Summer Vacation - Part Two

Part Two of the Little Family Summer Extraveganza - Exploring the Cascade Volcanoes

Cascade Peaks Day ½ (Technically speaking) - Mt. St. Helens

I guess I could have called this blog entry 1/4, because this is where our “relaxing at the beach days were over. Hannah here, reporting our trip to Mom’s well waited for highlight of the trip…

Now, because the kids are writing the blog, we have to mention what we ate. It’s one of the major motives for kids. But not today, waking up to the delicious smell of…Oatmeal. Goody, goody, my favorite. Oh well, we are camping though, which involves fast breakfasts on travel days. Especially today…

After enjoying our wonderful breakfast of oatmeal (Footnote 1), we then proceeded to leave Cape Disappointment. I think that I figured out the name. Our family could have used a few extra days relaxing and kite flying on the beach. Now I may confess, on the road, I do not remember much scenery, obstacles, or any conversing at all. This was because my nose was thoroughly burrowed in my new book, which I was determined to finish. And I did! Wait until Audrey gets these books, the bookworm of the family would continue to read with such intensity to be considered “burning them with her glare and then eating the books alive”. Finally we turned into our destination, not our campsite, but a parking lot that had a sign that read “Mount Saint Helens Volcanic Monument”.

Mom’s long awaited for pride and glory of the trip, visiting Mount Saint Helens. It’s not like we have never been here before, but when mom and dad visited some 1,000 years ago, the observatory of the crater was farther back than the recent one, closer to the volcano than ever before! As for Audrey and I, when we visited, it was on the other side, and just plain cloudy (Footnote 2). But now, we could try again to see the mountain, correction, volcano, and be able to see it much closer than we could have!

So being a kid, I have to mention that we had sandwiches in our RV at that point, excited for what was to come. Especially mother, who has been somewhat dazzled by the volcano. We then unhooked the jeep, and took off for the 50 mile drive to the observatory that looked into Mt. St. Helens crater. At that point, I plugged my earphone in, and listened to inspirational music as we climbed higher. Poor mom might have been talking, but I wouldn’t have noticed, because my eyes were on the scenery and blue skies (Footnote 3) 100% of the time. Apparently U2 and Coldplay really complemented mountainous highways.

Then, we arrived at the center. There were hills blocking the views of Mt. St. Helens, so we had to walk a little ways. But the look on mom’s face? Priceless (Footnote 4). We then went inside the center to watch a movie about all the things that we already know about Mt. St. Helens. Who suggested it? You're looking at (or reading) her. Some of the animation during that film had Audrey and me pinching each other to try and conceal our laughter. But it couldn’t keep it all when the scene where the pyroclastic flows hit the trees. There depiction was plastic miniatures being blown over by sawdust and a leaf blower. Priceless (Footnote 5). But I did enjoy the ending, where they raised the screen, raised the curtains behind it, and revealed volcano behind.

We finally exited the building to observe the physical volcano. Did I mention mom was still, and would remain to be, in her state? It was absolutely gorgeous, and for those who do not know what it looks like, look it up, because if you’re reading this, you have internet. Audrey identified something we called Christmas Tree Rock, a particular formation of rocks and a border of snow that formed a giant Christmas tree on the south-east face of the crater. And that concludes our trip to Mt. St. Helens. Mom (and about every other person that was leaving) craned her neck around to get one last glance of the volcano as we rode away.

Back in the RV around 3:30 (Footnote 6), we embarked on the two hour drive to our newest campground, Cascade Peaks. Everyone who is reading this for our misfortune, you should have just skipped to this section of my blogging.
Arriving at nearly 5:00, we went into the parking lot next to the main office. As I helped dad unhook the jeep, mom went to check us in. Silently unhooking the jeep, mute from hunger, mom came back looking even worse than us, and defiantly, un-mute.

“I went to the door” mom said, controlling the temper that was showing on her face, “and it said ‘Check yourself in, come back in morning’”
Dad and I blinked in stunned silence, comprehending what had just been said.

“So,” dad finally mustered, “basically it says pick your own campsite, then check with us in the morning, we’re doing something more important than you right now?”

“YES!” mom announced loudly, losing it, as we all were. For once we could understand her constant rage.

