Anya waits at the roll call for the bus to YMCA Camp Colman. Last year, she went with a number of friends — so many, in fact, she said she didn’t meet enough people. This year, she’s off on her own for a week.
Liya celebrates her 10th birthday a little early with some friends. We’ll be away for her birthday, so she has some friends (Anya S., Greta, Joey, Kira, Zelia) over for dinner and a movie. Anya and Kira will stay the night as well. When it gets dark, the girls play with sparklers in the backyard.
The girls have turned the front living room into a “Potion Lab”. Potion Lab is mostly a place where the girls mix various household substances together to see what happens. Research is concentrated in two areas: 1) nice-smelling mixtures, 2) lethal pesticides to kill household bugs.
Today in Potion Lab, something exploded, Anya manages to hit upon one of the few combinations of household products that are genuinely interesting from a chemical perspective. She mixes baking soda and vinegar in a small tupperware container, then leaves it and goes off somewhere. It eventually explodes, sending spatters of white goop everywhere in the room.
To her credit, Anya does spend a very long time helping Angela clean up the mess.
Canoe Camping on Ross Lake, Day One. Jan and Liya head out for their second annual father-daughter camping trip. Jan’s been trying to find a way to go canoe camping — he remembers having fun doing this with the Boy Scouts a long time ago on the East Coast, but lakes amenable to canoe camping are harder to come by in Washington State. A friend of ours tells him about a lake in Washington where you can go camping with canoes: Ross Lake, in the North Cascades. Ross Lake is an artificial lake that was formed years ago by the damming of the Skagit River. It’s beautiful, with a number of boat-in campsites along the shores, but it’s kind of tricky to get to.
We start the trip with a long drive up to the rural town of Marblemount, where we register for a backcountry camping permit at the North Cascades Ranger Station, and also make campsite reservations. These reservations can’t be made in advance, so we have no idea which sites we’ll get. We’re hoping for a site on an island, and are half successful: we get one night on the western short at Big Beaver, and a second night at Spencer’s, a small island. While we’re in Marblemount, we also stop for lunch at the Marblemount Diner.
We drive another half hour into the mountains to the Ross Lake trailhead. From there, we have to carry all our gear down a trail that’s only about a mile, but is fairly steep. We’re both carrying about a third of our weight: Liya’s carrying about 20 pounds, Jan’s carrying about 50. (Oof.) From the trail, we get a nice view of Ross Lake Dam, and ultimately the trail leads down to a dock on the lake. From there, we need to call Ross Lake Resort, a little set of floating cabins just across the end of the lake, and someone will motor across to our dock and pick us up. As luck would have it, someone’s already at the dock and willing to ferry us across to the resort.
At the resort, we get outfitted with our rental canoe and canoe gear, load up the canoe, and paddle off. It’s a somewhat cloudy day, not too hot for a long paddle, and we’ve got some wind at our back. It’s about 4.5 miles to Big Beaver, our campground for the night. Once we arrive, we scout the available campsites, and get a quite spot just up from the lake. We set up camp, and make our first rehydrated dinner — corn chowder — along with a “salad” of a cucumber we packed in.
There’s still a couple of hours of daylight after dinner, so we got for a walk along the lake to the point where Beaver Creek comes down into the lake. The river drops a bit as it enters the lake; there’s a constant background noise in camp from the small rapids. We also find a suspension bridge over the river.
Back at camp, we have dessert: rehydrated “Raspberry Crumble”. This is actually chocolate cookie crumbs sprinkled over hot rehydrated raspberry goop, but it turns out to be pretty tasty. Liya also wants a fire, which we make so she can toast a marshmallow.
