to Belair State Park for a campsite, then left the campsite to try Mission Creek.

That was a much better ride. Jarring in places, lots of roots, lots of standing water in trail ruts and pots, lots of mud, but at least it was a trail and not a gravel pit with trees. We dumped our bikes quite a lot and our shoes got very wet. We rode for about an hour, then realized we'd left the map we had and turned back.

One thing about these "working" forests; they don't feel right. They have a "used" feel to them, which I suppose is only normal as that's what they are: used. We're not in a forest in the same sense as, say, some of the ancient woods around Mt. Rainier. This place has been chewed through once or twice is the past century by loggers as a way of providing cash for our school system. That's the excuse that the state uses.

It's been a long time since I've ridden on anything other than city streets (and I don't even do that often enough!). My thighs and buttocks were brutalized by the constant pounding of the bicycle seat. I could barely walk.

We returned to the campsite with just enough light left to make Omaha's famous campside meal, foil chicken. I took a quick three-minute shower (50 cents for three minutes) and used as much hot water as I could buy with 50 cents.

I will say that the kilt is pretty much the perfect dress accessory for this kind of outing. I could change into my riding pants without needing privacy, and going regimental in the evening was a damned relief after wearing those things all that time. Also, since we'd forgotten many things in our haste to get out of there (like towels), the kilt was great in allowing me to shower, squeegee myself as well as possible, toss a t-shirt over my damp body, and go. Not too bad.

It felt so weird to be camping without the kids, though. It was the first day I'd really missed them in more than an intellectual fashion. Where are my giggly kids?

I must have slept like a stone that night. I don't remember any of it.

Tags: camping, life
Current Mood: happy