So, mom and dad decided to take the jeep and look around the campground for a decent full-hookup site, leaving me alone. Unless you count Audrey, who was in a separate room in the RV at the moment. I then went inside and explained the situation to her from the other side of the door. Now the only one left to tell was Cocoa, going into detail about why she couldn’t eat nor use the restroom at the moment. She licked me, which counted as an agreement.

Just then, a poor schmuck’s car broke down next to the entrance to this campground. You would think to say lucky, but remembering the current situation of the owner/manager (Footnote 7), it’s very ironic. He then proceeded to go to the main desk for help (I was watching through the RV), and came back with a very unhappy face. Then, he under the car to investigate, and all Audrey and I heard (Footnote 8) was something like this.

“F-ing car, F-ing weather, when they F-ing get back I’m going to F-ing kill them.”

That was around the lines of what he said, but I just used the more frequent words, and left out some of the other “colorful” words. You get the idea.

Another reminder, Audrey can hear this too, and being kids, when we hear “colorful words”, we think joking or ANGRY. We took a hint, taking the second option. Again, remember, we’re alone, and being the angels we are, we were scared.

Luckily, for us and him, he found the small grocery store and received some help from there. That’s when mom and dad got back, sending on the news that they had found a decent campsite. ’ Bout time! We then headed back, and ate the leftovers from a meal before we left on the trip, and don’t remember what it was, let alone I don’t care, it was FOOD!

That night, we managed to get to sleep around 11:30, because the campground is next to a highway with tons of loud motorcyclists and speeding cars.

Worse even than Happy Acre’s Campground in Indiana? Where a mean woman ruined it for me.

-Hannah ^-^

Footnote 1: Cough cough.
Footnote 2: Moment of sadness. And on that same trip, we tried to see Mt. Rainier, with more depression from the clouds.
Footnote 3: Did I mention how blessed we were today?
Footnote 4: Read: Giving candy to a baby.
Footnote 5: Read: Hilarious.
Footnote 6: Yikes! Race to dinner!
Gone/eating/fishing/hiking/swimming/something better than us.
Footnote 7: Did I mention that it was around 80-stinking-degree’s outside? Windows=OPEN!



Cascade Peaks RV Resort day 1 ½ (2)- Mt. Rainier

Date unknown (so far)

Dang. The days are starting to blur together now. We’ve been to two mountains in two days and they look almost the same. Oh, Audrey here by the way. I knew you were wondering.

Ok, so we started the day by waking up to The Bourne Identity. After the bullet shots and extremely awesome fight scenes ended we got up to eat breakfast. We ate deliciously good biscuits and gravy that came out of the microwave in almost perfection. Hannah immediately grabbed the extremely puffy biscuits for herself and hid them, hissing when we came near.

After being stuffed full to the brim, we got prepared to venture to paradise, at Mount Rainier. By the time we got up there many hours later our parents were probably planning to kill us because of a song we made up in the car. Ehem, it went like this.

Fawn, a deer, a baby deer.

Ray, a drop of golden DEATH (in a low voice say death loud).

Me, a name I call my pet.

Fa, a longer way to DIE (in another low voice).

So, a needle pulling stitches!

La, a thing you have to follow!

Ti, a thing that leads to torture!

That will bring us back to fawn, fawn, fawn, fawn.

Repeat after that.

That song is to the tune of the song about the musical scale in The Sound of Music.

Ok anyway, we continued to walk to the bathrooms and when we got inside it smelled like a mix of poop and death. My life flashed before my eyes.

After we survived the bathrooms, we walked to the trail that had the view. Only we had to walk back down because of risk of snow blindness. We met back up with mom in the visitor center because she had stayed behind. We ate lunch at the café. Hannah and I had sweet and sour chicken, which was pretty good. Mom had pulled pork sandwich. Dad had cream of corn soup.

After we ate we went to check out the gift shop and exhibits. When we came out empty handed we headed to the grove of the patriarchs. There was no parking so sadly we didn’t go. We continued to sing our song. On the way home we went to the grocery store. It was a miracle that mom remembered gum!

When we got back, we got ready to go to the pool. When we went to the pool we saw our friends from home, Olivia and Amber. We played in the pool and even got freaked out by a bat. We also played dunk when you had to guess what the person was thinking or you got dunked.

We went back to the RV after about 3 hours of playing and had dinner.

Well, gotta go now.

