Warm weather has finally arrived in Seattle. We gather up our beach stuff and walk down to the Madison Park Beach. Bree’s summer swimming lessons have gotten her much more comfortable in the water, and she plays in the water with Jan for a long time.
We go to Woodland Park Zoo to see two South African acts play in an outdoor summer concert: Ladysmith Black Mambazo opens, followed by Johnny Clegg. The former group’s vocal harmonies are nice to listen to, but it’s Johnny Clegg that gets the crowd off their feet. It’s Anya who is first moved to get us off our picnic blanket we can join the crowd of happy people dancing.
We head to Mount Rainier National Park for two nights of camping. This year we’re staying at the Ohanapecosh Campground, which turns out to be quite nice. We’ve managed to get a wonderful campsite (A4) next to the Ohanapecosh River, with a spectacular view of the river and the mountainside across it. Better yet, there’s a small stream flowing just across the north side of the site. The girls spend every free moment of the next two days playing along the stream, building bridges and so on. (Within 24 hours, Bree manages to get nearly all her clothes and shoes wet, such that Jan has to rig up a second clothesline just to dry out Bree’s things.)
We have a lot of fun setting up the family tent, and grill our dinner over the campfire. For post-dinner s’mores, we’ve brought some homemade marshmallows which Siri had made — but discover they bubble and liquefy very quickly in the fire, rather than brown the way the standard store-bought ones do. Before settling in for the night, we end up shepherding the girls on multiple “Last time!” visits to the campground restroom.
We drive up to the Sunrise Visitor Center, which has stunning views of Mt. Rainier’s summit.
After grabbing lunch at the Sunrise lodge, we want to take a short hike with the girls. Jan looks over the large list of possible hiking trails. Angela wisely selects the absolute shortest and easiest one (less than 1.5 miles long). Luckily even the shortest trail goes through beautiful alpine meadows. Bree stops often to check out the wildflowers beside the trail.
Angela observes that walking through acres of wildflowers is a bit like diving on a coral reef: there’s so much to look at, by the time you’re done you can barely remember any one thing you saw. In the case of this outing, we stop long enough to learn and remember that this type of flower is called Magenta Paintbrush.
Back at the campsite, Angela enjoys an afternoon cup of tea and a book.
More toasted marshmallows!
We do the short hike to the Grove of the Patriarchs — a cluster of really tall old-growth trees. Liya and her sisters enjoy bouncing across the suspension bridge over the Ohanapecosh.
The trees are huge.
Bree on the bridge over Box Canyon.
Angela and the girls look tiny on the bridge over Myrtle Falls.
Just about time to head back to civilization. We’ll be back next year!
Internet savvy: Jan walks with Bree and Liya past the new veterinarian in Madison Park.
Jan: “Hmm… I wonder if we should check that out some time.”
Bree: “First we have to find out how many stars it is.”
Liya’s 9th Birthday Party. For her ninth birthday party, Liya has once again asked Jan to put together a “mystery” or “puzzle” party. (This will be her fourth such party.) By mutual agreement, Liya and Jan have agreed it should feature Professor Pete, Liya’s round stuffed polar bear. (But only when he’s wearing Jan’s reading glasses, otherwise he’s just plain Pete). Jan has spent a good chunk of the past month working on the party, which seemingly on its own has evolved into more of a series of games and activities than a mystery or puzzle hunt.
The party kicks off around 4:00 pm when Liya’s guests arrive: Bronwyn, Greta, Tamarin, and Zelia. Anya’s invited her own friend, Elise, to the party as well. They come with sleeping bags, as this will be a sleepover party. Around 4:45, everyone comes into the family room for the opening of the game.
Professor Pete’s School for Sensitive Youngsters. Jan starts a movie introducing Professor Pete and his School for Sensitive Youngsters. (A play on the X-Men comics, which feature a Professior Xavier and his School for Gifted Youngsters.) Professor Pete explains how his school helps its students develop all of their senses – not just the five traditional senses, but the more complete range known to medical science. For today’s events, they’ll go through a series of tests based on eight of the senses: Sight, Touch, Hearing, Smell, Taste, Balance, Proprioception, and Pain. (Mention of this last sense elicits the expected gasps.)
