The 1st grade class holds their annual “Culture Feast” potluck. This is the third time we’ve done this event, and it’s always exactly the same. The kids open with the same set of songs celebrating the diversity of America as an immigrant nation, and there are the same jokes, but it’s still fun to watch. Angela brings a Taiwanese dish of pork and rice that goes quickly.
Backpacking trip with Lyn to Baker Lake. Jan’s mom joins him for an overnight trip along the Baker Lake Trail. It’s a perfect weekend for a hike: sunny weather, not too warm, no bugs.
Lyn’s carrying all her own gear, including a new tent, stove, and pack.
Looking across Baker Lake towards Mount Baker. Since we had a very mild winter, the volcano has very little snow on it this year.
School’s out for the summer.
Bree really wants to go to the beach today, so Angela takes Bree and Liya to the lakeside park near our house. It’s sunny, but kind of breezy and cold, so Bree’s shivering by the time she comes home.
Our latest weird candy delivery from Japan was “Gummi Berries”: a strange little kit for making little grape-flavored gummi balls. Bree and Jan follow the instructions to construct a little plastic branch, then alternate between dipping it in a sugar solution and a gummi powder. Eventually, little grape-like balls form on the ends of the branch. We dust the candy with some gum-flavored powder, and then pick the “berries” to eat them. They’re a little weird, but not bad.
Liya and Bree perform at their teacher’s annual spring recital.
Angela’s last day as associate pastor at Mt. Baker Park Presbyterian Church! She’s been there over three years, and feels that this is a good time to move on.
An important consideration: finding a church with a good youth program for the girls. We like Mt. Baker Park, but the church is so small, the youth program isn’t big enough to hold the girls’ interest. At some youth events, the only kids aside from ours girls are the children of the senior pastor.
Angela delivers a solid farewell sermon, and the congregation expresses their appreciation in a number of ways. After Lee, the senior pastor, says some kids words to Angela, the congregation stands and gives her a standing ovation.
Bree’s Eighth Birthday Party Octopus Puzzlehunt. At some point in the past year, Bree told Jan that, for her eighth birthday, she wanted him to create a puzzlehunt for her and her friends. While Liya and Anya have had some six puzzlehunts between the two of them, Bree hadn’t had one yet. So, although a puzzlehunt requires a ridiculous amount of work to create, Jan agreed.
Although Bree’s birthday isn’t for a few more weeks, we opted to hold her party a bit earlier in the summer so more kids could come. In the early afternoon, Bree’s guests arrive: Asher, Clara, Emily, Kate, and Theo. Shortly after everyone’s arrived, the puzzlehunt kicks off with an introduction from Jan in the family room.
It comes out that a group of stuffed animals in our house are particularly excited about Bree turning eight. These animals like the number eight — because they have eight arms. It’s the girls’ stuffed octopi. They’re so excited about the party, they’ve created a puzzle for Bree and her friends to solve. The puzzle comes in eight pieces, and each piece is hidden somewhere in or around the house. A short photo slideshow summarizes some of the important facts about octopi that will be crucial in finding the pieces. Notably: 1) octopi are so good at camouflaging themselves that they can effectively become invisible, and 2) octopi produce ink, useful not only for escaping predators, but also for printing with inkjet printers.
Bree reads the first clue, which sends the group of kids to the piano in the living room. The hunt is on.
Music clue. The children find a music clue waiting for them on the piano. Bree and the other girls work on this while the two boys run around the room. The clue involves decoding musical notes as letters, using the letters to form code words, and then translating those code words into plain words.
When part of the message is decoded: “LOOK UNDER THE ____”, the boys begin looking under everything. The next code word is “CAGE”, so most of the kids decide the clue must be under the hamster cage. Bree keeps shouting that the word “CAGE” is just a code word, and hasn’t been decoded yet, and would everyone please stop bothering the hamster. When “CAGE” is decoded, the actual plain word turns out to be, “piano”.
They look under the piano, and don’t see anything. Eventually they look up into the underside of the piano, and sure enough, there’s a little stuffed octopus waiting there with an envelope.
