nwhiker | Entries tagged with camping

Hotel tonight, trails and camping tomorrow and Monday. Driving home -or back to work- early Tuesday, whee!

The best kind of days are the ones when I crawl out of a tent straight into my hiking boots!

Weather is iffy, the air quality is crap, but fingers crossed it'll be ok. If it's not, we'll do some short hikes and leave it at that.

Leaving house and cats in Perry's capable hands. I may have to leave my computer password and Wordle account with him too, I'm not sure we'll have sufficient cell service for that!

Three things? I think there are more I need to talk about!

1. Starting with the most exciting: Linnea got into the Computer Science major!!!!!. Tbh, quite unexpected, but being a girl with learning disabilities probably helped. So yay for that, I'm so excited for her. One of the differences between her and Perry's long quest to get into the Biochem major? She has an excellent department advisor (as opposed to one who not only did not help but indeed... fibbed a bit on a few things) who helped her pick classes and supported her a lot. But yay! So relieved for her. Her boyfriend did not get in (despite good grades etc) so is looking at trying to get in for a Masters.

2. Last month on Zeppy, maintaining the lowest dose, I did not lose anything, I've been playing with the same two pounds since end of May. I'll go up in dosage this week and see if it makes a diff. But. Nothing fits. Things that fit less than a month ago are all of a sudden baggy to the point that I cannot wear them. Which yay, but I did not need to find out that two pair of leggings and three pair of jeans no longer fit on... Monday morning. I currently have one pair that fits (thanks Value Village), one pair that I can wear for two days, it has spandex or whatever in it, something I usually hate but nobody does 100% cotton in black that I have found, and I hope my yoga pants will still fit but I didn't try them on this morning, so who knows? Again, I'm not unhappy about this, it's part of the package of losing weight but not today? I tried on one of the pairs of jeans last week and I swear it fit.

3. We have park entry tickets to Rainier on Wednesday. We found a campsite for Tuesday night. Yay? Only the weather forecast has gone to sh*t and I'm not sure I really want to go. Plan was to camp, get up to catch first light at Reflection Lakes, and then do a hike up into a cirque with incredible views of the mountain on the way down. Oh, and some night photography the evening before if we weren't too tired. None of which will happen if the weather is crummy, so I don't know what to do.

4. I did book camping for late September in Crater Lake. It's not managed by Recreation.gov so the bots don't seem to book every single effing campsite as soon as they're available.

5. We went on a bike ride yesterday. First in more than a few years. It was great! Dh found out he needs new shoes, and we couldn't find his helmet, so he ordered new ones (he borrowed Perry's for yesterday). We kept it to 10 miles because of lessons learned in years past, we started out the season one year with a 40-mile ride. None of us, and that included Anne-Chloe and Perry, were happy the next day! It was good and we're planning on more rides this summer.

I'm living in camping conditions?

With the windows open and the fans on, it's a chilly 59F in the house this morning. It feels warmer outside because of the lack of fans, lol.

Dh is feeling better, my mom was looking and sounding better last night, I'll go check on her once I've warmed up a bit. Perry and I are still not sick. Perry is probably fine, it's been a week since his last exposure, but I'm still only 72 hours out from mine, though obviously we were both exposed prior to that as well.

So yeah. Fleece pants, tee shirt, fleece top, down jacket, huddled under down blanket, LOL. Sleeping on the living room floor, on an actual mattress, but with my sleeping bag.

Sigh... I'd rather be freezing my ass off at Crater Lake. 😁

Tea is ready. That'll help warm me up, and I think I know where I stashed my fingerless gloves last spring...

1. Perry and dh are going up to B'ham, Linnea is already there, to move her stuff from Apartment A to Apartment B, and to bring whatever Perry has left up there down. Dh was at trains Friday and Saturday. Perry was at rowing all day Friday and slept most of yesterday. My mother has been getting up between 8-9am and I've been 'on' both days already, and there is about to be a 3rd as soon as they leave. I'm exhausted. It's not like Perry and dh do that much, it's more that having them there means someone else can answer, for the zillionth time, the exact same fucking question. Caregiving sucks. I am not good at it.