(The video of Professor Pete’s welcome message is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYmyMqVlPCI)
The kids get marathon-style bib numbers to pin on their shirts, and then the games begin.
Taste: Jelly Belly Bingo. The first event is a group event based on the sense of taste. Each child is given a bingo card whose squares contain the names of various Jelly Belly flavors. An initial jelly bean is given to each of them in a special cup dispenser that’s hard to see into. As they eat the jelly bean, they have to guess its flavor, and mark the corresponding flavor square on their card. Sabriya manages to get “Bingo” first.
Hear: Name That Tune. Each child has a turn at a listening station where they play a “Name That Tune” app (which Jan’s put together for the occasion). They start by hearing just the first note of a traditional kids’ song, and are given a chance to guess the song. If they don’t know it, they hear two notes, then three, then four, and so on. Some kids struggle through, others are surprisingly quick — Tamarin gets “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” on the second note.
From the Taste event, the kids are sent off to different events in various corners of the house. Signage around the house directs the kids to the activities.
Smell: Scent Recall. The child gets to familiarize themselves with four different scents: strawberry, raspberry, black currant, and pepper. (These scents are taken from a collection of scents used by oenophiles to develop their nasal palette.) The child is then blindfolded and presented with the scents in random order, and asked to identify the scents. Most of the kids do pretty well on this one.
Sight and Touch: Drive the Robot. This combination event is, by far, the most elaborate of all the party’s games. It’s based on a game installation called “Interface” that could be played in the early 1990s at a Seattle restaurant called Entros. In Interface, one player (the “robot”) dons a mask that completely blocks their vision, and which has a wireless video camera mounted on the front. A second player (the “driver” or “controller”) has a screen showing the video transmitted by the first player. Both players can communicate through an audio channel. The first player is sent into another room, where they must negotiate a series of obstacles or puzzles using their sense of touch and listening to spoken directions from the second player.
Here Liya directs Bronwyn through the solving of a puzzle in another room.
In the early 1990s, the creation of the “Interface” game represented a significant technological challenge. In 2012, it turns out to be fairly trivial to recreate the game using an iPhone and an iPad communicating via Facetime. The only challenge turns out to be coming up with a way to comfortably and securely mount a forward-facing iPhone on a player’s head. Jan purchased an iPhone armband case and a headlamp, and did some surgery to create a “Cyclops” iPhone headmount.
Jan tries out the rig and snaps a test photo with his head.
Brownyn, following Liya’s directions, has made her way into the basement guess room, and arrived at a simple jigsaw puzzle she’ll need to solve.
This game requires a great deal of “mind sight” (i.e., understanding what information or thoughts another person may have) and communication skill on the part of the player looking at the screen. This is challenging for these 8–10 year olds, but some kids turn out to be great at it: Elise drives Zelia through the challenge in just a couple of minutes.
Pain: Bag of Mystery. All of the kids were at least a teeny bit apprehensive about this event – which was the intention – but the event is in fact completely pain-free. Each child is presented with two bags: one labeled “No Pain”, and another labeled “???”. They are instructed to choose a bag and, without looking, to stick their hand inside and pull out whatever they find. They are told they will not receive more points if they select the “???” bag. At this point, a stopwatch is started. The child can ask as many questions as they wanted (“Does it make a difference which one I pick?”, “Will it hurt?”) and all questions are answered honestly. The thing is, the quicker they make their decision, the better their score will be.
Both bags turn out to contain cute little stuffed animals (“Squishables”, which are all the rage in our house these days). Whichever animal the child selects, they get to keep. Anya quips, “The only pain in this event is not getting the one you wanted.”
