We rose, made French toast, broke camp in the drizzle, and headed home.

On the way home, we got hungry and stopped at a Burger King. I notice that on the pop machine there are now signs, like those you find in a wine store: "Sprite! Goes with..." And I enjoyed the Coke one. "Coke! Goes with the whopper, double whopper, and triple whopper." Basically, that says to me, "Look, a Whopper is 690 calories and each additional patty is another 300. Have a Coke. If you're going to commit suicide, you may as well go all the way."

There's an Onion shtick, Area Man's Recommended Daily Caloric Intake Exceeded By 9 A.M., which I can sympathize with, because I did do that, eating a total of 1550 calories in one sitting. Gross!

There's also another advertisement that I spotted along the way. It's a Chevron ad and it shows a cartoon character in one of their cartoon cars; a fuel line runs to the car, and another line runs from the character's mouth to a huge bucket of sodapop. Now, most people don't know much about the quality of gas; they just know that their car runs on it. But we know that sodapop is bad for you. Equating something we know is really bad for your body with your gasoline is probably not what Chevron had in mind.

Anyway, we got home after only a three hour drive. I wore my kilt. Nobody at the Burger King batted an eye, and we were really deep in rural country out in Sedro-Wooley. We all immediately took showers, went out to eat at a decent restaurant, and then went home, lay down, and passed out.

Tags: camping, life
Current Mood: tired

Thursday is our nominal lazy day. We decided to not go hiking Thursday; instead, we went up to the next campsite, Horseshoe Cove, which is one kilometer across the lake from Anderson Point, and spend the day at the beach. We woke this morning to scrambled eggs and toast, and discovered a terrible tragedy. One of Yamaraashi-chan's shoes had been cooked in the fire! The first two days had been wet and awful, and the girls' shoes had gotten soaked, so we'd lined them up by the fire. Even though we checked the distance and heat regularly, the canvas sneakers dried out fine but Yamaraashi-chan's leather tops burned. I have to buy her new ones.

I'm started to understand that five days in the wilderness bracketed by one day driving in and one out is about optimal; after that, I start jonesing for the things of civilization. Omaha want to buy camping pillows. Deep Woods Offi has become critical to our survival.

Last night we had left out a plastic bag with muffins in it, and a critter got in and ate some of them and left, uh, evidence of his presence. Damn, what are we going to do now for Saturday breakfast?

We went to the beach and tried to swim in the freezing waters, but only Yamaraashi-chan was brave enough to stay in there for any length of time. I also got my head wet, but decided to get out quickly. We ate egg salad sandwiches and apples and played rounds of UNO. While we were there, I took out my beloved camera and gorillapod and snapped pictures. I could hear this sound, a familiar, annoying sound. From a kilometer away, with the right wind, we could hear that damn weiner dog all the way across the lake! Yap yap yap! And from a kilometer away, I snapped a picture of the beast. He's a little hard to make out by the water's edge and not nearly as much fun as Nessie, but it's a nifty pic.

We headed home with five gallons of potable water from the feed at Horseshoe Cove as well as five gallons of sun-warmed water in my solar shower thing. The shower worked well enough, although the bugs were like "Clean, bare human skin! Attack!" and the girls ran like the wind to the tent to get dressed. It's a good thing the campsite is well-isolated from the others. I still haven't shaved, so I'm scruffy as all heck, but Omaha and the girls insist they still love me.

We had hamburgers and roast corn for dinner, then dipped apples in a mix of brown sugar and cinnamon and roasted the whole thing over the fire. I pointed out to Omaha that tomorrow I could get eggs from the Ranger's store up the way and we could use the leftover dinner bread to make French toast. Problem solved.

I started reading Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder and have to say that on the one hand, I'm impressed, and on another not so much. Schroeder puts himself into a bind once in a while and then just routes around by telling you that the hero solved the problem, but not showing or even telling you how. On the other hand, there's one scene in the book that is every writer's dream, an unforgettable scene that makes you sit up and say, "Why didn't I think of that?"

The girls are deep into their own books: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and The Golden Compass. We also played a few rounds of GoFish. Bicycle cards has apparently gone over to doing all licensing all the time, because this deck was themed with Tinkerbell and every card was different (although they were the same across suits; every Queen was the same, just different backgrounds if it was black or red). This deck was almost fanservice! What are the people at Disney doing to Tink? The four is a millimeter away from being a panty shot!