2. Perry and Anne-Chloe are going to be rowing a double together at the PNW Pink Ribbon Row. Alas, I'll be at Crater Lake camping, so won't be there to cheer them on, but the coach took some video of them today. The last stroke was crappy -you can hear Perry's reaction to it- but aside from that, they look pretty good. Perry and Anne-Chloe the canal with the Aurora (tall) and Fremont (small drawbridge) Bridges.
And yeah, note the color of the sky. The horrid wildfires both in WA but especially the ones in BC (OMG, Kelowna!) are the cause of that.

3. I don't even know how to broach this as a minor issue. When we camp, we're pretty minimalist. Tent, sleeping bags, and food is pretty basic one pot meals, nothing elaborate. The past few years, we've been going camping with my sister and BIL and they have a GIGANTIC RV with kitchen, bathroom, TV, and even a freaking microwave. Which yay, if you enjoy that kind of camping. The issues that have come up: nobody wants to spend any time outside. As soon as it gets chilly, rather than extra layers, sis and BIL use the excuse of my mom (*) to move everything inside (note that my mom, who hates camping even in the luxury RV is usually inside already). So that. And then the meals. Since they have a stove top with multiple burners, a microwave, and an oven, they prefer to plan more elaborate meals than us. Which is fine, but... really? Yes, we can grill burgers, but, really, we don't need to make oven fries to go with, we can open a freaking bag of chips, and apples are a hell of a lot easier than chopping lettuce for a salad, LOL. This trip (in mid-September) they won't have a water hookup, so they're talking about using only paper plates... it's like... my dudes. There are faucets, we have a small basin, we can wash dishes... oh wait, you want to make an elaborate three course meal with loads of dishes. Nothing serious, just an annoyance.

OMG. My life from 28 Aug - 20 Sept is going to be HECTIC and all over the place. At a very minimum this is what it's going to look like:

Aug 28: Sis and BIL arrive at my place
Aug 29: Sil and BIL AND MY MOM head to Vancouver
Aug 30: HIKE!!!! First hike of the summer in the mountains!!! Have to plan a destination!!!!!
Aug 31: Maybe HIKE!!!
Sept 01: Nothing (for values of nothing that include prepping for weeks of chaos!)
Sept 02: Nothing (see above)
Sept 03: Sis, BIL, MOM, and Aunt back from Vancouver
Sept 04: Shopping/trip prep
Sept 05: Cooking/trip prep
Sept 06: Packing etc /trip prep. Bro, SIL, NIECE, AND NEPHEW arrive at SEA. They stay near airport.
Sept 07: Drive to Rockaway Beach on OR Coast to airbnb on the ocean
Sept 08: Oregon Coast. Railway! Tillamook Cheese Factory! Coast stuff! HIKING! NIECE AND NEPHEW!!!!
Sept 09: Oregon Coast. Railway! Tillamook Cheese Factory! Coast stuff! HIKING! NIECE AND NEPHEW!!!!
Sept 10: Oregon Coast. Railway! Tillamook Cheese Factory! Coast stuff! HIKING! NIECE AND NEPHEW!!!!
Sept 11: Oregon Coast. Railway! Tillamook Cheese Factory! Coast stuff! HIKING! NIECE AND NEPHEW!!!!
Sept 12: Leave OR Coast back to SEA
Sept 13: My place with full fam. OMG. Celebrate Anne-Chloe's bday.
Sept 14: Bro and family leave back to LA. Perry drives aunt back to Vancouver. Anne-Chloe actual bday!
Sept 15: Prep for camping trip
Sept 16: Drive to Bend, camp overnight near Bend
Sept 17: Drive to Crater Lake. Camping at Crater Lake.
Sept 18: Camping at Crater Lake
Sept 19: Crater Lake back to near Bend to camp.
Sept 20: Bend to home
Sept 21: COLL-FCUCKING-APSE

It all feels very precarious!

Tomorrow I'm going to write up the first draft of a master task list.