Inside the envelope, they find an octopus puzzle piece, and an instruction to go find the massive stuffed octopus “hiding” in the upstairs loft.
Word puzzle. In the loft, the girls’ massive octopus sits beside a word puzzle, something like a crossword, where all the clues are based on the number eight. The answer to the word puzzle is “INSIDE ME”. Bree realizes the massive octopus is saying that the next clue is literally inside him. They flip him over, open his zipper, and there’s the clue.
You say octo, I say ocho. The next clue sends the kids to the basement guest room. This puzzle involves a map of Europe showing how the word “Eight” is pronounced in different languages around the continent. They need to look up various ways to say “Eight”, figure out what country the word is from, and then take the initials of those countries.
This puzzle doesn’t involve any mental leaps, just careful inspection of the map, and turns out to be just about the perfect activity for this crowd of kids between 1st and 2nd grade. This is the only puzzle in the entire puzzlehunt that manages to engage all the kids at the same time.
Still, one of the boys can’t sit still, and he eventually discovers a hiding octopus that’s not supposed to be found until later in the game. Jan has to gently set the octopus aside until later.
The kids really like the octopus theme to the puzzlehunt. As they encounter stuffed octopi in different places, they start carrying the octopi around. This isn’t part of the puzzlehunt — it’s just something they want to do.
Orienteering. The fourth clue involves following orienteering instructions (involving the eight major and minor points of a compass) around the backyard. The kids eventually unearth a clue that a tiny octopus has planted in the herb garden under a helpful tag that reads, “PUZZLE PIECE”.
Invisible octopus ink. Back in the family room, the kids have now found four octopus puzzle pieces. The triangular pieces have magnets inside, so they stick together, but the trick is doing this so that the octopus arms on each piece line up with the octopus arms on the adjacent pieces. They’ve only found four pieces so far, and still need to find four more.
Jan reveals that the octopi are not only able to become invisible, and produce ink, but can also produce invisible ink. He distributes ultraviolet flashlights so they can see invisible octopus ink. Bree discovers that the first clue in the puzzlehunt has some hidden writing on it that indicates they should go back to the piano.
Puzzles redux. The music puzzle by the piano turns out to have some invisible musical notes on it that change the answer to the puzzle. This reveals an additional octopus hiding with a puzzle piece in the fireplace. (Somehow, the fireplace ends up hiding a clue in most of our puzzlehunts. It’s so easily overlooked, and somewhat mysterious.)
It turns out that all four the clues the kids have already solved have a hidden, invisible set of information that only appears under ultraviolet light. So each of the four clues can be redone to uncover an additional four puzzle pieces.
Assembling the final puzzle. When the kids have obtained all eight puzzle pieces, they return to the family room to try to assemble them. They can stick all eight pieces together, and read part of a message on them, but they can’t make sense of it.
It turns out the puzzle can’t actually be completely solved when it’s flat — it needs to be folded into a three-dimensional octahedron. Once that’s managed, Bree can finally read the complete text of a Happy Birthday message from all of us.
The puzzlehunt is followed by birthday brownies (Bree didn’t want cake), followed by an hour of running around with octopi and ultraviolet flashlights.
When Jan’s mom joins us for dinner, Anya prepares a dessert for her: a cup of chocolate pudding, covered with chocolate frosting, and topped with chocolate cookie crumbles. It looks to be about 99% sugar. The dessert is dubbed, “Chocolate Puddle”. Grandma gamely eats her cup of Chocolate Puddle, then feels slightly ill afterward.
For Father’s Day, the girls give Jan the best Father’s Day card he can imagine. It’s a pop-up card, and opens to show a bucolic camping scene, complete with a tent, a campfire, some laundry hanging from a line, and a tree. This card is clearly meant to reflect on Jan’s recent interest in backpacking.
There’s a pull-tab on the side of the card. When you pull the tab, a bear slides out from behind the tree.
