Wow, did Rachel and I have a great time camping! Thank you a thousand times to PopPop, Amanda and Jenn for urging us to come join them in a yurt at Seaquest State Park. It's a trip Rachel and I will remember for a long, long time.
Rachel and I arrived quite late on the 4th; I had to take care of a lot of trip preparations beforehand -- and we had a great dinner of sauteed zucchini (Amanda); grilled chicken coated with mustard and herbs (me); and whoopie pies (Jenn). Whoopie pies! Oh, whoopie pies! We were all lucky campers.
The next day we took a hike around Mt. St. Helens hoping to get to the top. Richard, Amanda and Jenn went on ahead while Rachel and tried to valiantly keep up, slipping on the scree and falling every few feet or so. To her credit she absolutely refused to turn back because she knew everyone wanted to continue on. "Press bravely on!" she cried at one point, and I was so, so proud of her. "Do you want to turn back?" I kept asking, and she kept sniffling and saying no, and finally she just outright started crying and said, yes, she wanted to turn back. Poor thing! I kept telling her how brave she was and proud I was of her, and when we staggered back to our car at around 5:30 I was surprised to see Jenn's car next to ours. Turns out they had, in fact, seen us at the point we'd turned back, and they later said it was good that we had because they didn't make to to the top, either. So we all had double bratwursts and corn that night, and I told Rachel she could have a s'more AND a whoopie pie. Which she did.
The next day, Saturday, we all took it a little easier; stayed in camp until early afternoon then took a relaxing, level hike around nearby Silver Lake. Rachel loved looking into the water and at the lily pads, and she insisted on taking photos with my smartphone. We got back in time for her to play on the play structure at the campground, and I cracked open the book "Washington," about George, and when I looked up Rachel was SUPERVISING A GROUP OF 5 YEAR OLD BOYS in activities. She took a big stick and banged it against the metal play structure, like a gong, then would issue orders for them to run to the end of the nearby field, climb on some part of the structure, race back, etc. One of the moms who was watching this bemusedly said Rachel was being quite encouraging to the other kids saying, "great job!" and other positive reinforcement type things -- until a bigger girl took over the game and started anointing winners and losers, and Rachel came to me, pouting, saying she wasn't being fair. Of course, within 15 minutes she and the girl were spinning each other around on one of the play structure's spinning circles, so...her pique was short-lived.
More about today's trip to St. Helens tomorrow....
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