1. So much for losing weight and being in a lower decade. Weight headed back up.

2. New concern about my mom. When Perry got up this morning at 4am, he said he found her upstairs. The laundry room door was open, and the front door was unlocked. Oh and Twisp was in the laundry room. I don't have a Ring camera trained on that door so I don't know if she went outside but that's a problem because cats. She's also asking us if we heard "all the noise" last night. I'm going to purchase a Ring alarm system with door sensors from Costco, I think.

3. Our camera place is offering an incredible astrophotography class in July. A classroom session, a field trip, and a post-procession session. Would have been incredible. Would have loved to take it. Why can't we? Because there is not a single campsite to be found in the North Cascades with two weeks notice. I'm irked. Class finishes at midnight, and it's about a 3 hour drive home, over Highway 20 which... isn't the best, right? Anyhow. Another astrophotography class came up, and I registered. When I tried to register dh, 10 seconds later, it went to waitlist. I hope, at least, that's he's on the top of the waitlist. Sigh.

1. Depression is nibbling at me as my world constricts to the house. I have managed to get walks in, by getting up at 6am, walking, and dh goes when I get back, but aside from that, we're mostly house-bound. We can go out separately, and I think we both need to make an effort to get out daily, if only to shop or something. The inability to get out for a hike or an extra-long walk once a week, something we'd managed to do pretty much every weekend since January, is difficult. Days like today don't help: it's an absolutely perfect day: sunny, a bit of breeze, temps in the high 60s. Pretty much my dream day for a hike. I tried to get my mom to at least agree to a drive, but she just wants to stay home and read National Geographics.

2. Weird convo on twitter the other day re transphobia. While I 100% disagree with the dude, and I think he's a hater, he had some logical -to him- reasons rather than 'they gross me out' and is a strong supporter of gay rights (per his timeline, and also a Sanders/Warren supporter, Biden voter). His point was that gays were gays, and he just had to accept it, they didn't need any action on his part to be gay, but that trans folks demanded that he participate in their "delusion", that they could not be "a different gender" unless we catered to their pronouns and accepted their gender presentation as reflecting reality. I, needless to say, don't think much of his arguments, but it was truly a bizarre conversation: I'm used to more knee jerk reactions from MAGAts, misogynists, anti-LGBTQ+ folks, rather than a leftist with reasoned hate. Anyhow, he's blocked, LOL.

3. We did spend a few days in Bend this week. The good: camping! My sister is remodeling, so no real room in her house. Dh and I slept in our tent at a nearby state park. The bad: a lot of stress, both the drive to and from with her and being there, what with trying to get my mom to at least agree to visit the memory care place. No dice, but we were able to persuade her to talk to their evaluation team over Zoom, so at least we have a better idea of the level of care they think she'll need.

1. Rowing banquet last night in B'ham. It wasn't horrid at those things go. Saw several other parents who were on the TN trip and they all took the time to tell us how absolutely wonderful Perry was, and how much they'd enjoyed talking to him etc. That was so awesome to hear. I mean, I think he's a great kid, but it's always so nice when others notice too.

2. It's been... rough having my mom here. At first, she was sleeping a bit more, now she's up by 10am (or earlier) and I have to nag her to get to bed by 11 or 11:30. Since dh and I get up at 6am, we've been wiped! What we've been doing for walking is that the alarm goes off at 6am, and I basically go pee, brush my teeth, and throw on clothes. I'm at the trailhead by 6:20, back usually by 7:20 and that gives dh time to go on his walk, he's slower than I am in the morning. So it's been working, though I miss our morning walks together. But my mom did like the time she spent at the Senior Center so when we get back from Bend, hopefully that'll be a twice a week routine. It's in the middle of the day, so it doesn't solve our morning walk issue, but hopefully it'll tire her out enough to get her to go to bed a bit earlier. I really need the bit of evening downtime, I think dh does too, this is just emotionally exhausting for both of us. Also, even though she annoys me at time, my MIL is awesome good people.

3. I made a cake today and I'm bitterly disappointed in it: John Kanell's Butter Cake. It looks gorgeous. It tastes sweet and flat. Why, you ask? Because unsalted butter, which he says to use, is of the devil. I added all the salt called for, plus a bit more and it just was not enough. So it's overly sweet and not very interesting. If I make it again -and I might, because form factor and crumb are great- I'll use salted butter and add the salt.

