Camping: Thursday
Aug. 14th, 2005 07:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsOmaha and I awoke early and walked arm-in-arm to the campsite bathrooms. While she was in there, one of the other campers commented on her leapord-print pajamas and joked that she should be careful lest someone take a shot at her. We roused the girls and made coffee and hot cocoa, for it was chilly in the morning, low 50s, and then I made pancakes. That, I had done right, making a batch of the dry mix before we left and storing it in a ziploc bag before heading out. They were astoundingly good, and I'm not sure what I did right, but, sigh, they were just the thing we needed.
We relaxed this morning as that afternoon the hike was only going to be 2.7 miles, half what we'd done the previous two days, and I got through two more chapters of Niccolo Rising by Dorothy Dunnet. Later, I made a lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and set up the shower warmer so that we could all take more than just a sponge bath.
The hike today was the Silver Falls loop on the Ohanapekosh River, 1.4 miles up and 1.3 miles down on the opposite side of the river. We were warned that there were bees, but we never saw any. We drank from a small creek that fed the Ohanapekosh, again using the 1 micron water filter. The start included a nature trail with "self-guided" posts along a "hot springs" segment, and the girls were fascinated with just how hot the water was, that it came up from the hot lava part of the Earth. Omaha tried to stop and read from the nature trail pamphlet we'd picked up at the trailhead ranger station, but Kouryou-chan kept pulling ahead. we did get to read most of them.
We snacked and drank water along the way, and at one point I tried out GU, the ultimate endpoint in sports nutrition: 100 calories of raw high-use carbohydrates in a generic "berry" flavored concoction vaguely textured to resemble snot. Nevertheless, it works, and both girls were fascinated and had to try some. The swallow of water after "eating" some is necessary just to wash the stuff down. Yech. Omaha politely declined and Kouryou-chan thought it funny to pester her about it. "Please, try some! Please become one of the goo people!"
The falls are beautiful and loud, and much taller than the picture seems to suggest. The hike back down was mostly downhill.
Dinner was chili, which was quite yummy. Afterward, we had marshmallows, and I made my way into more of The Atrocity Archive. I looked at myself in the mirror, and with four days of stubble and no suitable washing I look like Mountain Elf! That makes the girls giggle even more. There are clouds coming around the mountain, so Omaha suggests putting up the rain fly over the tent. The clouds had sufficiently obscured the sun that the solar shower had failed to heat up. Oh, well.
Aronud 2 in the morning Omaha and I awoke with the urgent need to head to the loo. As we walk, I recalled seeing a sign at the Silver Falls trailhead ranger station that the Perseids meteor shower was tonight, and look up in time to see three falling stars, the last one leaving a blazing trail that persists in my site for several seconds. Omaha only saw one, but the night is so obviously clear we take the railfly down so we can again see up through the netting on the tent's roof at the night sky.
We relaxed this morning as that afternoon the hike was only going to be 2.7 miles, half what we'd done the previous two days, and I got through two more chapters of Niccolo Rising by Dorothy Dunnet. Later, I made a lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and set up the shower warmer so that we could all take more than just a sponge bath.
The hike today was the Silver Falls loop on the Ohanapekosh River, 1.4 miles up and 1.3 miles down on the opposite side of the river. We were warned that there were bees, but we never saw any. We drank from a small creek that fed the Ohanapekosh, again using the 1 micron water filter. The start included a nature trail with "self-guided" posts along a "hot springs" segment, and the girls were fascinated with just how hot the water was, that it came up from the hot lava part of the Earth. Omaha tried to stop and read from the nature trail pamphlet we'd picked up at the trailhead ranger station, but Kouryou-chan kept pulling ahead. we did get to read most of them.
We snacked and drank water along the way, and at one point I tried out GU, the ultimate endpoint in sports nutrition: 100 calories of raw high-use carbohydrates in a generic "berry" flavored concoction vaguely textured to resemble snot. Nevertheless, it works, and both girls were fascinated and had to try some. The swallow of water after "eating" some is necessary just to wash the stuff down. Yech. Omaha politely declined and Kouryou-chan thought it funny to pester her about it. "Please, try some! Please become one of the goo people!"
The falls are beautiful and loud, and much taller than the picture seems to suggest. The hike back down was mostly downhill.
Dinner was chili, which was quite yummy. Afterward, we had marshmallows, and I made my way into more of The Atrocity Archive. I looked at myself in the mirror, and with four days of stubble and no suitable washing I look like Mountain Elf! That makes the girls giggle even more. There are clouds coming around the mountain, so Omaha suggests putting up the rain fly over the tent. The clouds had sufficiently obscured the sun that the solar shower had failed to heat up. Oh, well.
Aronud 2 in the morning Omaha and I awoke with the urgent need to head to the loo. As we walk, I recalled seeing a sign at the Silver Falls trailhead ranger station that the Perseids meteor shower was tonight, and look up in time to see three falling stars, the last one leaving a blazing trail that persists in my site for several seconds. Omaha only saw one, but the night is so obviously clear we take the railfly down so we can again see up through the netting on the tent's roof at the night sky.
