Camping: Dam The Money!
Aug. 6th, 2006 09:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsI rose before everyone else. The patch had failed again, but late, and Omaha and I got most of a good night's sleep. As the first adult to rise, I made the fire and put on a tin pot of water to boil for tea. Kids in the neighboring campsites were very noisy this morning, long before any decent hour when they should have been. It is the weekend, and the weekend warriors are here with their outdoor home entertainment centers. One family bested the guy with the DVD player on the picnic table; they had an entire home entertainment center mounted to the side of their RV. Ah, well, if this were a contemporary novel with a second-rate author I would illustrate the opinions of the protagonist with comments about "quiet desperation"-- his own and everyone else's-- and mention the mixture of contempt and envy he has for his fellow campers.
Tea truly is civilizing.
Last night, Omaha and I heard a baby crying so long and so loud I commented, "Looks like someone brought their kid out to sacrifice him to Moloch." This morning, the kid was still going. What idiot brings a colicky baby out into the woods? Maybe the girl across the way who was practicing her flute late into the night last night could play it a lullabye or something. And the campsite next to the baby's was full of young women partying hard, who somehow never managed to connect their whoops of excitement with the fact that they were waking the damn baby.
The family across the way, rather standoffish, has two cars-- an SUV and a momwagon-- and all the stuff that much cargo space implies. They had this intricate fold-out complete kitchen set, with a cutting board, wash basin, a hanging rack for pots, the whole bit. One of those things where it's got 99 uses and you know maybe four of them. Observation: the daughter is wearing a Microsoft t-Shirt. So maybe instead of Coleman and REI campers, the distinction is Microsoft vs. Unix campers? Next year: table cloth! Wish that baby would shut up. Now the clouds roll in.
I heard Omaha and Yamaraashi-chan whispering. They're awkwardly forming some kind of partnership, some agreement on how to live with each other, and I approve. The young man at the campsite to the west ws carving his initials in a tree. Lovely. I stilled an impulse to chastise him. I regretted doing so later. (In the literal sense; I felt regret at my failure, not that I was penalized for it.)
Breakfast was somewhat catch-as-catch-can. Scrambled eggs, one sunny-side up (for Yamaraashi-chan), a few breakfast muffins, a few biscuits. We were using up food on the planned schedule. I wrote in my notebook, "It appears as if we will not have to resort to cannibalism."
I revealed to Omaha one of the Secret Pleasures of Manhood: when a mosquito gets between a man and a urinal. Die, die, motherfuckers! As I was prepping hot water for dishes, a wasp flew into the boiling pot-- and flew out again! I wonder if it'll live. Omaha mentions that we're out of mustard. I can just picture it: "Would y'all happen' to be sportin' some Grey Poupon?"
It began to rain even as we headed out, so we stopped at the small town near the mountain and bought ponchos so we could hike in the rain. I noticed that in the little hardware store we stopped at, the point-of-sale stations were powered by SCO OpenServer. By the time we got there, of course, the juju of the ponchos kept the rain away and it was nice the rest of the day. We drove out to Sediment Dam, one of the projects that was put together in the aftermath of Mt. St. Helen's eruption to keep the ash and mud that had come off the mountain from flowing down mountain rivers and clogging the arterial Columbia river.
The trailhead for Sediment Dam #1 was next to an abandoned gift store. It was a mysterious place: the door was locked, there was still a scattering of merchandise on the floors, and the calendars were from 2003. Signs read "No Water" next to the bathroom and there were cobwebs on the doors. Most peculiar of all: the lights were still on in the gift shop. It was clearly a trailer home facility, and next to it was another trailer with a government style display apparently telling us what the dam was for, but we couldn't see it. The door was locked too. Next to the trailhead, a fence walled off a maintenence facility and what looked like a logging road. We would discover more about this later.
We made lunch before we headed up the trail. While we ate, another family showed up in two momwagons, and one of them had a distinctive look to it. I've never seen a cab out in the woods like that. Yamaraashi-chan thought maybe the family had bought the cab for the day, but Omaha and I explained just how expensive that would be.
