Mount Rainier: Forest

Mount Rainier visit continued.  From Paradise, you can drive for half an hour or so and be down in the old growth.  This is my favorite kind of hiking.  It's usually shady and green, the air has a delicious rich smell of forest, and there is a lot of pleasure in the details of mushrooms and leaf shapes and bark.

We had one lovely walk by a riverbank, where we picked up an abandoned inflatable.  Who could resist?

The last time we visited Mt. Rainier, Jordan learned to walk on logs, and this year he again did it every chance he got.  It still makes my heart go into my mouth, so I sometimes don't watch.

Aaron is dying to do exactly what Jordan does, in all things.

At the end of our lovely hiking days, it was a pleasure to enjoy the sunset back at Paradise.

Mount Rainier: Alpine

We spent two nights at Mount Rainier with Grandpa.  The weather was glorious, the scenery awe-inspiring, the lodgings comfortable, the wildflowers in bloom.  Really nice trip.

We stayed at the Paradise Inn, up in the alpine part of the park.

Right outside the inn is an amazing bounty of wildflower meadows.  It's hard to show in a photo, but there were dozens of different shapes and colors.  They're not really supposed to be blooming in September - it's been a cool, late summer - but so much the better for us.

 Inside the inn, large painted ceiling lamps honor the native flora.

Outside again, you hike through the meadows on wide paved paths.  (Don't be a meadow-stomper!)  The mountain is an amazing presence.  We had perfect clear sunny weather every day.

There are waterfalls all over the area.  This is Myrtle Falls.

Our group spans a 67-year age range so we take the easy hikes.  One of the days, though, Dale and Jordan took off on their own for a more ambitious hike up the Skyline trail.  They went way, way up:  Jordan was very energetic, and for a bit there Dale wondered if he would be able to keep up with him.  Major pride at the top, and Dale thinks it may have been the best alpine hike he's ever taken.  They saw lots of marmots.

Aaron writing

Aaron recognizes many letters, spells his name, and is beginning to write words.  Here is a class activity in which he measured a kale plant in the garden, drew it life-size on the white board, and labeled his drawing.

Whidbey Island trip

Last weekend, we went to Whidbey Island with two of our favorite families from preschool.  We have matched-age kids that get along very well, and we adults get along well too, so it was a total treat to travel together.  For those of you not in the know, Whidbey Island is a long winding bit of land within Puget Sound, north of Seattle.

You take a ferry, which breaks up the trip very pleasantly, although it's less than two hours so you hardly even need to break it.  Here are the kids eating ice cream while we wait for the next boat.  That's Adam, Jordan, Aaron, Nathaniel, and Ian with the dark curly hair; Amara (the other four-year-old) was probably dancing.  (FYI this was probably the best weather we had all weekend... while other regions around the country bake like so many potatoes, our zone is cool and cloudy.)

We stayed at a place called the Fort Casey Inn, in what used to be military officers' quarters:  charming old two-bedroom homes with steep staircases, covered porches, vintage furniture, full kitchens, and a lot of patriotism in the décor.  Many eagles.  There are two units to a building; we three families rented both sides and had the run of the place. 

Upstairs was this unusual print of a classical lady noticing a bomber in the distance.  ?

The other real oddity of the house was the water.  It had such a horrible flavor you would gag on it.  It was like sucking a rusty pipe.  We couldn't make coffee or boil pasta in it, it was so vile.  We used spring water instead.  Even taking a shower felt like you were barely breaking even.

We divvied up the meals and cooked at the house.  I volunteered for Shabbat dinner and had the challah rising in the trunk of the car on the way there!  There was not a table that seated 12, so we combined a couple smaller tables and transformed a large utility room into a lovely dining hall.

When we were at the house, mealtimes were practically the only times we laid eyes on the older boys.  They were in six- and seven-year-old heaven, talking nonstop about Pokémon and Bakugan and other imaginative warlike things I could not even follow.  They bedded down on the living room floor, and we adults hung out in the other living room listening to their chatter through the baby monitor.  For hours.  Here they are getting ready for bed, listening to a story by lantern light.

And here they are not waking up in the morning.

That was fine with me; I spent the early mornings blissfully reading a book and listening to the birdsong from the covered porch, with a beautiful view of the water.  Jules had already made the coffee and was in agreement about the true soul of a vacation being a beautiful spot with a book.  I seem to have no photo of that spot, so you will just have to be envious.

Saturday we spent the morning at Fort Casey itself, which all the children (particularly our very war-oriented older boys) thought was seriously awesome.  There were cannons and turrets and alcoves and tunnels and storerooms and a lighthouse.  We explored it all.

There were also a lot of totally nauseating dropoffs.  This one actually had a railing, but many of them didn't.  Kids on ledges freak me out, and we had six of them, all very happy and energetic and fearless.  My heart was in my mouth the whole time and it didn't taste good.

I prefer the taste of marshmallows roasted by the beach.  This was a short walk from the house.  Sadly Adam and Jessica are missing from this picture; Adam got sick and Jessica volunteered to take him home for the rest of the weekend (and study harder for impending exams).  We missed them!

Our last event was tide pools at Deception Pass State Park.  The cool and cloudy had shifted into actual drizzle by then, but we still saw some exciting sea life and had a tasty picnic.  Great weekend everybody!