Peace.

audrey



Cascade Peaks Day 3 ½ - Exploring Ape Cave

7/30/11

Its nice having a date now, isn’t it? Hi, Hannah here again, I just know all of you have been waiting for my entries. Even though Audrey has written 4 out of the 7 days, me just writing 3. Poor kid. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken that day off! Anyhow, I’m here to write about the definite highlight of the trip so far…for dad and me at least.

Today started as a day filled with questions.

What are we going to do?

What should we eat?

Why did we watch a saddening WWI movie to wake up (Footnote 1)?

Will the dog come with? Will the dog stay?

When will the dog efficiently digest the gum? Oh, yeah. Remember that gum that Audrey was commenting “Mom finally remembered my gum, for once”? Well, the dog found it first! At the time, we were waiting for the evidence to “pop out”, but I already know when it came. Believe me, I know (FN 2).

To answer the where question, I simply asked if we could go to Ape Caves, lava tubes from one of Mt. St. Helens early eruptions, the only one with lava. This was about 2,000 years ago, so no harm to people. There was snow and ice out that got trapped inside the lava flow. When the lava cooled and the snow melted, long caves were left, creating the Ape Caves. On our previous trip to Mt. St. Helens (FN 3), we decided to go into these caves, taking the short tour and looking into the lower caves. It saved my day. And ever since then, I’ve wanted to go back and explore the upper caves with dad, a 1.5 mile “strenuous” climb through the lava tubes. Just my thing! I mentioned I love lighthouses in a previous entry. It’s because their beautiful and mystical. Same goes for the caves and the ocean.

The family agreed to my wonderfulsuggestion, Except Audrey and mother had no idea of what was to come.

Turns out, it was a 97 mile trip to the caves, roughly 100 minutes or more of driving. We were going to do it though. And, the path we were taking was a secluded highway, twisting and turning its way around cliffs and views of Mt. St. Helens. I managed to stay well by listening to music and closing my eyes, enjoying the wind as it blew through my hair (FN 4). But Audrey on the other hand, had just discovered the books I had finished, and was burning them and eating them alive as long as she could, until the curves got the best of her. No, no vomiting. Merely a severe headache, stomach ache, and nausea. Poor kid.

Then we stopped at a place a little farther down then the caves, the Trail of Two Forests (FN 5) to have our sandwiches-without-mayonnaise lunch. It was pretty good. Then we left for adventuring!

When we finally reached the caves, we realized the inevitable, it was Saturday, and the parking lot was full. As was the lower parking lot. And the sub-lower parking lot. And every dirt space people could find to park at. Goody. So, dad dropped us off, me holding our equipment for our climb, and drove off to find a parking space. Restroom breaks were taken and then we waited for poor dad to walk up from the sub-sub-sub-parking lot. When he finally walked back, we all went to the entrance of the cave to regroup and go! Dad then stated, “Now we have to put our coats on. It’s going to be really cold down there.” He then looked around for a second, and then met my gaze.

“They're in the car?” Dad briefly explained.

“Yep.” I explained.

“What do you want to do?”

“Risk hypothermia and climb while jogging in place?” I wisely replied.

“Not today sweety.”

Dang. We forgot the coats.

The original plan was to have Mom and Audrey go explore the lower, easier, guided section of the cave, but now there was no choice. Mom instantly decided (FN 6) that Audrey, herself, and I would walk down to the car, drive me back up with the coats, and leave dad and I to do our spelunking (FN 7). I instantly felt bad. That means Audrey and mom would have to park at the Trail of Two Forests (where we ate lunch) and hang out for two hours until we got back. But we drove all this way out here, and mom and Audrey were determined to let dad and I go.

So dad and I regrouped at the cave entrance, put on our jackets, and proceeded to enter the cave. After taking about 3 steps down, we were met by a rush of cold air. It was about 85 degrees outside, but in the cave it was 42 (FN 8) degrees. After the 1.5 miles of climbing though, the cold air was highly honored. As dad and I exited the cave, we both remarked that this was the highlight of our trip. Audrey and mom? Not so much. The cave was fascinating though, and if you turned off your lights, it was complete darkness. And, there were several obstacles through rock piles, and an 8 foot high lava waterfall (FN 9) that we had to climb over. The rest of the cave looked like a train tunnel, only it wasn’t manmade, there were different formations and lines on the walls, and the caves would either break out into giant rooms, or get smaller and smaller. Best day ever!

