Gobblers Nob

When my friend texted me about a hike called Gobblers Nob, I was immediately drawn to the name. Then I pulled up the description on WTA and saw that it was 11 miles and an expert level hike.  One of those things turned out to be true. 

But just one.

I wore my new backpack to give it a trial trail run before our big trip in August. On a positive note, the backpack fit great. On a negative note, it was freaking hot on Friday so I sweat like, well, like it was the hottest day of the month.  Thankfully, almost the entire trail was in the shade. Here I am before all of that. 

The first part of the trail is actually a road that is no longer a road - except for all the government vehicles that were somehow today driving on this road. It is nice and wide and slow uphill and goes along Tahoma Creek. 

We did make it to the trailhead and this is where the uphill got serious.

Our first destination was Lake George which has campsites and would be a lovely place to cool down - if there weren't a ton of biting black flies and mosquitoes waiting for their human meals. 

Onward and upward! I didn't take many pictures of all the beautiful flowers still blooming at this higher altitude as I was huffing and puffing up, but Alison took this gorgeous picture.

At the top of Gobblers Nob is a fire lookout tower with spectacular 360 degree views including a stunning view of Rainier.

The best part of the tower on a hot, sunny day was the shade.  I was very, very excited to take a break in the shade and eat while soaking in the views instead of the sun.

And then we headed back down. Down was great. Faster. :)

Our hike in graph form:

According to my watch and other reviews on WTA, it looks like we may have done closer to 13 miles. Which actually works out great for training for August. I'm glad I have a friend who challenges me with these interesting hikes, but I was also thrilled to get home and shower and eat ice cream for dinner.

July on FB

Just spent some quality time this weekend with family and a newly minted Septuagenarian. Just remember, Dad, seventy is only 13 in Scrabble!

Lately the West Coast has become home to invasive species such as murder hornets and black-legged ticks (Lyme). I feel like we're owed a cool bug next. Like fireflies. Why can't fireflies be the next invasive species that we find all over the place? When's the last time you heard horror stories about fireflies decapitating other insects or causing a horrible disease? Never! We need some fireflies over here.

If having Isaac burst into our room with a bright flashlight yelling "peek-a-boo" before 6am isn't a reason to keep our door locked, I don't know what is.

Getting ready for soccer in the fall

Boy child: MOM!! MOM!!!

Jason: She's in the bathroom

Me: Why are you giving my location away to the enemy??

Living in Washington State is excruciating. 0 stars. Two thumbs down. Stay away. This is NOT the amazing summer destination you are looking for.

All the gear Ben and I took on our first backpacking trip. You might assume that with all that stuff, I would have remembered to bring a tent for myself, but........nope.

Sometimes Nana finds just the perfect thing for our house

Nothing interesting to see here, folks. Just uninteresting, unattractive Washington State .

The nice part of a large flower garden is that these little friends are way too busy to bother the humans (especially some of my humans who are particularly bothered by the proximity of bees).

PIVOT!!!!

We look pretty happy, don't we? It's amazing what half an hour break in the shade with water and a snack can do at the top of a "hill".

Mashal Falls

Usually my kids don't beg to go on hikes. Usually my kids don't beg to go on specific hikes. But Isaac has been insistent that we go on the hike that has a ton thimble berries. Mashal Falls is that hike. And yet, this year, not so many thimble berries. 

Mashal Falls, you have got to up your game. Sure, we're in a drought, but really. So very sad. Luckily, the huckleberries upped their game and very much represented.  Instead of swarming around the thimble berry bushes, the kids raced each other from huckleberry bush to huckleberry bush.  It all went swimmingly until Ben came across worms on two berries and he lost ::gasp:: his berry appetite for the day. Never fear - he had already consumed quite a few before that time came.

Eventually, we did make it to some falls.

Which meant a nice break in the shade on a hot, sunny day.

The distance wasn't super long, but heat, berries, and social interaction just wore Ben out.