Double birthday

We had originally planned to have Aaron's birthday this weekend (with friends from the preschool) and Jordan's next weekend (with his elementary school buddies); that's the kind of thing we've done in previous years.  But unfortunately no one was going to be able to come to Jordan's party... I guess the weekend of the 4th fills up.  By last night only one friend had said yes.  Meanwhile Aaron's party, for today, was logging the RSVP's beautifully, 11 kids and 10 grownups.  I was fretting, until I realized that almost all of Aaron's friends have an older sibling who is Jordan's friend; those siblings were already invited; could we possibly just make it a super double brother birthday?  I pitched it to Jordan and he loved the idea.  I think it might be nontrivial for him to endure his brother having his birthday first, and really the two of them love to do things together.  I promised to make each of them their own special cake and they were thrilled.  we didn't even have to change the guest list.  Excellent corollary: one less party to prepare for!

The whole thing was a giant hit.  15 adults and 14 kids (mostly either 4ish or 7ish, plus one infant and two toddlers), and I don't think there was a single argument or tantrum or accident.  The adults had a great time standing around snacking and chatting and drinking Moscato, and the kids variously played baseball, water balloons, and paper airplane war, as far as I know (they were quite independent).  I made a lego cake for Aaron and pokeball cupcakes for Jordan; both were tremendously well received.  (Thank you Danny for these terrific pictures!)

Pokéballs, for those of you not in the know, are what pokémon come in.  The pokemon characters themselves are more than I can handle in cake form, but the balls are graphically simple enough to be doable, and they were very popular.  My usual butter cake recipe.  For the lego cakes, chocolate (by Aaron's request), which made frosting them with a thick smooth bright color trickier; if I were not in the habit of freezing cakes first it might have been rough, but as it was, it just took more frosting.  The connectors are halved marshmallows.  You stab them with a fork to paint them with frosting, then slide them onto the cake.  Of course legos make great layers.

Bryce Canyon

This place is not for me.

I don't mean that I don't like it.  I mean that it does not seem to me to be human-oriented.

You stand at the very top of the big canyon looking in, and the thing is full of these giant, weird formations called hoodoos.  Pillars, spires, sculptures, windows, arches, walls?  The native american mythology is that they used to be people, and I can see that.  But the scale is all wrong.  It looks like you are gazing down into some kind of city full of chess pieces and dinosaurs and flying buttresses.  But really it looks like nothing you would have a name for.

For example, here is an arch.  The bridge leads to nothing; the path under the arch goes from nowhere to nowhere, too steep and gravelly to walk on.  You can use words that make this formation seem like something that is part of your human world, but you're just telling a story.

I think part of the reason I feel this way is that my home is the Pacific Northwest, where the wilderness feels magically lush and accessible.  Okay, the idea that any wild space is created for my comfort is a major illusion, but for pete's sake what am I supposed to think, when the shady woods are full of bubbly streams and berries?  It's so easy to believe in a provident Nature there.  Here, I felt like I was very much on my own, survivalwise.  I actually enjoyed feeling this way.  It felt like something a person ought to keep in mind, not just for survival, but in order to enjoy an appropriate humility about one's place in the world.  It's really a lot bigger than you, and shaped by forces that are way beyond your sphere.

In addition to everything being totally outsized and fairly spooky-looking, it is a just plain harsh environment.  The sandstone doesn't invite much to grow in it.  The canyon rim is quite high (8000-9000 feet), so even just being there felt like hard work, much less walking.  It's also very dry, so my nose was bleeding, and it's super hot during the day and briskly cold at night.  We were cranky and got headaches.  I remembered the feeling from Nepal.

We enjoyed the striking strangeness of it for a couple of days.  We did less hiking and more overlook-gazing than in Zion; though Dale and Deena did go down into the canyon for one long hike and enjoyed it a lot, the rest of us didn't want to do the down-and-up part.  We did some wonderful stargazing on both nights; on the second night, we kept the boys up late and taught them some constellations.  They're actually harder to spot when the sky is so very sparkly... my city-trained eyes could hardly pick out the familiar patterns.

Coral Pink Sand Dunes

(Catching up on vacation posts.)  On the way from Zion to Bryce, there are Coral Pink Sand Dunes.  Our kids love nothing more than sand so I thought it was worth a stop.  It was awesome.  The sand was velvety soft and yes, a lovely salmon pink color.  Bare feet were a must.  The top inch of the sand was warm, and below that it was cool.  It was so fine that we watched a beetle leave fancy tracks in it.

I learned a little about the geology of sand dunes.  For dunes to occur, you need (1) a source of sand; (2) lots of wind; and (3) particular geological formations so that the wind slows down rather suddenly, dropping its load of particles.  In this neighborhood, the abundant Navajo sandstone provides the sand.  I don't know why it's windy (why is anywhere windy?) but what wind there is is funneled up this giant bowling-alley-shaped region, concentrating and eventually slowing the fast-moving air so that the sand all falls right here.  Continual winds keep the sands shifting and prevent much vegetation from taking hold.

In the background of the above photo, some teenagers with toboggans are trudging up the biggest dune, hoping for a fun slide down.  It didn't work: the sand is not slidey enough.  This is a shame, because it's devilishly tiring to walk around here.

We did make it to the top of a smaller hill for a photo.