Proprioception: Blind Marble Drop. Proprioception (a.k.a. your kinethesic sense) lets you know where your limbs and body are even when your eyes are closed. For this game, they stand above a set of paper cups on paper plates on the floor. They hold some marbles in their hands. They have to look at a cup, close their eyes, then move their hand to where they think it’s above the cup, then let go of a marble. A marble in a cup is worth 3 points, a marble on the surrounding plate is worth 1 point. Liya rocks at this game.
Balance: Blind Balance Beam. For the last event, Jan leads all the girls outside to the backyard, where a balance beam has been placed on the ground. After a practice run with eyes open, each girl get three chances to see how far they can walk on the balance beam while blindfolded. The balance beam starts out 6 inches wide, then narrows to 4 inches, and finally the last segment is only 2 inches wide.
While you do have a vestibular system that lets you balance with your eyes closed, it turns out to be really hard to balance on even the 6” beam with no visual feedback. Still, three of the girls manage to get all the way to the end. Most spectacular is lithe gymnast Greta, who starts to wobble the instant she steps on the 2” section and yet, in a rush, is able to sprint across it.
Scoreboard. As each girl leaves an event station, the adult there records the child’s score in a shared scoreboard that’s also visible on the family room TV. (This is another example of tech that would have been really hard 15-20 years ago, and is now trivial.) It’s fun to watch everyone’s progress through the games. As luck would have it, every child comes in first, or tied for first, in at least one event.
Per Liya’s request, her birthday party dinner is a cheese board. She particularly asks for Mimolette, a hard, orange, cow’s milk cheese. All the guests seem pretty happy with this rather non-traditional birthday fare.
Following the non-traditional dinner is a non-traditional dessert: Liya wants pie instead of cake. She, our nanny Siri, and Angela bake two pies: a blackberry/raspberry pie, and a pear pie.
Before the pie is served, the first place winners in each party event receive, as a prize, a birthday candle which they add to the pie. As the candles are lit, Professor Pete leads everyone in a chorus of “Happy Birthday”.
When it gets dark enough, the girls have Jan take them down to the park so they can play Flashlight Tag. They all finally collapse around 10:30 pm.
The next morning, all the girls awake to an ample pancake breakfast. The guests spend another happy hour or so before their parents arrive to pick them up. (Whew!)
Sabriya says goodbye to Learning Tree Preschool. Her last day at the school was actually in June, but many kids attend the school through the summer, so they hold their graduation in August. She receives a little certificate from her teacher, Rachel. Rachel reminds Bree of a little joke they used to share, in which one would tell the other that “No smiles allowed at Learning Tree!” — and so of course Bree gives her a big smile.
Seattle to Stanford Sierra Camp, Fallen Leaf Lake, California. Angela’s alumni association runs a summer camp for alumni families, and apparently it’s quite popular — she’s had us on the wait list for something like seven years. (When Angela told Jan this spring that we’d finally gotten off the wait list, Jan had no idea what she was talking about. Angela: “I told you about this.” Jan: “When?!?” Angela: “Seven years ago.”)
Each family gets assigned a week of the summer, and generally that family will keep coming back the same week each summer. We’ve been assigned Week 12: the last week of the regular summer camp session, which ends just before Labor Day. (We later learn that our good fortune was due to a change in California’s public school schedule. Because so many schools are now starting in mid-August, a number of long-time camp families could no longer come at the end of the summer. This resulted in a large number of camp slots suddenly opening up.)
The camp’s on Fallen Leaf Lake in the Sierra Nevada mountains, just south of Lake Tahoe, and at the eastern edge of the Desolation Wilderness. To get there, we need to fly from Seattle to Reno. At the SeaTac airport, we meet up with the Blooms and the Wolson-Blacks, a couple of other Seattle families heading to the same camp. We have a nice lunch at a Mediterranean café in Reno, then drive about two hours around the south end of the Lake Tahoe to find the long, one lane road that snakes around the eastern side of Fallen Leaf Lake to get to the camp.