We walked up to the overlook that peers over the dam. It's a bit unremarkable, so we then hiked up to the dam itself through a lovely bit of woods. The dam was a long stretch, but a sign at the foot of the trail said that there were information displays at the other end, so we walked the length of the dam to read them and I discovered the ironic fate of the dam. It was, all things said, a complete failure. It was a berm dam built with tubes in it that would slowly fill, slowing down the running water and letting the sediment settle into the valley. It didn't work at all. The dam was started in 1990; it was supposed to last until 2035, but in 1991 the river just dug its way around the dam and flowed just like before through the valley below. The displays were in the traditional Manly Government Voice ("Commerce! Economy! Industry!") but they all stopped in 1991, surprise that. The plastic was sun-faded, but the dam was well-maintained. It can't be allowed to fail; the dam itself has massive amounts of dirt that can't run down to the Columbia. The failure of the dam explains why the gift shop was abandoned; it doesn't explain why the gift shop survived ten years, if the evidence is to be accepted, overseeing a massive, expensive but doomed experiment to hold back the volcano's aftermath.
We walked down the backside of the dam-- there were no signs that said we can't and there was a great trail down there-- and then Omaha wandered out into the backcountry. The girls were intrigued with the sight of bear scat, and Omaha pointed out a place where an Elk had bedded down for the night. I truly live in the 21st Century: the silvery glint that should have been a littred can of cheap beer upon closer examination turned out to be an energy drink.
We walked up the road back to the parking site, only to end up on the wrong side of the fence. The fence seemed like an ordinary fence, and we climbed over it. On the other side, though, the signs were just a little ominous. Good thing they were lying. We drove back to camp.
The campsite was damp but not terribly so. We started a fire, cleaned up, dried out our chairs. The patch to the mattress had failed through the day; we seated a new one. Dinner was foil chicken, which is chicken, veggies, potatoes, and cream of chicken soup mix all in a foil pouch and roasted over the fire. Really good!
We sent the girls to the swingsets. When dinner was ready, they came back and Yamaraashi-chan complained that there were way too many mosquitos. She said, "There must be so many because the playfield has yummy, juicy little girls in it!" I'm glad she said it and not me. I said, "So, you're ready to be popped in the oven and roasted, then?" Both girls chorused, "No!"
For desert, I took some popcorn and a few pinches of the cinnamon and sugar mix leftover from yesterday, and made just amazing kettlecorn. I had to shake the kettle over a high fire by grabbing it with two sticks and whacking it back and forth over the grill. It bubbled over, and I learned that popcorn burns very brightly.
Tea truly is civilizing.
Last night, Omaha and I heard a baby crying so long and so loud I commented, "Looks like someone brought their kid out to sacrifice him to Moloch." This morning, the kid was still going. What idiot brings a colicky baby out into the woods? Maybe the girl across the way who was practicing her flute late into the night last night could play it a lullabye or something. And the campsite next to the baby's was full of young women partying hard, who somehow never managed to connect their whoops of excitement with the fact that they were waking the damn baby.
The family across the way, rather standoffish, has two cars-- an SUV and a momwagon-- and all the stuff that much cargo space implies. They had this intricate fold-out complete kitchen set, with a cutting board, wash basin, a hanging rack for pots, the whole bit. One of those things where it's got 99 uses and you know maybe four of them. Observation: the daughter is wearing a Microsoft t-Shirt. So maybe instead of Coleman and REI campers, the distinction is Microsoft vs. Unix campers? Next year: table cloth! Wish that baby would shut up. Now the clouds roll in.
I heard Omaha and Yamaraashi-chan whispering. They're awkwardly forming some kind of partnership, some agreement on how to live with each other, and I approve. The young man at the campsite to the west ws carving his initials in a tree. Lovely. I stilled an impulse to chastise him. I regretted doing so later. (In the literal sense; I felt regret at my failure, not that I was penalized for it.)
Breakfast was somewhat catch-as-catch-can. Scrambled eggs, one sunny-side up (for Yamaraashi-chan), a few breakfast muffins, a few biscuits. We were using up food on the planned schedule. I wrote in my notebook, "It appears as if we will not have to resort to cannibalism."
I revealed to Omaha one of the Secret Pleasures of Manhood: when a mosquito gets between a man and a urinal. Die, die, motherfuckers! As I was prepping hot water for dishes, a wasp flew into the boiling pot-- and flew out again! I wonder if it'll live. Omaha mentions that we're out of mustard. I can just picture it: "Would y'all happen' to be sportin' some Grey Poupon?"
