We headed up on Friday and planned on meeting my cousin David and his daughter Tayla about halfway there. Things started off as they usually do, to a later start than we hoped and we texted David that we were on our way. As I drove I felt like the truck had quite a bit of shimmy to it. As we climbed a hill on the other side of the Columbia the truck really was shuttering. Take your hands and clasp them together, now shake them to and from your body; that's what it felt like holding on to the steering wheel of the truck. I told Mom I thought something was really wrong. She said that it was most likely the tires and that maybe one of the weights had come off and they were unbalanced. (Okay...I know nothing about vehicles except that it didn't feel good...) So we stopped at the nearest available town (that being George, Washington folks) and got directions at a gas station to the nearest place that could look at our tires. When Mom got out of the truck she looked at the tires and gasped. The front passenger side tire was tearing apart. Literally. There was a large piece pealed away and you could see the cables from inside the tire. I very gently drove it down to the store and we had them put on four new tires. Since the others were just as old it was good to change them all. I texted David that we were going to be a bit behind. He called me and said that we were really lucky. If the tire had completely fallen apart the truck would have most likely rolled. That's not something I'd ever like to experience thank you very much.
Four new tires later we were back on the road and met up with David and Tayla. After a bit of lunch we continued on to the cabin. There were stops for gas and Frontline for the dogs (since none of us had dosed any of our dogs and no one really wants to take ticks off of them) but finally we arrived. After spraying down the cabin with a bleach solution (because no one wants Hantavirus either) and masking up and sweeping it out, we set to make it as homey and cozy as possible. Dinner was grilled hamburgers and hotdogs, watermelon, chips and beans. And after a long, tired day we headed off to our beds before it was dark.
The next day David set to work repairing the outhouse deck. It was rotten and risking caving in, so it was quick to tear it away and he was soon at work building a new one.
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| Ariel and Toby wondering when we are going home... |
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| Ariel dreaming of her couch |
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| Tayla napping |
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| Mom and David knitting and relaxing |
Mom and I took an afternoon walk up to the beaver pond which is not someplace you want to take a dip (unless you're Shelby, David's black lab). It's full of plants that look like something out of a children's fairytale that pull you under. Maybe there are Hinkypunks or Merpeople like in the Black Lake from Harry Potter in there. It just looks unfriendly.
But the beavers don't seem to mind...
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| The Beaver Lodge |
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| See the teeth marks! (This was gone when we went back later, sneaky beavers...) |
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| Indian Paintbrush (To add some flora to the fauna) |
Afternoon naps are a must at the cabin. We rarely look at clocks or watches, so you really have no true idea of what time you get up. At some point in the afternoon it gets hot and you get tired and laying down and reading until you fall asleep sounds delicious. We made Hamburger stew for dinner that night, a concoction of my grandmothers that is browned hamburger with potatoes, carrots and peas on top all cooked in a single skillet. We enjoy it smother in ketchup with some bread and butter on the side. That night we stayed up late enough for S'mores. Mom and I had picked up the jumbo marshmallows this year and boy were they ever! You had to eat a few mouthfuls of marshmallow before you got to the graham cracker! My favorite version of S'mores is substituting the regular Hershey's chocolate for a Ghiradelli caramel square. They fit perfectly on a graham cracker and have that luscious smooth caramel inside. Yummm! That night Mom needed to get up and use the outhouse, so I went with her. The stars are always so impressive up there so far from the city. While I was staring at them I saw this very bright satellite above. It was as bright or brighter than Jupiter and I swear it didn't look just round, but had an extension off the side. I seriously think it was the International Space Station! It was amazing...to time something like that without knowing and then for it to be so dark...I felt like Zefram Cochrane being shown the Enterprise through a telescope.
The next day we started off by going for a hike. We walked down to where the forest service had put up boundary markers for our private land to see if it coincided with the coordinates we have for the where the two corners of our properties meet. At first the GPS wasn't working to well and I thought that maybe I needed to calibrate the compass. We walked back up to the cabin and I very frustratingly tried to follow the manual. It seems that the manual is for two versions of that GPS and mine (of course) did not have the instruction it said it would in the manual. After much ungraceful fiddling it seemed that the compass calibrated itself? In any case it matched a proper compass and so we decided to give it another go. This time we took the truck down because we also wanted to come in on a newer logging road that seemed to go up the outside of our second patented claim. On our way down we met Leslie and Justin (David's ex-wife and son) coming up. They followed us down to where they could park their car and jumped on our tailgate. The forest service did a good job of cutting off the road with a ditch so we drove off-road until we could get on it. Then a bit further on they had blocked it off again with three large boulders.
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| David found that pistol he's been missing... |
We hiked around up there a bit and found a few shafts but didn't get too far in. Tired and hungry we headed back to the cabin for lunch. As I was laying down in the cabin after lunch, I heard it start to rain. Until then we'd been blessed with warm weather and sunny skies. We all picked up chairs and things that we didn't want to get drenched and then huddled in. First it sprinkled and then it started to pour. A few peals of thunder brought cheers from those out in the dining tent and sent the dogs under beds. And what good rain doesn't bring on a need for a nap? The ladies all laid down and snoozed while the guys went up and did some shooting. Later on David finished re-fronting the outhouse seat that had slowly been eaten away by animals and...other things. In the evening we walked up to the Madonna tree (a monument to my grandfather created by my grandmother after he had died) and we read the Sunday mass readings for the week. Dinner was spaghetti and we stayed up very late talking and trying to draw out the day.
The next morning was the day to go home. We had a big breakfast and then David and Tayla wanted to walk up past the beaver pond. We found this muddy place where there were all these butterflies, blue and black and yellow, and when you walked through they'd all fly into the air around you. By the time I went and got my camera they had moved on. It had become windy and threatening rain so they probably headed for cover. But I did get a good picture of one of the periwinkle blue ones...
And I really wanted to get a picture of the tiny blue dragonflies that were all around but they were so fast! This is as good as it gets...
Along with the tamer varieties of fauna there are also bears up there. David found a paw print in the mud. He said it was only a baby, but it's paw must have been the size of Mom's hand.
And then after all the fun it was time to pack up. Happy to be home, but sad I can't be that free everyday.
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