Ross Lake, Day Two. After breakfast, we hike about an hour alongside Beaver Creek into a huge valley. Some moments of interest: as we approach a huge old-growth tree (a Douglas Fir, perhaps), we hear some snaps and thuds. We stop and wait, and see that small green pinecones are falling from the tree. Looking up, we see a branch near the top shaking, occasionally dislodging pinecones which plummet down, hitting branches along the way. We can’t see what sort of animal is making all the fuss, but hurry past with our hands protecting our heads. Liya also makes many stops along the way to look at ferns, looking for orange/brown bumps on the underside of the fronds. These are fern sori, little bumps that contain fern spores. She’s heard these are a good cure for stinging nettles and bug bites. (A timely topic — there are some mosquitoes.) We stop for a snack by the large and fast-moving but (at least at this place) completely silent Beaver Creek.
We hike back to camp and pack up, then load up the canoe to paddle to our next camp, Spencer’s, which is on a small island. Along the way, we look back at where we’ve come from, and notice smoke high up on a ridge of Sourdough Mountain. It looks too big to be a campfire, and in a weird place for one anyway. (It’s small, but if you magnify the photo, you can see the plume of smoke in the upper right-hand quadrant.)
[The fire will still be burning later that evening, but out the following morning. We’ll later learn from Ross Lake Resort that it’s a small forest fire which was started by a lightning strike, and which has been burning on and off for a week. The forest service is keeping an eye on it, but it doesn’t seem too concerned about it while we’re there.]
On the way to Spencer’s, we see a pair of kayaks headed toward the island too, although they stop for a break. When we get to the island, we find both of the island’s two campsites unoccupied, so we pick the one we like best on the northeastern corner. Ten minutes later, the kayaks arrive (two moms, a girl named Katie, and a boy named Jamie); they have to settle for the other site.
After unloading the canoe, we make a paddle around the island with Liya in the helm seat at the back. She wants to try her hand at steering the canoe. After a minute of this, she observes, “Our trip around the island is going to be a bit wiggly.” She does a fine job for a first try, and even tries a bit of solo paddling with a J stroke.
It’s gotten a bit warm, so Jan takes a swim. The water is extremely clear, tinted green, and brisk but pleasant. Afterwards, we make a small hike around the island, partly on trails and partly bushwhacking. Dinner is macaroni and cheese, which is fine, but the dessert is a bit of a failure. Jan hadn’t read the directions on the dehydrated “Apple Cobbler” closely before we left, and it turns out you need a pan to finish cooking the dessert. Liya builds and lights a fire entirely on her own for toasting marshmallows.
Ross Lake, Day Three. Good morning!
Post-breakfast contemplation.
Liya plays with Katie and Jamie from the next campsite while Jan finishes packing up. We paddle halfway back to Ross Lake Resort, stopping at Cougar Island to look around. We meet some people who point out the we’ve got a northern wind, giving us the benefit of an extremely rare tailwind going back down the lake. (And giving their group, headed north, the bad luck of a extremely rare headwind.) We then paddle over to a tiny neighboring island to make a quick lunch of more corn chowder. We’ve made ample use on this trip of a tiny backpacking stove Jan’s sister Skye and her husband Jared gave us last Christmas. It’s worked like a charm.
After returning our canoe at Ross Lake Resort, we get a boat ride back over to the dock on the eastern side of the lake. We shoulder our packs (now very slightly lighter — dehydrated food doesn’t weigh that much) for the long slog back up the steep trail.
We have to stop for breaks at a number of points. The temperature is in the mid 80s, we get hot, and we’re not carrying much water. Luckily, we remember there’s a creek along the way, so we break out the water filter so we can fill up our water bottle with cold, fresh water. Rejuvenated, we finish the hike back up to the car.
When we get back into cell phone range, Jan’s supposed to call Angela and let her know we’re safely out of the backcountry and on the way home — but his phone isn’t working. We make a stop in the tiny town of Darrington to conduct a search for a pay phone, a somewhat rare beast these days. We have to stop at several places before we finally find one. A couple of hours later, we finally pull into the driveway at home.