Tags: camping, life
Current Mood: tired

The sun was shining and the girls were giggly. Yamaraashi-chan became obsessed with her bugbites and cataloged all of them. I made my coffee and we had cranberry breakfast muffins for breakfast. The trick to the breakfast muffins is to wrap them in foil and then hold them over the fire on the end of a marshmallow stick; they heat evenly and hold in moisture, so they're deliciously warmed and absolutely heavenly with butter. The coffee is civilizing force for good.

Yamaraashi-chan dressed in a spaghetti-strap top that even she admitted later was "a bad idea" because the mosquitos were all so bad this year.

We drove out to Baker Lake Dam, a modest hydroelectric project of Puget Power and Tacoma City Light. We drove behind a pickup with a horse trailer, and both riders were women. I don't think I've seen a man riding horses recreationally for a long time now.

We entered the Baker Lake Trail from the south side this time, taking an easy 2.4 mile hike in to Anderson Point. When we got there we found one heck of a campsite, complete with a box latrine: no surrounding shelter, just an isolated pit with a wooden box covering it and this sign pointing the way. The girls were fascinated by the idea until I pointed out that you'd also have to sit there to use it when it was raining. There were campers there, too. They had crossed the lake on their boat, only to have the motor break down and strand them. They asked how long the hike was as it looked like they might have to hoof it out of there to get parts.

We sat on the beach at Anderson Point, skipping stones, eating PB&J sandwiches, and lying in the sun while the girls played in the water. The campers had a crappy little weiner dog who barked at us annoyingly and then walked away, head and tail high. "Hmph, my ancestors were timberwolves."

We made beercan chicken, which admittedly looks a little weird and takes a long time-- almost two hours, while the steaming beer keeps the bird moist and helps cook the upper portion. That, couscous, and broccoli. Who says you can't be civilized out in the middle of nowhere?

Tags: camping
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Sphere, Symbiont

This is so weird. Omaha is waking up before me. She never did that on previous years when we went camping. Whatever happened to me being the early riser, getting my coffee and an hour of quiet reading time before she and the kids woke up? How annoying!

I pre-ground all of my coffee before leaving, and I'm noticing just how stale and, well, Maxwell-House the coffee is becoming. I mean, it's not really that bad, after all it's only a few days old and it started life as Deadman's Reach, but now I know why all 1970s coffee tasted the way it did.

We had cold cereal for breakfast and Omaha made chicken salad sandwiches for lunch. Yamaraashi-chan needs a haircut. Her hair is terribly tangly and won't behave no matter how hard we try.

The tent is too full. I lean against the wall, causing it to bulge slightly and making the rainfly significantly less effective because the water will seep through the fabric.

We walked the Baker River trail from the North, but only did about 3½ miles of it, up and down. We spotted a huge nest of what looked like wasps, as well as a whole bunch of frogs. Given what I've heard about the worldwide population crash in amphibians, it was reassuring to see so many frogs on the path.

Kouryou-chan became whiny toward the end, but was easily distracted by playing Pooh-sticks^[?] (there's a Wikipedia entry on Pooh-sticks. How cool is that?) with Yamaraashi-chan, but they both started running into the woods to get more sticks and Omaha and I joked that we should get them out of there before they deforest the place. My wrist was better, my sciatic nerve stable, but now my left shoulder ached, dammit. The GPS was still problematic, as again we were in the ravine to the North of Forest Road #12 and there was still problems even getting a 2D fix, much less a 3D fix.

After we got home, I took the girls down to the river. They walked along Boulder Creek as long as they could, down the entire campsite and then some. Kouryou-chan led us into another washway, now strewn with boulders and rocks from last year's heavy flooding, and filled with mosquito-breeding pits from this year's rain. It rained all evening, but Omaha is a fire master who can make a fire burn in a hurricane. Dinner was tacos, and the girls ate them down with gusto. We also had s'mores, and I used up the last of my Hershey's Cocoa Reserve. I love the light in that photo.

Tags: camping
Current Mood: tired

After a morning breakfast of Omaha's famous breakfast muffins and coffee, we made chicken salad sandwiches (the trick is to make the salad before you leave) and discovered that the dry ice trick might have worked too well-- some of the milk was partially frozen. We re-arranged the icebox.