4. OK, fine, four things! We're headed to Bend tomorrow for a few days, the idea was to get my mom assessed at the Memory Care place. Not sure it's a good idea, but eh, hopefully we'll talk more tomorrow evening. I think my mom is still too aware of us and our relationships to make this a good transition, but I also don't think she could quite manage with just assisted living, she needs more "prompting" and reminders. But anyhow. Since sister is in the middle of a remodel, dh and I got a campground nearby. We'll probably spend most of the day at my sister's, but we'll get to sleep in a tent. Since, what with my mom, that's probably not going to happen again any time soon, I'm SO looking forward this!

Needless to say, I'm sitting at my computer, obsessively refreshing twitter, my phone charged and ready grab, desperately hoping that Biden will pick Kamala Harris for his VP.

I have subjective and objective reasons to think she'd be the best pick.

I remember being so bitterly disappointed with Clinton's pick of Kaine. Nice guy but boring and, well, vanilla. I do think a Clinton-Booker ticket would have engendered enough enthusiasm to overcome the racists, but that's just me.

But I was thinking this morning back to 2008. We were camping in Yellowstone, at one of those campgrounds with no amenities (our preferred choice) and avoiding the main areas of the park with the pizza (hello, you try feeding kids rice-a-roni with refried beans when they could get pizza at Old Faithful Village). That said, we did need to do laundry and get showers, so one evening, we headed to one of the bigger campgrounds for that.

There was a newspaper vending box and I saw the headline: "BIDEN" and there was Obama's VP pick.

I have no idea how old the news was at that point!

Now excuse me while I go back to fretting.

fret... fret... fret... fret... fret...

That was A Long Drive!

OK. Posting a few photos, the rest will have to go into the Flickr set!

Friday before we left, I tearfully (no, I am not kidding) made my beloved Windows phone obsolete and exchanged it for the POS Android device I'd been mostly avoiding using since last October. I spent much of the weekend fighting Android. I was an early adopter for Android (2008? 2009?), and loved my first two Android phones. Then IMO, the whole OS turned into a bloated piece of shit that corrupted data (all my videos), that didn't allow you to do anything unless you had an app, and you spied on you. Got a Windows phone and fell in love. I limped it along long past the time MS supported it, but I ran out of Candy Crush levels to play, and things were slowly stopping to work. So blah. Anyhow, I spent a good part of the weekend frustrated with That Fucking Phone.

I named the phone DaisyBlue and put a pretty blue flower sticker on it. I think it'll still mostly be called That Fucking Phone or that Piece of Shit Phone. Dh at least sympathized. He had to move to Android a few years back and loathes it with a passion. With Windows Phone, while it was supported? Everything worked, integration was seamless, and MS was very clear on what data they were and were not collecting. I felt secure from a privacy standpoint.

I left Facebook for privacy reasons, and will probably stop using FitBit for the same reason. I am really not happy to have to fight The Evil Scum of Google to keep my data private.

Anyhow. Photos.

This pretty much sums up Redwoods, does it not?

And the proof is in the photo....

And Redwoods is beaches too! The view from Agate Beach Overlook. These were, even on the warmest days, Patagonia beaches (Patagonia = fleece, for child with delusions of brand name clothing...)

Linnea, dh, and I went camping at Crater Lake from Labor Day Monday through Wednesday. It was so nice, we had a great time. Made a point of watching a few sunsets, and a sunrise, and spent a few hours watching the stars come out, seeing the Milky Way, and looking for satellites.

Lots of photos here... Dh took some spectacular ones, and there are some great panorama shots from him and Linnea. I'm going to try to take the hour or so it will take me to go through everything and created a best of Crater Lake, but here's the set, with all 200 some odd photos.

Crater Lake 2019.

At one point in my life, I think I had a brain. That point, however, is not now.

A few things, in bits and pieces...