Done with our climb, we hiked back to the visitor center through the forest. When we returned to the main parking lot, we found that Audrey and mom had found a parking space. Later they explained that they had gone back down to the Trail of Two Forests and discovered that the trail’s name was talking about the forest before and after the lava flow. Besides, Audrey had also gotten to read without the risk of getting car sick!

On our way home, we decided to take the highway home, instead of the twists and turns again. Besides, we could eat out for once (good bye oatmeal!). The only downside is that it was 115 miles home. Oh well, food was worth it! After driving for about an hour and a half, we came upon a familiar restaurant, one that we had been to before. But something was special about this place, and I quite couldn’t put my finger on it. Until we sat down at least. I took one look at the little advertisement pamphlets, and remarked, “Dad! This is where you got your Bee’s Wax tablets, the ones that were supposed to help you with your health!”

Mom then remarked loudly, “Yeah! They’re the ones that didn’t work!”

Every other member in the family quickly turned and shot her a look that said “People can hear you, you know?” Then everyone quickly burst into quiet laughter, including the smiling blushing mom. She was so cute when she was happy.

After enjoying a satisfying dinner, we then moved onto dessert. We were completely satisifed after dinner, but hey, this is a vacation, right? We got to have dessert.

Big mistake. Dad ordered a slice of Banana Cream Pie, mom ordered some bread pudding, Audrey order “Our Specialty”, mint chocolate chip ice cream on Oreo crumbs, and I ordered the brownie with ice cream. Sounds normal right? Well, you have to remember from time to time while reading this, the Little family curse . This was also the other reason why this place rang a bell…

First, mom’s bread pudding and dad’s banana cream pie came out. Dad had a large slice, and looked like a quarter of a pie. Just delicious. Mom’s was in a glass cup, with gooey bread pudding inside, with what she swears was 4 whole quarts of whipped cream on top. Then ours came. Audrey’s was a fair chunk of ice cream (FN 11), with Oreo everywhere, but mine could have been a small cake of molten brownie, lathered in hot fudge, and topped with soft served ice cream sooo good, you would never go back to homemade!

Then the whipped cream on ours could have been one meal. If mom thought hers was large, then ours was 10 fold. No joke! I couldn’t even tell that they had gotten our orders right for about 10 minutes of mining the cream. There’s no problem there. Except when everyone has too much, you can’t share. So, leaving with half of our plates left, we regretfully continued on our way home.

Once we got back to the RV (about an hour later), we decided to play a game of Pictionary. If you don’t know what it is, again, look it up! After an intense battle of speed and how well you can draw every state in the entire country, my team won again! Wahoo! Victory, almost as sweet as tonight’s dessert.

And yet again, we reach the part where I say that here I am sitting and writing today’s blog. But that’s not true! If you want to find out what I mean, read the next day’s entry by Audrey.

-Hannah ^-^

P.S. Did you realize how much both Audrey and I talk about food? I guess you can call us “detailed”.

Footnote 1: Flyboys - a movie about one of dad's favorite subjects - airplanes.
Footnote 2: Yup. You guessed it.
Footnote 3: Yeah, the really depressing and cloudy one.
Footnote 4: Top was off the jeep, oh yeah!
Footnote 5: I wonder what the two forests are? Hint hint, keep reading.
Footnote 6: Read: Yelled/Forced
Footnote 7: Best. Word. Ever.
Footnote 8: Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Footnote 9: P.S. I hate that word. I mean, really? Water-fall? It’s just too literal.
Footnote 10: Think Scoopers.
Footnote 11: Read: Half of an ice cream cake.



Cascade Peaks Day 4 Rest Day and Mom does Laundry

July 31 2011

Hi, Hannah here for the final day of Cascade Peaks RV Resort (FN 1), the resting day. You probably were expecting Audrey, but I took another day off of her hands, to try and make up for the one day that I lost. I might type the same amount of blogs now… I think. I’ll do the math later. But for now, it’s me (FN 2).

So today started off very slowly, waking up to the movie Robots (Robin Williams never gets old). And today, we got a real treat; mom’s made up recipe called Camper’s Breakfast. It has scrambled eggs, bacon or sausage, and hash browns all together, giving you a full meal in one dish! Just leave it to mother to make things easier.

