Last Gasp of Summer

The first few days at Kingfisher were lonely (in a good way) and cold and drizzly. Note the difference in attire between the sensible adult and the crazy children. Also worth noting is that Barb is sitting in a child's chair and the children are sitting in adult chairs. Both girls have decided their very cool purple camp chairs (with deployable awning!) are unacceptable.

How long have we been attending Teresa's end of summer blowout at Kingfisher? Four, five, six years? Every time it's great. The campground host this year told us that some families have been camping there annually for four, five six decades. I believe it. It's a special place.

This year we were the first family to arrive, and the only family that stayed a whole week. (Some families, however, stayed past the Sunday that we left; we weren't the last to leave.)

While we were alone in the lonely campsite, we took the short drive to Bagby Hot Springs and did the beautiful, 1.5 mile hike from the parking lot to the springs. The trail is littered with fairy dust, and there's a hollow stump that sometimes contains treasures bestowed by the fairies. Elizabeth put her hand in the hollow (those of you of a certain age will be reminded, as I was, of a scene from the 1980 Mike Hodges movie Flash Gordon) and retrieved a Monopoly bill. Suzanne found a penny. Not a bad haul. Thanks, fairies!

At the springs, we got a tub right away, which is unusual even for a Monday morning. It was wonderful to soak, though the girls had a low tolerance for the hot water and periodically took breaks to go play in the nearby coldwater stream.

On Tuesday, Brian and Riley arrived and we went for a hike to Pansy Lake. Brian, a Pennsylvanian, took issue with the taxonomy and reclassified it as Pansy Pond. He pointed out that on the West Coast it seems that any body of still water bigger than a mudpuddle is called a lake. Barb said it was akin to the way every bar and restaurant (in Oregon, at least) is called a cafe. It's weird. On the hike to the "lake" both of the Larrison girls complained of the cold. Two notable things about this: a) it's August -- why are we cold?; and, b) duh, you're wearing a leotard and not much else.

In any event, the hike was gorgeous and serene, through towering Western Red Cedars and Douglas Firs. It was a bit misty, or "socked in" as Brian put it, which added to the dreamlike nature of the landscape. At a backcountry campsite on the shore of the lake Barb discovered a hatchet buried in a stump. Which was serendipitous to an extreme, as I'd just that day broken my hatchet (an awesome Marbles, boon from Uncle Mark). But as soon as I got back to the campsite I broke the found hatchet, which probably explains why it was left behind.

The broken hatchet is a good segue to the bad stuff. Elizabeth took a fall on a downed tree and got scraped up pretty good. Barb and I escaped to a hike (leaving Teresa in charge of the kids), but during the car ride to the trailhead I got an unprecedentedly excruciatingg headache. I almost never get headaches. So we returned to camp and I rested for a few hours and was fine thereafter.

Worst of all, though: Elizabeth and Riley were exploring the far side of the Collowash (our river), when they stepped on a wasp (or yellowjacket?) nest. Riley got away with one sting, but Elizabeth got stung multiple times (she claims 24, I'd say 15+, but who's counting?). Barb was on the beach when it happened, but it wasn't (naturally) clear to her what Elizabeth was shouting about. Elizabeth shouts about a lot things.  I was on my way back to the beach when I heard the screaming. We got Elizabeth safely onto the campground side of the river and Barb got the first aid kit and we plucked the numerous stingers from her skin. Dr. Brian miraculously got her to take a benadryl. Barb gave her a couple of ibuprofen. I spent two and a half hours with her zipped into the bugproof tent reading to her from The League of Seven.  After that, she was pretty much fine.

And the rest of the trip was idyllic. The weather turned paradisaical, the balance of adults and their attendant kids showed up. The Underwear Girls cult was reformed. Anson and Alder, amazingly, visited from Seattle. Barb, Alder, Brian, some other men, and I climbed Whetstone Mountain. Anson exposed the squares to a lot of cool music. We swam in and floated on the cold river.

It was great, and I'm already looking forward to next year.

The lucky positioning of these trees allowed us to set up our old hammocks next to each other. All the kids (not just Suzanne and Elizabeth, pictured) took advantage of this, treating the hammocks as swings. Riley is reading to the girls. He was a great companion to them while they were the only three kids on site.

Sophia, Suzanne, and Livia as captains of their own destiny. Suzanne really bonded with Livia on this trip.

Elizabeth and Houdini.

Anson photobombing Elizabeth and her triple-decker frog sandwich.

A typical day on the river.

This frog and salamander pen was built while Barb and I were climbing Mt. Whetstone. It was the work of Elizabeth and a parent named Jason. According to Anson, who bore witness, Jason got started with Elizabeth, having no idea how inexhaustible she was. Thus the complexity of the works. It was probably people like Elizabeth who built the Giza Pyramids, Stonehenge, and the like.