Making peach ice cream. I bought peaches a few weeks ago and they were devoured. Everyone said "Get more!" so I bought more. And nobody but me ate them. I ate as many as I could but they all ripened on the same day. So peach ice cream. I don't do custard based ice creams, so it's peach puree with a bit of sugar, heavy cream, and half and half. It tastes ok. I personally prefer sorbet to ice cream, but this is pretty ok.

Camping at Crater Lake Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday. Just dh, Linnea, and me. Sigh. Perry is working and doesn't want to lose the hours. Should be fun, except...

Except that we're leaving on Sunday afternoon to get a hotel in Oregon. And Sunday night is supposed to be clear. AND there are supposed to be Northern Lights happening on Sunday. Which we will not see. Usually it's bad weather. This time, it's bad luck. Sigh. If I hadn't already booked non-refundable hotel and campground, and promised Linnea a camping trip, I'd cancel and stay home on the off chance of seeing 'em.

Also, because I am an idiot. I just looked at a map today and realized when the midwest (like Minnesota) see the aurora more often than Seattle, even though we about as far north. It's that magnetic pole vs axis of rotation thing. Duh, but I hadn't really thought about it and all of a sudden, I was looking at a map and blam. What was even funnier? Within two hours of noticing that, I read about it in two different places in articles about the aurora. However, I am ashamed to admit that it took me this long.

Our email server has been down for a few days. SUCKS.

Back to camping. So. It's just dh, Linnea, and me. Which presents one issue. See, camping had traditionally been the time when Linnea gets her yearly allotment of processed food. She has a whole list of foods that we've traditionally taken camping. When there were five of us, no biggie, especially when one of those five was Perry and when many of those camping trips were a week or more. Now we're taking a ridiculous amount of junk food for three people/three days. We (probably) won't finish any one box/bag, but there MUST be gummi worms, 'Nilla Wafers, brownies, and two kinds of chips. And I bought her her beloved Twizzlers, and she was upset that I didn't have any Red Vines because she's the only Twizzler lover in a family who prefers Red Vines, so I bought a package of Red Vines for dh and me to make her happy. Which might sound silly, but while she's happy to go camping with us, she misses having her siblings along quite dreadfully, so I try to maintain the small traditions. Perry will eat all the food eventually.

Anne-Chloe. Things are not well with her, and dh and I have a profound disagreement on how to deal with the issue. Alas, he's gone through his father's accounts, and found out the amounts FIL had been sending SIL over the years and about gagged. But just because his sister is a fuckup doesn't mean AC will be and she needs some help. UGH. I suspect dh and I will need to talk about this some more, because AC should truly not be punished because my FIL blew through over 150k helping SIL in just the past 2.5 years.

Anyhow. Should think about how to have that conversation.

My sister is in Iceland, at one of the campgrounds we stayed at. I'm jealous. I want to be in Iceland.

I'm so so tired of the folks that claim that anyone who doesn't like dogs is somehow suspect as a person. I despise dogs. I think they're dangerous, frightening, unpredictable, smelly, pooping things, that I'm also sometimes allergic to. I don't think I'm a bad person, I just think they're gross (*). And I'm constantly dismayed at how the damn mutts are taking over all public spaces... I mean, the grocery store? (*) I like individual dogs, like my sister's dog and dh's aunt's border collies, but as a general rule? Yech.

I am currently reading _Starless_ by Jacqueline Carey and it's so good.

So much I'd like to say about politics, but I want to get this post wrapped up. Maybe tomorrow.

One more of those bulk posts with all sorts of stuff in it, because I am basically the proverbial chicken with my head cut off running all over the place trying to figure something out.

MS degree: plate seeds, wait two weeks, plant seedlings in dirt, wait two weeks, extract DNA from seedlings, test is via PCR. If some show the trait you want, rejoice, mark them... And wait weeks and weeks and weeks for seeds to be ready to harvest. Harvest. Plate seeds, wait...... I'm at this point more or less on track for focusing on writing and wrapping up lab work during fall quarter and defending next winter. Since I started this particular project last July (ie two quarters late), I'm not unhappy with my progress. Just waiting for grass to grow.....