Our cat Nutmeg finishes the fifth of her five chemo treatments for kitty breast cancer. This concludes a long process that began with a surgery in early May. The animal hospital gives her a chest x-ray, and everything looks clear, so for now things are as good as we could have hoped. Nutmeg’s already a cat senior citizen, but we’re happy she can be with us for some more good years.
“Bunny World!”, by Sabriya Miksovsky
Seattle to Stanford Sierra Camp. For the second year in a row, we’re heading to Fallen Leaf Lake in the Sierra Nevada mountains for a week of family camp. Our return is highly anticipated: since the girls got back from camp last year, they’ve often asked, “How many weeks until we go back to Sierra Camp?” Today we finally get to go back.
The flight to Reno and drive to the south end of Lake Tahoe go smoothly. (There are six other Seattle families from camp on the flight, so camp actually starts a bit early.) We get to our cabin at the end of the road overlooking the lake around 3:00 in the afternoon, and the girls quickly unpack so they can head down to the boat dock. The sky over the lake looks quite hazy — a result of smoke from the large Rim Fire currently burning at Yosemite National Park. (The park is 50 miles away, so there’s no danger, just smoke.) Despite the haze, paddleboarding on the lake is wonderful.
The girls are happy to reunite with camp friends from last year. When we meet up with the Hwang family from Marin County, their middle daughter Daphne runs and gives Liya a big hug. Later on, Sabriya meets up again with her friend Georgia, who’s come all the way from the D.C. area. (Bree and Georgia had actually seen each other a couple of times during the year through Skype video calls.) And we’re all happy to see familiar faces at our first dinner in the camp dining room.
Sierra Camp, Day One. It’s the first day of the kids groups, which are divided by age. Sabriya is still in the Snoopers group, Liya moves up to Yahoos, and Anya moves up to Midorees. They meet their counselors, some old friends, and meet some new kids. Angela and Jan spend the morning and afternoon relaxing: reading, going for a paddleboard ride, and so on. Anya’s a bit sad because her friends Sidney and Laura-Kate have not yet arrived. She spends her free time reading in the cabin until her friends finally arrive around dinnertime. In the evening, the kids go to evening parties for their respective kids groups.
Sierra Camp, Day Two. The girls’ groups have either a beach day or a hike day. Liya’s Yahoos group goes to Angora Lake, well-known as a popular hiking destination because of the lemonade stand by the lake selling fresh lemonade. Jan and Angela join a group hike from Emerald Bay to Azure Lake. This hike entails some scrambling up granite boulders. Because of the smoke from the forest fire at Yosemite, the lake is more slate gray than azure, but it’s still pretty. The hike leader and a camper brave the cold waters to swim out to a submerged boulder in the middle of the lake.
Liya and Anya are so completely occupied with their friends that we eat neither breakfast, lunch, nor dinner with them. We drag Bree with us to the evening’s entertainment: Disco Bingo.
Sierra Camp, Day Three. There’s no wind in the morning, and the smoke is thick enough that the sunlight is orange (a bit like sunset), and it’s hard to make out the shoreline on the opposite side of Fallen Leaf Lake. Jan goes for a long paddleboard paddle around the south end of the lake. Later, Bree and her friend Georgia joins him for a canoe ride.
Sabriya enjoys a Fun Dip (a sugar stick used to pick up flavored sugar granules) while riding in a Funyak (a small kayak).
Bree and her friend Georgia
Sierra Camp, Day Four. It’s Liya’s 10th Birthday! It’s a nice family day too — the whole camp goes down to the beach for a morning of beach games. Anya participates in the limbo competition, and Angela and Jan get about halfway through the egg toss. (Fortunately, neither of us gets covered in egg.) Anya, Liya, and Jan swim out to the one of the floating rafts. The lake is colder this year than last year, so a short dip in the water is plenty.
Bree waits for her chance to ring the camp’s dinner bell.
Anya walking under the limbo bar.
Angela’s keen to improve her sailing skills this year, so she gets us all of us out on a Hobie Cat. There’s a fairly good wind, albeit a bit gusty. When the wind picks up and the sailboat starts flying along, it kicks up a bit of spray. This delights Liya and Sabriya, and makes Anya moan to go back in.
