[This sailing trip started on April 30.]
Sailing in Puget Sound, Day 2. It’s a beautiful morning off of Cypress Island. We have a quick breakfast, and then cast off from the mooring buoy.
Today our plan is to sail to Port Townsend. Once the boat nears the Rosario Strait, we raise the sails and cut the motor. There’s some current, some swells, a fair bit of a wind, making for some reasonably exciting sailing. Jan enjoys driving the boat, although it’s easily the largest boat he’s ever sailed. For added thrills, there’s the ever-present danger of grounding the boat on submerged rocks or hitting floating logs.
With all the swells, David gets a little seasick. While the sickness ebbs a little after a while, it never completely goes away. By the mid-afternoon, we’re still several hours’ sail away from Port Townsend, so we make the decision to furl the sails and motor the rest of the way to port.
Port Townsend is a small town with a charming marina next to downtown restaurants and shops. Coming into the marina is slightly harrowing — driving an unfamiliar, expensive, rented boat into a marina packed with other expensive boats produces a fair amount of tension. We don’t pull into the slip as nimbly as we would have liked, and might have hit the dock if it weren’t for the quick action of two nice marina workers that catch our lines and stop our momentum. Whew. After tying off, we happily head to the nearby coffeehouse.
Marc and Jan make a long walk to the West Marine outlet at the edge of downtown to buy a replacement line for the boat’s jammed boom vang. Afterwards, the three of us walk to the Silverwater Cafe for a nice dinner. It’s been a long day, so Jan turns in early.
Sailing in Puget Sound, Day 3. Jan and David are up early, but Marc sleeps in. Jan goes for breakfast to a cafe called Better Living Through Coffee.
After breakfast, we slip out of the marina — leaving is less harrowing than entering — and then set the sails. Our goal today is to sail all the way down to Shilshole Marina in Seattle. Somewhat unfortunately, the wind is coming from that direction. We tack back and forth across the sound for a couple of hours, but don’t make as much progress as we’d like. We finally decide we’ve sailed enough for the day, and begin to motor.
Sailing down the shipping lanes to Seattle means we don’t have to worry much about rocks, but we do have to keep an eye out for the huge container ships. They look slow, but are moving much faster than we are. They also have the right of way — they’re so heavy, it would take them several miles just to come to a stop. We also have to work around the Washington State ferries, which are also pretty big and fast.
We arrive at Shilshole Marina around 4:00 pm, and this time manage a more graceful entrance to our slip. Marc will be taking the boat out again with other friends, so Jan and David say goodbye and get a ride back to Madison Park.
Bree puts a backpack on backwards and puts our cat Moxie into it. Moxie loves to be suspended in a bag or sling, so he happily purrs there until Bree’s tired of carrying him around.
Bree is playing Ultimate Frisbee this spring for the 3rd year in a row.
On the morning drive to school, Bree sneezes.
Jan: “Gesundheit.”
Bree: “What does that mean?”
Jan: “What do you think it means?”
Bree: “Um… ‘Sneeze Away!’?”
They both think this is pretty funny. For the next few weeks, when one of them sneezes, the other says, “Sneeze Away!”
The return of warm weather means that it’s time to get out our “catio” cat tent. Mojo and Moxie find this pretty exciting — as does Sabriya.
In lieu of regular classes this week, Liya’s high school is running week-long programs on various topics. Liya’s program is focused on aviation. They’ve visited the Boeing factory in Everett, the Museum of Flight, an Alaska Airlines dispatch office, a maintenance workshop. Today the group goes to the Alaska training center, and Liya gets to fly a Boeing 737 flight simulator. She manages to land her plane — albeit with a big bounce on the runway.
Liya flies a plane! For the last day of her high school’s week-long aviation program, she and her classmates head to Renton Field. Liya and her classmate Isaac are paired with a flight instructor, and the three board a Cessna 172. It’s absolutely perfect clear weather for flying. Isaac flies first, taking off over Lake Washington, circling around Mercer Island, then heading west over Seattle and Puget Sound to an airstrip near Bremerton, WA. The instructor lines up the landing, but lets Isaac land the plane. Then Liya and Isaac swap places, and Captain Liya gets to take the Cessna up. She flies back over Puget Sound and above Lake Union. She asks the instructor if she can fly over Madison Park, and he says that’s okay. She’s able to pick out our house from the air, and points it out to the instructor — they’re only flying 1200 feet above our house, so it’s quite clear to see. As with Isaac, the instructor lines up the landing for Liya, then Liya gets to land the plane.
Bree’s Ultimate Frisbee team has their final game of the season.
Afterwards, Bree and her friend Emily play at the Jefferson Playground. They could happily play for hours, so when it’s lunchtime, we pull them away. We eat lunch with Emily and her mom Diane at Cactus.
For Mother’s Day, Anya sends Angela a NY Times Mini-style mini crossword with a mom theme. (It’s a little tricky, actually, as it uses some “rebus” squares. Those hold more than a single letter. The actual Ny Times Mini crosswords never use rebus squares, but the full crossword does use them sometimes on their more challenging days.)