Perry: he went to a regatta last Saturday, did really well, and had a good time. It was a small regatta, with a points trophy that his school won, because they entered 7 races, with four kids, and won 6 of them. Perry raced 4 times, won 3. The race they didn't win was a pair, ie sweeping, and just two boys. That's a difficult configuration and not one they practice, the coach entered them just to see, since it was a low stakes small (free!) regatta.

I almost hesitate to say this out loud, but we threw his name in the Goblet of Fire for an entry to the Head of the Charles in Boston in October. Think New York Marathon for rowing, as to the prestige/size/etc of the event. We'll see. Fingers crossed.

And, in a miracle I'm not sure is real, because I can't believe it: SAT and ACT testing, three, four if he gets Boston regattas this fall.... and not a single conflict. I'm shocked. Shocked.

In a failed attempt to slow Perry down and give him a better workout by adding drag, Perry's coach gave him a rope and a buoy haul behind his boat. Linnea named the buoy Simon. Perry is not pleased, but too bad, Simon it is. Linnea and I threatened to add ears, whiskers, and eyes to Simon and Perry complained that he didn't want a furry as a buoy.

Linnea is doing rowing summer camp with Perry and his crewmates. She's... both doing great and having a hard time. She's so funny, she's got a total girl crush on the coach (not hard, coach is awesome). Anyhow, she's learning, and doing as well as can be expected, but is very hard on herself. Perry is being surprisingly kind, as are all the kids in the program, which is less surprising.

Did I mention that her trip to Scotland and Ireland was a total 100% spectacular success? She had a blast. I can't WAIT to see photos, she won't show us any until she shows us the official slide show she's made.... but we've not had time to plan a full evening with the whole family to do that.

AC is doing great. Did I mention she scored an internship at Fred Hutch? I'm so jealous. The class she's taking (which catches her up in the biology track from the quarter she missed because of the brain abcess).

I'm annoyed because I always buy avocados at Trader Joe's and they always ripen in a day or so, sometimes two. I have had this four pack for 4 days and they could still be used to load canons.

Have to contact the breeder again for an update on the cats that were pregnant. This process has not gone well, to say the least, I'm a bit annoyed. I said from the very start that my only thing was no tuxedos, and no girlies with a dark face. I just can't. Especially black girl cats. I miss my sweet old lady so much, and I just can't.... Anyhow, all the kitties she's offered us have been... tortie girls with dark faces. Nope. Anyhow. Gotta ping her again to see.

Dh, Linnea, and I are headed camping this weekend, out by the ocean. Got a crazy awesome campsite about 3 weeks ago, which is just unheard of, I expect it was a cancellation. Alas, Anne-Chloe has school and work Monday morning, so she can't come, and Perry didn't want to, and since it wasn't a family trip anyhow, we're letting him stay home. Linnea is upset, I'm a bit sad for her. It just figures that the one child who deeply cares about having her family around her etc is the youngest who will get the least of that, ya know?

OK. I have to shut up and get to bed.

I just got a campsite, apparently on a bluff overlooking the ocean, for Linnea's bday weekend. I think it's the last freaking campsite available within 50 miles.

Last year, I snagged the last campsite at Mt Rainier.

I have to start planning a bit earlier, I think.

With a bit of luck, we'll be camping for Linnea's bday. I don't know if Perry and AC will come with us, AC may have school, so it just might be Linnea and us. We'll see. I'm very much looking forward to it.

I'd have loved to go for my birthday, but Linnea is leaving for Scotland and Ireland on my bday, so I expect next weekend to be a bit hectic, so didn't make plans. Plus dh and AC may be driving the backroads of Oregon chasing the SP4449. I'd have loved to go with them, damn it. Last time we did it was so much fun... Linnea potty trained in the back of the Pilot, we saw some spectacular scenery, and really had a wonderful time.

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Page generated 14 Mar 2026 01:10

Stumbling Through Adulthood

With Insomnia

Entries tagged with camping

Headed camping!

A number of things

Didn't go camping but.....

Three things for Sunday

Three weeks of total chaos.

Feh

Three things for Sunday

Three things for Sunday

Just thinking back...

And home!

Crater Lake

What brain?

Head: officially spinning.

Bit of luck...

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