Jan and Lyn do an overnight backpacking trip to Greenwater Lakes and Echo Lake in the Mount Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest. The fair October weather is holding on, and Jan really wants to squeeze in one more trip before the rains come. His mom, Lyn, has been interested in doing a backpacking trip herself, so she joins in. They arrive at the trailhead east of Enumclaw just before 11:00 am, and hit the trail.
The trail crosses back and forth over the Greenwater River several times. Jan and Lyn pass a Forest Service crew preparing to blast some rocks; they want to make one section of the trail more accessible to horses. Although Jan and Lyn are well away by the time the blasting starts, they hear the explosions echo through the valley several times during the afternoon.
Echo Lake is beautiful in the afternoon sun. It’s also quite isolated. Jan and Lyn see no other hikers all afternoon, and are the only campers on the lake. They’re not entirely alone, however — at sunset, they can hear weird honking/snorting/screeching calls from around the lake. The sounds are made by elks.
Jan tries out a new lightweight stove rig he’s put together, and is happy it all works fine. Dinner is instant Vietnamese pho, which hits the spot as the light fades and the temperature starts to drop. Jan and Lyn turn in early.
Around 2:00 am, Jan’s woken up by a strange sneezing or barking sound very close by. In his half-asleep state, he decides its a dog. And those loud, heavy footsteps must be its owner. Walking his dog. In the middle of the night, on the shore of a remote lake. After some more sneezing/barking/honking sounds, Lyn wakes up, too. “Did you say something?” she asks. The two feel heavy footsteps through the ground as much as they hear them. It finally dawns on them that it’s an elk a very short distance away, essentially in their campsite. The elk finally goes bugling and whuffling off. Another (or the same one?) comes through the campsite an hour or so later.
On Saturday morning, Jan and Lyn have breakfast at Echo Lake, then break camp and head back down the Greenwater River towards the trailhead. They stop at the Greenwater Lakes for lunch, and make it back to the car around 1:30 pm.
“Getting there is half the fun” — but sometimes it’s a series of disappointments. For her 7th birthday this summer, Jan gave Bree a promise of a father-daughter trip in the fall. As with his trips with Anya and Liya when they each turned seven, the trip will feature a seaplane ride. Jan’s taking Bree to Orcas Island. She’s been looking forward to this trip for months.
Unfortunately, on the morning of the trip, the weather isn’t cooperating, and Jan and Bree arrive at the seaplane terminal in Seattle just in time for the airline to announce the flight’s cancelation. Not to be deterred, the pair hop back into the car for an impromptu road trip up to Anacortes to catch a car ferry to Orcas.
Even though they’re nearly two hours early for the ferry, there’s a huge backup at the ferry terminal, and the next ferry is already full. There isn’t a ferry after that for several hours. So Jan and Bree spend the most of the afternoon killing time at the little ferry snack stand, or sitting in the car reading books, playing cards, and watching videos. The highlight of the afternoon is a walk along a shoreside trail where Bree leaps around declaring that “We’re on an “Adventure!” Still, even with a lot of things to do, it’s still hard to preserve that spirit of adventure while spending 5 hours in a parking lot.
The ferry is late to boot. Instead of having dinner as planned at a nice place on Orcas, the two have dinner from the ferry’s cafeteria. By the time they arrive in Orcas, it’s dark. By the time Jan drives for half an hour to get to their hotel, Bree’s fallen asleep.
Day two of the trip to Orcas is much better. Jan and Bree rent a bike and trail-a-bike combo and spend the morning pedaling around the north end of the island. Here’s Bree at North Beach, looking toward Sucia Island, where we camped this past summer. From this point, they bike east, then go on a fun (albeit slippery) off-road trail before making their way back to town.
Jan and Bree eat lunch at a great little bakery in the town of Eastsound. After lunch, they browse through a bookstore and a toy store. The latter has a large selection of stuffed animals. Partly as compensation for a rained-out day yesterday, Bree ends up with a giant stuffed representation of a marshmallow s’more.
In the afternoon, they bike to another beach on the west side of the island. The island is proving to be scenic, but very, very hilly.
In the hotel at night, Bree wants to play cards again. After spending hours yesterday afternoon playing Go Fish, Jan’s tired of that, so he teaches Bree how to play Gin Rummy. Much better.
Last morning on Orcas Island
Jan and Bree drive to Moran State Park to do a hike. Bree’s getting to be an able hiker. Here she checks our location on the trail map.