We headed up through a light drizzle to Baker Ridge, but the trail was unpassable. The ranger station had had posting warnings that many of the trails had been damaged in last year's floods and this trail had not been maintained in a long time; in fact, it was mostly used by daring climbers for a quicker access to Mt. Baker's eastern flank. At the trailhead, such as it was, we found a burned out bonfire and a note reading "Party Pyro Losers."

The weather was wet and cold, and my body was feeling it. My left wrist hurt something awful, and I suspect I did something to it while loading up the clamshell. My right knee is likewise dubious about any strange torsions. It all seems out to remind me how old I am.

We drove over to the Sulphide Camp trail and did a hike. It was only about four miles round trip, a good warmup for the week to come. Yamaraashi-chan found a root that looked an awful lot like a dead turkey, and that's what we nicknamed it. We finally got tired of her swinging it and told her to pitch it into the river. Kouryou-chan called out "Slug alert!" and "Poop alert!" whenever we passed a slug or evidence of horses on the trails. At one point we came across five slugs crossing the trail. Yamaraashi-chan said, "Look! A slugfest!" The GPS system was only marginally useful; it kept fading in and out as the ravine blocked satellite reception. We also spotted this burned stump, twisted and black. In the distance, it was Lovecraftian and frightening, and even getting close didn't make the unease it created go away completely.

After the hike, we went home and had pizza, made by slicing open garlic bread and slathering the insides with cheese and pizza sauce. The girls made it all vanish, then practiced the fine art of roasting marshmallows.

I think the latrines here are what Nietzsche had in mind when he wrote, "Remember: when you peer into the abyss, the abyss also peers into you."

Tags: camping, life
Current Mood: tired

The family went on its annual camping outing. This time, at the girls' request, we went to Baker Lake, up by Mt. Baker. It's a lovely drive and no more than three hours from Seattle. We loaded up the clamshell and strapped it to the roof of the car, packed our gear and headed out.

Camping trick #1: pack dry ice in the bottom of your cooler, then put regular ice on top. The ice will form a protective layer between the dry ice and the foodstuff, and the dry ice will keep the whole colder much, much longer. We didn't need to refresh the ice until Thursday night.

Traffic was terrible through Everett. The straps of the rooftop clamshell made a buzzing sound like angry hornets, but we eventually made it to the campsite. The girls have fantastic fantasy lives; it's all Harry Potter and Golden Compass at the moment. You know you're driving through a different world when the self-proclaimed "finest steak house in town" has a Budweiser neon in the window.

Omaha and I turned off our electronics: iPhone, iPod, cell phone, Palm. Omaha needs to keep her Handspring on because it reminds her when to take her epilepsy medication. I left my laptop at home to collect mail. I wonder what Speakeasy will do since sometime around seven the line will go hot and stay at maximum bandwith for the next 120 hours or so (don't ask).

It was misting when we arrived and threatened to rain at any moment. Omaha dug out the foodstuffs while I set up the tent in three minutes flat, rainfly and all. I love modern camping technology. Omaha and I went cadillac on the sleeping pads this year-- no more Coleman inflatable air mattresses that deflate in the middle of the night leaving you on rocks like they did last year. Instead, we bought REI self-inflaters; less than four pounds each, $80 a person, but they're much more robust. They didn't give us any problems at all. Dinner was hot dogs and chips.

I had to pump water from the river. I love my PUR pump; it's too bad they got bought out, although I think the company that bought them makes replacement filters. It took a long time to fill up the water bladder-- so long Kouryou-chan became frightened that I'd fallen in and gotten hurt or something. It was very dark by the time I got back. There's no potable water supply at the campsite, although the one up the road has one (and a tiny general store for the rangers and campers).

The only other couple on the campsite was very friendly. The mosquitos are absolutely murder this year. We went to bed shortly after dinner, and it did rain harder later that night, but the tent kept us mostly dry. The campsite is next to Boulder Creek, which was rushing hard through narrow channels at the bottom of a much wider riverbed. It makes a lovely roaring sound that I think comforts most human beings by some deep instinct. I know I slept well with all that white noise.

Tags: camping, life
Current Mood: tired