It began to rain even as we headed out, so we stopped at the small town near the mountain and bought ponchos so we could hike in the rain. I noticed that in the little hardware store we stopped at, the point-of-sale stations were powered by SCO OpenServer. By the time we got there, of course, the juju of the ponchos kept the rain away and it was nice the rest of the day. We drove out to Sediment Dam, one of the projects that was put together in the aftermath of Mt. St. Helen's eruption to keep the ash and mud that had come off the mountain from flowing down mountain rivers and clogging the arterial Columbia river.
The trailhead for Sediment Dam #1 was next to an abandoned gift store. It was a mysterious place: the door was locked, there was still a scattering of merchandise on the floors, and the calendars were from 2003. Signs read "No Water" next to the bathroom and there were cobwebs on the doors. Most peculiar of all: the lights were still on in the gift shop. It was clearly a trailer home facility, and next to it was another trailer with a government style display apparently telling us what the dam was for, but we couldn't see it. The door was locked too. Next to the trailhead, a fence walled off a maintenence facility and what looked like a logging road. We would discover more about this later.
We made lunch before we headed up the trail. While we ate, another family showed up in two momwagons, and one of them had a distinctive look to it. I've never seen a cab out in the woods like that. Yamaraashi-chan thought maybe the family had bought the cab for the day, but Omaha and I explained just how expensive that would be.
We walked up to the overlook that peers over the dam. It's a bit unremarkable, so we then hiked up to the dam itself through a lovely bit of woods. The dam was a long stretch, but a sign at the foot of the trail said that there were information displays at the other end, so we walked the length of the dam to read them and I discovered the ironic fate of the dam. It was, all things said, a complete failure. It was a berm dam built with tubes in it that would slowly fill, slowing down the running water and letting the sediment settle into the valley. It didn't work at all. The dam was started in 1990; it was supposed to last until 2035, but in 1991 the river just dug its way around the dam and flowed just like before through the valley below. The displays were in the traditional Manly Government Voice ("Commerce! Economy! Industry!") but they all stopped in 1991, surprise that. The plastic was sun-faded, but the dam was well-maintained. It can't be allowed to fail; the dam itself has massive amounts of dirt that can't run down to the Columbia. The failure of the dam explains why the gift shop was abandoned; it doesn't explain why the gift shop survived ten years, if the evidence is to be accepted, overseeing a massive, expensive but doomed experiment to hold back the volcano's aftermath.
We walked down the backside of the dam-- there were no signs that said we can't and there was a great trail down there-- and then Omaha wandered out into the backcountry. The girls were intrigued with the sight of bear scat, and Omaha pointed out a place where an Elk had bedded down for the night. I truly live in the 21st Century: the silvery glint that should have been a littred can of cheap beer upon closer examination turned out to be an energy drink.
We walked up the road back to the parking site, only to end up on the wrong side of the fence. The fence seemed like an ordinary fence, and we climbed over it. On the other side, though, the signs were just a little ominous. Good thing they were lying. We drove back to camp.
The campsite was damp but not terribly so. We started a fire, cleaned up, dried out our chairs. The patch to the mattress had failed through the day; we seated a new one. Dinner was foil chicken, which is chicken, veggies, potatoes, and cream of chicken soup mix all in a foil pouch and roasted over the fire. Really good!
We sent the girls to the swingsets. When dinner was ready, they came back and Yamaraashi-chan complained that there were way too many mosquitos. She said, "There must be so many because the playfield has yummy, juicy little girls in it!" I'm glad she said it and not me. I said, "So, you're ready to be popped in the oven and roasted, then?" Both girls chorused, "No!"
For desert, I took some popcorn and a few pinches of the cinnamon and sugar mix leftover from yesterday, and made just amazing kettlecorn. I had to shake the kettle over a high fire by grabbing it with two sticks and whacking it back and forth over the grill. It bubbled over, and I learned that popcorn burns very brightly.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 06:01 pm (UTC)Tea truly is civilizing.
If tea saved me from that, then I am grateful to it. :)
It reminds me of what Daniel Utecht told me about the difference between naturists and nudists. He said you could see the brand names on the "nudists" stuff.
I could never figure out why anyone would go camping if they weren't trying to get away from all that stuff.
I'm enjoying the pictures, btw. Your family is lovely, and you're still cute.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-06 06:38 pm (UTC)