The camp is your quintessential summer camp: lakeside cabins, a main lodge with a flagpole in front, a boat dock and swim rafts, an archery range, etc. We check in at the office, and make our way to our assigned cabin, Juniper C. It’s high up on a hill, and has a great view of the lake from an outside deck. (Because the camp sits at something 6800’ altitude, we also get winded simply walking up the hill.) As soon as enter the cabin, the girls immediately begin squabbling over who gets which bed. Bree gets a room to herself, with Liya and Anya taking up beds in the small living room.
After unpacking, Jan asks the girls if they’d like to walk around before dinner. Liya joins him, and they walk down to one of the boat docks. There they run into a group of eight year-old girls, including Samantha, the daughter of friends. Samantha turns to the girls and says, “Guys, this is my friend, Liya.” One girl says, “Let’s go to the tree fort!” and all the other girls say, “Yeah!” Jan tells Liya it’s okay to go, and she disappears with the group. So we quickly discover that the freedom to run around is one of the funnest parts of camp for the kids (and the parents!).
The dinner bell goes off at 5:45, and the camp food turns out to be really good. We eat on a table on a deck facing the lake. After dinner, we join an orientation talk for new families. The camp director, Dave, is blown away with the fact that this last week of the summer has 14 new families this year. (Usually, he has two or three new families each week.) After a short walking tour of the camp, we join the rest of the camp families (some 300 people or so) in a meeting room where the camp counsellors introduce themselves with short skits. Liya exhausted, so Angela takes her back to the cabin. Later, Bree and Anya meet up with the counselor for their respective kids groups. The kids groups are organized by age, and each group has an odd name: Snoopers are 5-6 years old, Menuhunes are 7-8, and Yahoos are 9-10.
Jan brings Bree and Anya back to the cabin, and we all collapse.
Sierra Camp, Day 1. After breakfast at the main lodge, we get the girls off to their respective kids groups. Angela attends the Sunday church service. Jan watches Anya’s group go through a introduction game, then heads to the boat dock to take out a sailboat. A camp counselor there nudges Jan towards one of the simpler Lido sailboats, which turns out to be a great call. The wind is nice but occasionally gusty, and one gust nearly knocks the boat right over, so it’s a good thing the boat’s as easy to manage as it is.
We all meet back up again for a barbecue lunch by the lake. It feels a bit like being in Frontierland at Disneyland. After lunch, we all do a lot of messing about in boats. Angela takes a sailing class with friends Paul and Liora. The instruction is light on details, but they nevertheless manage to maneuver their Hobie Cat around the south end of the lake. Jan takes Liya and Sabriya out in a pedal boat (which you pedal like a bicycle) to a nice beach at the south end of camp called Baby Beach. Liya shows Jan and Bree a small treehouse her kids group explored earlier. Later, Jan takes Liya out for a sail in a Hobie Cat.
Some explains to Bree and Liya that any camper who picks up ten pieces of trash from the camp grounds can bring the trash to the camp office and receive a Sierra Camp pin. They can do this up to three times a day. The girls spend the next few days picking up a lot of trash.
Anya spends the early evening with her Yahoos group. Angela attends an after-dinner lecture by a Stanford professor, but is so tired she ends up coming back to the cabin early.
Sierra Camp, Day 2. We drop the girls off at their groups, then the two of us join up with a group that’s going rock climbing. We make a 30-40 minute climb halfway up Cathedral Peak, which sits behind the camp. We’re still getting used to the altitude, so just the short hike tires us out a bit. Our guides are Dave, the camp director, and Will, a Stanford student. They take us to a point where there are two climbs. The first is “The Crack”, a relatively straightforward climb (rated 5.6) at the intersection of two cliff faces, with plenty of handholds and footholds. This we ascend without much trouble. The second climb, just to the left of the first, is “The Face”, a decidedly more challenging route (rated 5.7) across and up a short cliff face. There are fewer handholds and footholds, they’re much smaller, and harder to find. Both of us find this second climb to be about the limit of what we can manage. We’re quite happy when we reach the top. (Later in the evening, we ask Anya what’s the hardest outdoor climb she’s done without any assistance. She’s done a 5.10a climb, which is far harder than either of the two we did today.)