Jan, Chris, and Lyn head to the Olympic Peninsula for a weekend of backpacking on the Ozette Loop on the coast of Olympic National Park. The three had tried to hike the same loop last year, but were thwarted when an airline misplaced Chris’ backpack his camping gear. This year he brings the backpack as carry-on luggage, and all his gear makes it safely to Seattle.
The three start the trip by driving out to the peninsula and spending the night at Lake Quinault Lodge.
Ozette Loop, Day 1. Jan, Chris, and Lyn have breakfast at Lake Quinault Lodge, then make the circuitous drive to the peninsula’s northern edge and then back down to the trailhead at Lake Ozette. Their plan is to hike the 9-mile Ozette Loop over three days: 3 miles to Sand Point on the coast, 3 miles up the coast to Cape Alava, and 3 miles back inland to the trailhead. The forecast calls for mixed weather, so the three are hoping that there’s not too much rain.
The hike out to Sand Point goes smoothly. Most of the trail is a boardwalk that rises above the marshy ground. The coast receives a ton of rain, so the forest is lush, and would be essentially impenetrable were it not for the boardwalk.
The find a nice spot just north of Sand Point where they have a view but are sheltered a bit from the wind. Since it’s past lunchtime, they have a quick lunch of peanut butter & jelly wraps. Jan points out that everyone should knead the small packets of peanut butter before opening them. Lyn forgets to do this, and ends up with peanut butter oil on herself. Later, when they have tea, she also manages to get sugar on herself. Jan suggests that she adopt the trail name, “Bear Bait”.
Everyone sets up their own shelter for the evening. In lieu of a tent, Jan tries out a tiny tarp that he’s considering bringing on a longer hike this summer. After the shelters are squared away, they set up some hammocks and relax for a bit. When a light drizzle begins to rain, Jan pulls out another small tarp he’s been interested in trying out. He and Chris rig it up from some trees to form a serviceable roof over their sitting/eating area.
Since this hike is fairly short, Jan’s brought something he’s never taken before on a backpacking trip: a small skillet. He uses it to make a “rustic skillet bread” from a mix, which turns out great, and is a good match for a rehydrated pasta Bolognese.
Ozette Loop, Day 2. Jan, Chris, and Lyn break camp after breakfast and begin walking north along the beach toward Cape Alava. They have something of a schedule to keep: the rising tide will eventually cut off the path around a rocky outcropping called Wedding Rocks. If they don’t make it around the rocks before the tide comes in, they’ll either have to make a challenging scramble up a steep slope, or wait hours for the tide to go out again.
Getting around Wedding Rocks requires that they pick their way on exposed rocks covered with seaweed and surrounded by tide pools. The going is steady but slow, and they can see the waves coming closer and closer inland. They manage to make it around Wedding Rocks to the beach, then stop for a snack. By the time they’re ready to move on, the tide has come in and blocked off the route around the rocks.
At one point along the beach, they meet a couple that mention seeing a doe with two fawns further up the beach. Some time later, Chris tells Jan to look down — and one of the fawns is lying on the rocks a short distance away from his feet. The fawn looks rather sleepy and unconcerned, as does its sibling nearby. Their mom is up above the short at the edge of the forest, munching away.
They arrive at Cape Alava — the westernmost point in the continental U.S. — in the early afternoon. They manage to find a wonderful campsite looking out over the water, backed by a small lush meadow. In the meadow are two young deer bucks with their fuzz-covered antlers just coming in.
Tonight’s skillet dish is a rough approximation of an apple cobbler made from a package. It’s not bad.
Ozette Loop, Day 3. It rained a little over night, but the rain mostly stops by the morning.
Jan makes a final skillet breakfast of blueberry pancakes made with rehydrated blueberries, which are quite tasty but require more cleanup than the usual meal-in-a-bag. Jan, Chris, and Lyn then pack up for the 3 mile hike back to the car. The long boardwalk back has some more ups and downs than the outbound boardwalk had had, so the trip takes a little longer. Lyn’s very happy to get back to the car at the trailhead.
They stop for coffee at Blackbird Coffee in Port Angeles, then drive all the way south around Puget Sound to get back to Seattle. After freshening up, they head out to a nice dinner with Angela, Liya, and Bree at Luc in Madison Valley. Coq au Vin and seared halibut make a fairly dramatic change from backpacker food.
Bree plays the role of Jack in her class’ performance of the musical, “Into the Woods”. Her role includes a solo, “There are Giants in the Sky”, which she’s rehearsed with a singing coach for a couple of months. Here she’s shown reluctantly selling her cow, played with aplomb by her classmate Charlie.
At one point, Bree misses a cue. The show’s narrator, reading from the side of the stage, calls out something like, “And then Jack came walking through the forest…” Nothing happens. The narrator tries again, more loudly: “I said, And then Jack came walking through the forest…” Nothing. “Hello?!?”, the narrator calls, then ducks behind the curtain. A short while later, Bree enters quickly from stage right.
Afterwards we asked her what had happened, and she said she’d been trying to console a friend backstage. The friend had a cold, and the cold prevented her from hitting the high notes in her song, and so she was upset. Bree had just been trying to make her friend feel better, and missed her cue.
Bree and her class all get up very early in the morning to depart on their grade’s overnight trip to Victoria, BC.