After the hike, we drive up to top of Mt. Constitution. It’s too cloudy to see the view today, but it’s nevertheless fun to climb the tower at the top.
For the return trip, Jan and Bree get to the Orcas Island Ferry dock very early. We have lunch there, then spend a few hours playing Gin Rummy.
Anya starts some early consideration of which high schools she’ll apply to next year. She’s only in 7th grade, so she doesn’t have to start applying to schools until 8th grade next year, but it seems helpful to at least attend some open houses this fall so she has some sense of what’s coming up. Here she’s sitting next to her good friend, Kaila, a fellow 7th grader who’s also beginning to think about high schools.
For the school’s Picture Day, Anya does spend some time on her hair and picking out a shirt — but comes down to breakfast wearing leopard-print fleece pants. “They only take your picture from the waist up”, she explains.
Anya celebrates her birthday with a sleepover for her good friends Ariella, Cordelia, Kaila, and Ivy. She wants to do an outdoor activity with them, and by a small miracle, a week of rain lets up long enough for us to take the group of girls kayaking on Lake Union. We paddle from the Northwest Outdoor Center to the University Bridge and back, looking at all the houseboats along the shore.
In the evening, there’s dinner at our house, followed by what’s now a tradition at Anya’s birthday parties: flashlight tag at the nearby park. When we get to the park, we discover that the parks department has installed a huge floodlight that lights up half the park, making it hard to hide. We devise some alternate rules to tilt the balance away from the person’s who’s “It” and back toward the people trying to hide.
Back at home, the girls watch a Japanese anime, “The Girl who Leapt through Time”. We try to get the girls to get to bed and turn out the lights by 11:00, but there’s whispering and laughing long into the night.
Anya’s 13 years old! We have an teenager in our household.
Now that Anya’s 13, we think she’s ready to have a cell phone. The phone isn’t, strictly speaking, a gift to her. Per some advice we read, a gift is hard to take away if troubles come up. So the phone’s a tool on loan to her for as long as she doesn’t let it take over her life.
Sabriya loves her after-school Sewing class! She’s already made a pillow, a bag, and a little stuffed owl. She looks forward to the class each week, and has prompted Angela to dig up our little sewing machine so she can work on projects at home.
Watching a teenager who’s recently gotten a phone for the first time is like watching a laboratory rat become addicted to a narcotic. Coming home from school and texting with her friends, Anya laughs and shouts, “This is so much fun!”
Anya is happy to wake up each day and start texting her friends back and forth. Sometimes a friend starts a group text, and then her phone pings repeatedly with new texts for the next hour.
Halloween means that it’s time for the girls’ school Halloween Parade. Bree dresses as a bunny, complete with a cute little pom-pom tail. The older girls are now in middle school, so they no longer walk in the parade. (Sigh.)
Would you like to try our new pumpkin hazelnut peppermint mocha? Liya dresses for Halloween as a Starbucks barista.
Liya and Angela started making this costume weeks ago, cutting and sewing by hand a very close facsimile of a green Starbucks apron. They created a stencil of the Starbucks logo, and transferred it with white acrylic paint to the apron. They got a small tray, and asked the folks at our neighborhood Starbucks for a bunch of little sample cups. Liya puts the apron on over a black outfit, and puts her hair up in a ponytail.
This costume receives more comments and compliments than any other costume our kids have worn. It was so convincing that, when Liya is walking around Madison Park in the afternoon, little kids come up to her. They think she works at Starbucks and is handing out candy.
We invite several families over to our home for afternoon trick-or-treating, then dinner, then some more trick-or-treating. We walk up and down the Madison Park business district first for its easy pickings. The weather clears up just a bit, so we get a bit of late afternoon sun — nearly unheard-of in Seattle on Halloween.
(Anya’s not with us for this event. She’s spending the night at a friend’s home, so we don’t have a photo of her in her handmade costume: a giant orange traffic cone.)
After dinner, everyone heads back outside to walk around the neighborhood. An hour or so later, everyone troops back with full bags of candy to take a break before going back outside. But before they can rally themselves, we hear a low roar — rain thundering on the roof and windows. It’s pouring outside. This brings the general trick-or-treating to an early close, and our guests head home.
Liya is undaunted, though. She still wants to go back outside because she hasn’t yet stopped by the cool house on McGilvra Boulevard that always goes over the top with their decorations. Jan convinces her to wait until the rain slows before the two of them go back out.