After the climb, we walk down to Baby Beach for a swim. Liya’s Menehunes group is there, having paddled little “Funyak” kayaks over from the boat dock. Jan takes a swim in the lake; Angela decides its too cold. The water’s not bad, maybe 68F. Old time campers say we’re lucky to have the lake this warm, as many years it’s much colder.
Bree has made friends with a girl in the Snoopers group named Georgia. The two girls spend a solid hour playing in front of the main lodge. They both happen to like a TV show called, “Super Why”, so they spend much of the time pretending to be superheroes like the ones in the show.
Anya and Bree decide they want to paddle Funyaks too, so Anya takes one and Jan takes Bree in another. We paddle over to Baby Beach. At the beach, Anya decides to swim, which means Bree wants to also, which means Jan has to also. Jan points out that Bree’s not wearing a swimsuit, and there’s a breeze, so her wet clothes will make her pretty cold on the paddle back — but this is the sort of parental logic that doesn’t hold much sway with kids. Bree wants to swim regardless. Bree’s been taking swimming lessons this summer, and has gotten comfortable in the water, although she can’t swim on her own yet. She’s wearing a life jacket, though, and happily paddles out with Jan to a swim raft.
Angela and Liya come over to the beach in a pedal boat, so now all five of us are together. Anya doesn’t want to paddle back, but we put her Funyak on the pedal boat, so Anya and Bree ride back on the pedal boat. By the time we all get back to the boat dock, Bree is shivering. We hustle back to the cabin, where Bree and Liya turn on an electric heater and camp next to it until they warm up.
Sierra Camp, Day 3, and Liya’s 9th birthday. Jan does a moderate hike along the Rubicon Trail, which follows the southwest coast of Lake Tahoe to the point of Emerald Bay. It’s a beautiful hike, with a constant view of the lake’s deep blue and turquoise waters. When we stop at a secluded, sandy cove for lunch, hike leader Will breaks out a surprise snack: he heats up some chocolate chips over a camp stove, then pulls out some strawberries he’s had packed on ice so we can have chocolate-dipped strawberries. Apparently the hike leaders have some of a competition going to see who can bring the most improbable dessert on a hike.
Back at camp, Anya’s Yahoos group plays Funyak Soccer, essentially water polo in kayaks. Angela takes Liya around in a canoe, and then spends the afternoon with Bree. Sabriya once again plays for hours with her new best camp friend, Georgia. Jan goes for another nice swim in the lake, then goes to pick up Anya from the Yahoos group — only to find that Anya has gone out pedal boating with a new friend, Grace. One of the things we’re enjoying most about camp is that the surroundings afford the girls more independence than they can have at home, which in turn means more time for us to relax and do things we want to do.
Before dinner we run across Georgia’s parents, Katherine and Ben, who have obtained a cheese platter and some wine from the kitchen, and are holding an impromptu party in front of the main lodge. When the dinner bell rings, we all go inside. After everyone’s had a chance to eat dinner, some camp staffers come into the dining room singing, and bearing a birthday cake for Liya. They sing some camp birthday song, then place the cake in front of Liya, who’s somewhat overwhelmed by the attention. The cake turns out to be pretty good, but rather large, so we share cake with the happy line of kids who have lined up for a piece.
Sierra Camp, Day 4. There’s no kids groups scheduled for today, so we gather up the girls after breakfast for a family hike. We invite Bree’s friend, Georgia, to come along. Our plan is to take a little trail that starts across the road from our cabin, then follow that until it comes to a small sign pointing towards nearby Lily Lake. The lake is only about fifteen minutes away by a paved road, but we want to take this less-used trail. The trail descends to a small group of homes, then disappears. We ask for directions, and are told to follow a road down to Glen Alpine Creek, then walk up the creek bed. There’s not much water running in the creek right now, so we can hop from stone to stone up the creek. In places where there aren’t enough stones, we scramble through the bushes and trees on the sides of the creek or, in a few places, sidle along the granite walls of the creek. All this activity meets with the girls’ enthusiastic approval, and even though it takes us nearly an hour to reach the lake, the girls all say it’s the best hike they’ve ever done. Still, we’ve had our fill of the creek, and take the paved road back to camp.