 

Point Defiance - Flowers, Turtle Island, Picnic, and Hungry Ducks

 

Backpacking Trip 1 - Dosewallips Ranger Station

This was the goal of our recent backpacking trip. Back in the day, you could drive to this campground; however, several washouts later and now you get to hike there. This trail is the very end of a longer backpacking trip I have planned with my friends in August. We figured we check it out so we at least know how it is going to end. So on Monday morning we set off: three adults and four kids - two days - one night - thirteen miles.  

The timing of this trip was necessary, but not great. We had just returned from Lake Wenatchee and then it was time to pack for this trip. I was still a little tired and trying to do a few too many things at once - or at least that is the story I am sticking to because while we packed an awful lot of stuff (see below) we made a very interesting discovery later on.

Our hiking crew at the trailhead. My, my, don't we look all chipper and energetic! 

This really was a lovely hike. It used to be (20+ years ago) a road which meant the trail was nice and wide for most of it. We hiked along the Dosewallips River and we could hear it even if we couldn't always see it, but the views we did catch were lovely.

I learned some important lessons on the hike in:

-training with a pack beforehand (which I had done, but Ben had not) was hugely helpful

-Ben needs to eat protein before a long hike

-Ben does not think that he needs to eat protein before a long hike

-Ben will not admit later that eating protein actually helped him stop feeling like he was going to die on the hike

-it's ideal if you don't get pee on your shoe when peeing in the woods

It was a rough start, but things did even out (emotionally, not geologically) on the hike and we did make it to the campground. I was not disappointed. We founds sites right on the cold river and everyone was able to use their water filters to get super chilly, refreshing drinks of mountain water.

This is when I made a discovery. A nothing-I-can-do-about-it-now-but-how-in-the-world-did-I-do-that? discovery. I BROUGHT NO TENT. AHHHHHH!!  Originally, I had wanted to bring just one tent for Ben and I to share, but Ben insisted on having a tent to himself. Awkwardly (and very thankfully), we were now back in the one tent scenario. Ben quickly volunteered to sleep with no tent even though we could have squished into his or he could have shared with his friend. I took a few minutes to let go of my probably unwarranted fears about that and told him that would be fine. 

And then there was another awkward/hilarious moment when I inflated my sleeping pad and discovered that there was some interesting math to be done getting it into the tent. Slightly deflating it and shoving it in diagonally did the trick.  

As the trial run for our longer trip, we tried out gear like our camp stoves and dehydrated meals. Legit dehydrated meals = win. Microwavable mac and cheese bowls = fail.

Post dinner entertainment was Skip-Bo. A new game for two of our crew. And Ben learned that cheating a little doesn't help you win a lot. Well, I hope that's what he learned.

I won't claim to have slept well. I worried about Ben and tossed and turned for a bit. For a while, I was convinced that my sister's sleeping pad was really crappy because my hips and legs were hurting, but after a while it occurred to me the hike was more likely to blame.  But after getting some rest, the morning came and I got up to find Ben safe and sound having slept under the stars. 

After breakfast we took a morning group selfie of our energetic (though slightly less energetic than the morning before) selves and started back down.

Yes, down. Most of the trail was fairly flat-ish. Except the part right before the campground. Pretty great views coming back.

And I must report that there were huckleberries, thimbleberries and native blackberries everywhere to the point that we had to nag Ben to keep moving him forward at times. That part was pretty awesome.

Hamburgers and ice cream were waiting for the intrepid campers in Hoodsport and we kept reminding the kids of these treats to keep them motivated/bribed for most of the trip. They were not disappointed. 

It was a great trip with great friends. And a great idea to get some of the kinks worked out (ie someone may need to come pack for me) before we commit to something longer next month.

Wenatchee: Mosquitoes, Wind, and Fun

I made reservations in January for our July camping trip at Lake Wenatchee.  In January it was pretty much impossible to know that come July we would be under a burn ban at the state parks. Our recent heat wave did nothing to help drought conditions and so we found ourselves at the park without the ability to have a campfire. 

