Kingfisher: Eclipse 2017

Dang, I must have really been slacking to not have posted about the ABSOLUTELY EPIC Kingfisher trip last year. Holy Moley! No bigs, I guess: it was only the year of the TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE. Oh yeah, and our campsite happened to be in the IDEAL PLACE TO VIEW IT.

Okay. Sorry about that. Enough with the all caps shouting. But it was SUPER EXCITING. Plus, regular Kingfisher camping goodness.

Breakfast being prepared.

Sophie and Suzanne rafting on the river.

The new best friends prepare to dunk in the icy waters.

Drying off after an ice-cold plunge.

Elizabeth and Max (the blonde in this picture) played an awful lot of the board game Settlers of Catan. In fact, one day the two of them played the game for six hours straight. They ended up using forest detritus as playing pieces to keep the game going.

Daddy cooking one of the only things he knows how to cook: bacon.

Chillin' with (L-R) Shelly, Noah, Teresa, me, Charlie.

The whole big group gathered, waiting for the eclipse.

Suzanne's mind has been BLOWN!

This legitimately had me questioning my sanity. The shadows changed. I didn't think they would, or could. But they did. When the sun was in eclipse, the shadows became crescent-shaped. It was very freaky. It was the kind of thing that a good science-fiction writer would describe, consequently blowing my mind. This is probably straight-up physics or optics or some class you could take as an undergraduate at a half-decent school. Yet, its description would mark you a wizard in my mind. It was really striking to go into the woods and see how different they looked with these shadows.

Elizabeth and Barb checking out the natural phenomenon.

The Kingfisher Crew preparing to witness the event.

Sophie and Suzanne. Not sure why Suzanne is looking so grumpy, except maybe she didn't want Dad hanging around. I came down when it was almost pitch black because I was afraid she'd fall of the log. Which was dumb. As her face suggests.

After the eclipse, things went back to normal. Normal is awesome.

Elizabeth took this picture. She ran wild with the camera, as kids are wont to do, and took a lot of bad pictures.But I think she knocked it out of the park with this one. Barb looks as she is: capable and beautiful.

Tree Planting AKA Barb is Amazing

I don't mean to brag about my amazing wife, but she's pretty amazing. When Elizabeth first started at Woodstock School, Barb noticed that the big field on the south side of the school was nothing but a rectangle of grass: no trees, no hillocks, nothing to differentiate it from a soccer pitch except the lack of goalposts. 

She developed a vision.

And recently, after much work with the PTA and the city and (maybe?) Friends of Trees, the first stage of her vision was fulfilled, as ten trees were planted in that big grassy lawn. Some day they will shade the non-air-conditioned school from brutal sunlight and cast shadows on gamboling children yet unborn.

I'm really proud of Barb for seeing a way to improve our community and figuring out a way to make it reality.

She's amazing.

Suzanne is the third kid from the left. You might notice that the school used to be blue. Most students (and lots of parents) are sad that it is now taupe. But apparently the taupe is historical.

And I can't wait to see Stage 2 of her vision.

Wendy's Birthday: Oaks Bottom

Have there been previous posts about Oaks Bottom? Probably. If there haven't been, shame on me.

We went there on Wendy's birthday (the thirteenth) and had a pretty great time. For one thing, our girls were enthusiastic to go for a little hike. Under normal circumstances, the suggestion that we go for a hike is received with the same enthusiasm as a trip to the ... in fact, there's no comparison. The girls would rather go to the dentist, or the furniture store, or to church than go for a hike. But because Lily and Kai were psyched, our girls got psyched. That was nice!

Oaks Bottom is a small nature preserve in inner Portland. It's a sort of marshy place on the edge of the Willamette River, below a steep embankment upon which most of South East Portland resides. There are some few trails and lots of birds and the trails intersect with the many-miles-long Springwater Corridor.

The kids saw the embankment, and they had to climb. The picture does not do justice to the height and steepness of that slope.

Suzanne was the first to get to the downed tree, which I declared was "as high as you can go."

Elizabeth found a good path down the hill, and took a break on this madrone tree.

Going up was the easy part. Suzanne in this picture is finding a way down the embankment that doesn't involve tumbling like a ragdoll.

Elizabeth swinging off the madrone perch. That slope was steep.

I, for one, was sometimes frustrated by how we couldn't proceed 15 feet down the path without the kids wanting to scramble up an impossibly steep slope or walk on to a slippery log over a cold bog or swing from some low branches. It's an adventure!

We saw a few white herons (cranes?). It was cool. ... That white spot in the middle is a bird.

See what I'm talking about?! We couldn't walk 15 feet without the kids doing stuff like this. Adventure!

Christmas Present: Seattle Train Trip

For Christmas, the girls received Amtrak tickets to Seattle. We went up and had two nights visiting with Anson and Alder, and what a blast we had!

Inspired by another Christmas gift (the book Atlas Obscura, which sprang whole from the forehead of the website of the same name), we visited the Fremont Troll. We took the bus to get there, getting off at the Troll Avenue stop.

We also did a lot of hanging out at the apartment. Anson and Alder put together a treasure hunt for the girls (and the treasure was a jar of coins with a few bills at the bottom, found in their mailbox after the girls had found the key to the mailbox). Anson and Alder also gave the girls a microphone and a small amplifier, which we all had a lot of fun singing into. (In fact, after we got back to Portland, pretty much the first thing we did was go to Aaron and Wendy's for a New Year's Eve party -- and we took the mic and amp, and it was awesome!)

What a great time we had. Thanks, Anson and Alder!

Anson and Alder's apartment is a bit cave-like, which is why Anson has a headlamp handy in order to read a simple book.

Suzanne is getting DOWN!

Alder has been captured by the children. She is lucky to have survived.

Elizabeth used these statues to explain to me the life cycle of the frog.

We gonna rock down to/Troll Avenue.

Why does the Fremont Troll look like Alan Moore?

Suzanne on the shoulder of the troll, with Barb below. Climbing on the troll seemed super sketchy, and it's amazing that many kids don't fall from its shoulders or head to be killed or at least severely disabled.

This clown statue commemorates a local TV show host .

Barb's on TV! If you look through this TV from Barb's side you see the two clowns and that's the way Seattle has memorialized these two very influential kid show clowns. I really like that.

That's Anson in the blue hat. 

Fremont is the cool Seattle neighborhood in which we hung out.

The Crew.