Back at camp, Anya and Liya want to try stand-up paddleboarding, so Jan takes them out. Both girls pick it up quickly. After that, there’s an archery lesson at the archery range. There are lots of wayward arrows going in all directions, but Anya and Liya manage to at least get one bullseye a piece. In the afternoon, we enjoy sitting out on our cabin deck, listening to a musician somewhere close by playing a violin.
In the evening, there’s a big campfire on the beach, which includes a singalong and, of course, toasted marshmallows. On the way to the campfire, Jan and the girls run into one of the camp’s more notable guests: U.S. Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy, who chats with us for a bit as we all look at the moon. Jan notices that he’s wearing one of the little name tag buttons all the adults are wearing, only he’s crossed off the name “Anthony” and has written in “Tony”. Even Supreme Court justices can let down their hair on vacation.
Sierra Camp, Day 5. Anya and Liya’s groups go on a hike to Angora Lake, while Bree’s group has a beach day. This leaves us free to go on another moderate hike. This one leaves straight from camp, heading west into the Desolation Wilderness to Grass Lake. It’s a beautiful day for a hike, and we have fun chatting with the other hikers as we go. At the lake, hike leader Will has tried to top his Tuesday hiking snack of chocolate-dipped strawberries, but overreached: he’s brought the fixings for “chocolate blackberry tacos”, but failed to bring a frying pan in which to actually cook said tacos. We snack on chocolate chips and blackberries, then take a plunge in Grass Lake by jumping off some rocks. The lake is colder than Fallen Leaf Lake, but it’s not bad. The walk back down to camp is faster than climb up, but still leaves us hot and dusty, so as we pass Baby Beach, we jump in the water for another swim.
In the late afternoon, there’s last-minute addition to the speaker program: Justice Kennedy (“Tony”) has agreed to take time out from his vacation to give a couple of talks. He gives an interesting off-the-cuff presentation on what it’s like to be on the Supreme Court, and shares some thoughts on the U.S. Constitution. Jan quips afterwards that he’d never thought he’d attend a talk on constitutional law while dressed in a bathing suit.
Right after the talk, Jan and Angela head down to the boat dock for a sunset wine and cheese cruise on the “Boatster” pontoon boat. The dinner bell rings while we’re out on the lake, and we’re happy to come back to shore and the dining hall to find that the girls have made their own way to the dining hall and fed themselves some moderately healthy dinner.
Sierra Camp, Day 6. The girls have their last kids groups in the morning. Anya’s Yahoos spend the time in a fierce game of Capture the Flag against the older Midorees, and narrowly lose 3-2. Angela and Jan take a Hobie Cat out for the morning, with Angela putting her refreshed sailing skills into practice as skipper.
The girls spend most of the afternoon with their new camp friends. Liya and Bree spend a long time fishing off the north end of the ski dock for crawdads. Jan takes Liya and her friend Daphne for a canoe paddle, and as soon as they get back, the two girls go right back out with Daphne’s father for a pedal boat ride. Anya and her new friends Sidney and Laura Kate spend the afternoon combing the hillside below our cabin for huge (1 foot long) Sugar Pine pinecones, and collect something like 20 of them.
In the late afternoon, Jan and Angela take Bree to a social cocktail hour hosted by Dave, the camp director, and his wife. This is followed by a barbecue dinner by the lake. We’re supposed to pack at this point, but the girls spend the post-dinner hours running around some more with friends. We all gather around 8:00 for a final camp evening that includes a slideshow of moments from the past week. Angela stays with Anya for the camp staff talent show, while Jan, Liya, and Bree once again collapse into bed early.