June 24. Bree joins Jan for a two-night trip on the PCT. Bree’s been interested in joining Jan on a backpacking trip, and he thought it’d be fun for her to hike along a part of the Pacific Crest Trail he’ll hike next year. (The sign in the photo abbreviates the full name: the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail.) Jan’s Washington PCT trip will be a long time away from home — 5 to 6 weeks — so some direct experience of the trail will give Bree a clear picture of where he’ll be and what he’ll be doing.
Their two destinations are Dewey Lake and American Lake, both in the William O’Douglas Wilderness just east of Mount Rainier National Park. They’d originally planned a weekend trip, but when the weather forecast began calling for very hot, possibly stormy weather this weekend, they moved their trip up a few days.
Bree’s hiking with a pack that holds her sleeping bag, air mattress, pillow, clothes, water, and some small gear items. Her pack weighs in at 8.5 pounds, which seems doable for her.
ree’s pack includes one item Jan does not carry: Lambie, Bree’s favorite animal. Bree spent a while considering which animals to bring. Then, given weight concerns, settled on just bringing Lambie. (Lambie: 9 ounces)
The first night’s camp is at Dewey Lakes. This spot feels very remote, but just 3 miles from a trailhead that’s only 2 hours from our home. Because it’s a weekday, Jan and Bree have the lake to themselves for the night.
Dinner is Mac & Cheese, which meets with Bree’s approval. They also try a backpacker meal of “creme brulee”. This is a rehydrated vanilla custard with sprinkles of caramelized sugar. It’s not exactly creme brulee, but it’s not bad either. The main problem: the “2 Servings” listed on the bag turn out to be more like four servings, of which Jan has to eat three. Oof.
This point in the early summer seems to be the peak for wildflowers. There are TONS of flowers everywhere: daisies, lupine, magenta paintbrush, and many others.
The next morning, Jan and Bree break camp and begin hiking the four miles to American Lake. As they round a bend, Mt. Rainier comes into view.
Jan and Bree reach American Lake by lunchtime. It’s a small but pretty lake. It includes set bench-like set of rocks perfect for sitting on while splashing around. The weather is getting pretty warm, so after lunch, they cool off in the lake.
These fluffy tufts are the seedpods of a flower called the pasqueflower, but Jan and Bree agree that they look just like the truffula trees in Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax”.
In the mid-afternoon, Bree wants to make a little boat of some sort to sail on the lake. Jan suggests they make a raft. Behold the “American Queen”: a tiny raft of sticks, a stiff grass, and a rubber band they found at the lake’s edge.
One of Bree’s favorite shows at the moment is “Survivorman”. Last year, Jan and Bree watched an episode where survival expert Les Stroud lights a fire with a firestriker — a sort of high-tech flint and steel. Intrigued, Jan bought a ferrocerium firestriker, and has brought it on this trip so they can try it out. He’s also bought a small amount of highly effective fire tinder: dryer lint.
After a dinner of rehydrated “spaghetti” (not bad), Jan and Bree build a fire. The firestriker and dryer lint work as advertised, and in short order they’ve got a blaze going. When coals begin to form, they break out the marshmallows.
Bree sails the “American Queen” on her American Lake namesake for a while, and then decides to try the raft on the small stream the lake drains out of. The raft spins, gets caught, gets freed with a stick, then spins out of reach, then comes back into reach, over and over.
Evening sun on a peak above American Lake
Time to break camp and head home.
Today’s going to be a very long day: 7 miles back to the trailhead! Jan stuffs as much of Bree’s gear into his pack as he can fit. They hike the four miles back to Dewey Lakes, where they have lunch and a swim. Then they begin a long, slow climb up out of the lake valley. It’s hot in the afternoon, probably mid 80s, and Bree stops often to take a break. They finally reach the top of the climb about 3:00 pm and take a longer snack break.
On the way back to the car, Bree caches a message for Jan to read when he passes by this point on the PCT next year. This rock has a crack in it, into which a double-bagged message has been stuffed. Some small rocks go on top to keep the message secure. Only Bree knows what it says.
Jan and Bree reach the trailhead at 4:00 pm. Bree was a trooper, and hiked all 7 miles without complaint. On the way out of Mt. Rainier National Park, they stop at the Greenwater General Store for some well-deserved icy cold drinks and snacks.