Just before dinner, Angela and Jan go out on a sunset boat cruise. It’s a beautiful evening to be out on the water for some sightseeing and conversation with some camp friends. We see several osprey flying over the lake, including a pair in a giant nest at the top of a dead tree. The setting sun shows a nice profile of Mt. Tallac. The cruise ends somewhat dramatically when the counselor driving the boat crashes it into the dock.
After dinner, we all head to the beach for a campfire with singing and marshmallows.
Liya celebrates her birthday at dinner. Her friend Daphne is very sweet to have remembered Liya’s birthday and gives her a book. A group of counselors come out of the kitchen singing and bearing Liya’s requested birthday dessert: a pie, not a cake.
Sierra Camp, Day Five. Angela has a massage in the morning while the girls are in their kids groups. Jan joins fellow camper Ben for a long hike to Mt. Tallac in the Desolation Wilderness area that adjoins the camp. They hike via the trail to Gilmore Lake, but above the lake lose the trail. This happens when they begin following a series of rock cairns which are supposed to mark a trail, but at some point the cairns begin to peter out, and it becomes harder and hard to find the next cairn. They eventually come to a point where they can’t find the next cairn; they decide they’re lost, so they stop and get their bearings.
Jan’s happy to break out his boy scout orienteering skills, and using a topo map and a compass, they set course on a route that should take them across the real trail. They tramp across an alpine meadow, surprising a number of grouse, then skirt a huge field of brambles and scramble up a slope to happily come across the main trail. (Whew!) From that point on, the hike goes smoothly, and they soon reach the summit of Mt. Tallac. They meet up with another pair of campers, Kevin and Greg, and the four of them enjoy the 360 degree view from the very tip of the mountain. There are spectacular views of Desolation Wilderness to the west and south, but the north and east are still socked in with forest fire smoke from the distant fire at Yosemite. From the summit, the four men make the long, knee-grinding descent down to Fallen Leaf Lake and back into camp. As they pass the camp’s boat dock, Jan takes a moment to jump in the lake and cool off.
One of the nice things about the Stanford camp is that each week, two faculty members are invited to give a talk at the camp. While the girls participate in evening kids activities, Jan and Angela attend an interesting lecture on the legacy of Thomas Jefferson.
Sierra Camp, Day Six. This is the last full day in camp, and Liya and Anya’s groups conduct their annual morning-long Capture the Flag competition. Anya and the other Midorees are utlimately victorious. Angela goes for a solo sail, and is doing well when a gust capsizes her Hobie Cat. She bobs in the lake for a bit until the boat dock dispatches a motorboat to help right the sailboat. She redeems herself with a smooth return right into the proper slip at the boat dock.
In the afternoon, Jan and Anya do a bit of archery. The camp provides cheap bows that are slightly painful to use, but one girl in Anya’s group lets us try out her own recurve bow. It’s a pleasure to use, and much more accurate. Any kid who shoots two bull’s eyes gets a free milkshake at the camp soda fountain. Jan dubs the bow, the “Milkshake Maker”, which delights the bow’s owner. All the other kids on the archery range wait for a turn to use the bow to score a free milkshake.
The evening meal is an outdoor barbecue, followed by a slideshow of photos from the past week and a counselor talent show. Bree tries to stay up for the whole thing, but Jan finally brings her back to the cabin for bed at 10:00 pm. The finale of the show is a sketch Anya had seen last year, at the end of which the counselors splash the audience with water. Anya gets a cup of water so she can surprise the counselors by splashing water right back at them.
Liya and her friend Daphne
Three girls at camp
Sierra Camp to Seattle. After saying goodbye to camp friends for another year, we check out and drive to the Heavenly ski resort near South Lake Tahoe. We ride a gondola to the top of the mountain for some great views and lunch, then head back to Reno for the flight home.