Ben was questioning our parenting decisions at this point.

Even without a campfire we managed to have fun though. We'd been told that our campground had a trail that led to beach only accessible from the campground. Translation: never crowded. And it was supposed to be my kind of beach: rocks and logs to climb over and around.  We had extra time on our first night (ok, mostly because we didn't have to make a fire) so we took a walk down to do a preliminary inspection.

However, we didn't find it the first night. We found the river and lots and LOTS of MOSQUITOES.  

That is a thing. We heard and read that it was going to be a thing. And that was all true. We actually bought a device at REI in the hopes that it would help, which it did! But once you got about 20 feet away it, they attacked. We learned our lesson the first night and spent the rest of the time either near the Thermacell or covered in picaridin. 

Thursday morning we explored the campground and found a playground.  I should probably mention now that we only had two minions with us on this trip. Josh and Michael are attending summer school (nothing academic! but they had to be out of the house for some of the summer) so couldn't come. This definitely changed the dynamic some. Packing the car was definitely easier. In any case, we probably spent more time at the playground than we would have seeing as how it was interesting to 50% rather than 25% of the kids.

Covered in picaridin, we ventured out to find the beach. We were successful and not disappointed.

As we stood on the beach, however, we could see across the water to another beach. We just had to go check that one out as well. 

The other campground has a beach that can be a day use beach. It looked sandy. But, it was not. More gravelly. So the big bag of sand toys wasn't all that useful, but Jason and the boys had a great time in the water with the innertubes. 

We were also warned that it was windy at Wenatchee. And that was also true. After a while, the boys felt quite chilly from being wet in the wind, so we went to the camp store to get some ice cream. That seemed to help...their spirits, if nothing else.

Ben and I visited the first beach again in the evening to see if we still liked it better. We did.

Isaac is perfecting the monster Oreo and works on this on camping trips - usually the only time he gets to eat a lot of Oreos at once.

Two beaches, one hike, four Oreos - this kid was OUT

Funny story. It turns out that if you spray yourself with bug spray, sunblock, and then again with bug spray your skin will get very sticky. We don't normally shower when we camp (sorry TMI) but Jason and I were just too sticky at the end of this day to get in our sleeping bags. We scavenged around the van and my bags to find enough quarters to work the camp showers. Having not planned to shower, we ended up using dish soap since we had no soap with us. We had 4 1/2 minutes for both us to shower and when we got back to the tent, Isaac was out cold. 

Friday we drove to Leavenworth. We had a rafting trip scheduled for the afternoon, so we wandered around Waterfront Park, the Wenatchee River, and downtown in the morning. 

Leavenworth is lovely and I would definitely enjoy a return visit. But now it was time to head out on the water. The river trip was gorgeous. Water levels on the Icicle River were low (one of the boats got stuck), but the scenery was amazing.

This was the family rafting trip, so the water was calm enough that we could hop out of the raft at several points of the trip. I was shocked when Isaac piped up and begged to get and in the water. He told us it was cold, but got out several times during the trip.

Our awesome guide Ruth was equal parts knowledgeable, encouraging, and fun. 

I don't think the boys fully bought into the idea that this would be fun when I told them about it, but they had a blast and now Ben really wants to know when we can go back so he can try white water rafting.

No camping trip is complete without Ben foraging. This campsite had huckleberries, but sadly they weren't fully ripened. That didn't stop Ben from trying a few, of course.

Saturday morning came bright and sunny which meant that we could pack up our tent and gear without having to dry everything off. It's been OVER A YEAR. Last year everything was sopping wet every time. Packing up dry camping gear is a breeze by comparison. With the car loaded, we hiked down to the beach again.

Then we had to bid a fond farewell to Lake Wenatchee. I'm pretty sure we'll be back.