For the basic summary of the day, we didn’t go anywhere outside of the RV campground. And we didn’t leave the RV until after lunch to do anything. Unless you count taking out the garbage (FN 3).

We started the day with a massive typing session, blogging. Audrey and I had been so busy going from mountain to mountain, and picking up the dogs gum poo, that we didn’t have time to blog. Oh, poor us. But catching all of it up in one day with sufficient quality (FN 4) was not easy at all. Audrey had one blog to do, Mt. Rainier, and I had two, Mt. St. Helens and Ape Caves. That means for Audrey, about 2 pages and 45 minutes, and for me, 6 pages and 2 hours. I’m a faster typist than Audrey as you can see her ratio being 1 page, 22.5 minutes, and mine being 1 page, 20 minutes. I am so fast it makes my head spin. It’s very entertaining to watch the “poke, poke, tap, tap, poke” of Audrey’s typing. So, we reluctantly started the typing process of blogging, trying to remember the day, in chronological order, and remembering every little detail. Now we had to remember the happenings of at most 3 days ago. Audrey went first, so I could get the typing out of the way all at once (FN 5). By the time both of us were done, it was already a little after lunch time. So, sandwiches were made and eaten.

Now it was time for the fun to begin! Being the last day, Audrey and I had to go to the pool, because this was the only place on our trip with one. Audrey and I love the water. Mom escorted us down in the jeep with her book in hand, and we thought we saw a bicyclist with boat feet (FN 6) racing into the distance. When we got to the pool, Audrey and I immediately raced in to swim. The layout of the pool(s) from a bird’s eye view has the left pool, one closest to the parking lot, and the right pool, separated by buildings connected by and overhang for shade. The pools appear to be very small, oval shaped and about 30 ft long and 15 feet wide, but are 8 ft at the deepest point. The right pool is heated, while the left pool is very unheated. As Audrey and I raced to put our towels down and enter the warm pool, we passed the overhang with a sudden boo to the side of us. Our small screams were met with laughter as we jumped into the left, freezing pool for safety. Now we were safe, bicyclists don’t venture into cold water! Dad tried to swim in that pool for a little while, but then begged us to go into the other with him. While in the warm pool with dad, we played a game called Dunk with him. Audrey may have mentioned it in a previous blog, but it goes like this. One asks another person what thing they are thinking of in a certain category. For example, what color am I thinking of, what animal, what tree, etc. If they guess wrong, you dunk them, and keep doing so until they get it right or give up, where you drag them to the bottom of the pool. On their call of course. It was all fun and games, until dad resorted to pulling my hair to dunk me and pull me back towards the surface. Very funny dad. Audrey and I went back to the cold pool. When dad was about to leave, our friend the bat came back. It swirled around a few times before finally roosting back under the overhang. Mom (FN 7) and dad were now glad to have seen it too. Audrey and I stayed the rest of the time in the cold pool, finding it oddly relaxing.

Then the sun moved, the shade changed, and mom got cold. So we reluctantly went back to base, saying our goodbyes to the pool. Back at the RV, we asked mom if we could go to the zip-line (did I mention this place had a mini zip-line?), and stayed there for about 30 minutes, zipping (FN 8) to and fro. Then we came back for dinner (Yum, grilled chicken!) After dinner we decided to play the Pictionary show down of the century. It was Audrey and I versus the adults. It was tense, both players on the last square, fighting it out at the All Play, when dad messed up again, mistaking what should be “foot print” for “foot impression”. Audrey and I won with it neck and neck. Woo hoo!

After this tiring day of nothing, tomorrow we are headed to our last destination, Fort Warden, where we will stay two nights, until finally going home. Finally? Did I say finally? Of course not!... But tomorrow’s bonus will be that Audrey is taking a shower, early in the morning, and I get to wake her up. This will be fun.

Until tomorrow.

-Hannah ^

Footnote 1: So called resort…
Footnote 2: Yippee!
Footnote 3: Yuck! Cocoa’s gum poop was still processing…
Footnote 4: I guess you could say we deliver!
Footnote 5: Poke, poke, tap tap, poke.
Footnote 6: Seriously, they’re size 15 in men’s!
Footnote 7: Remember, mom’s still reading.
Footnote 8: Punny (my own word)