Upper valley excursion

The 5 of us set off in Bruce on Tuesday morning.

Setting off in Bruce. Photo courtesy of Rhiannon.

We got up to the end of the road about 9:45am and started walking...

Ready to hit the trail: Eric, Kristin, Rebecca, me and Will with Bruce in the background.

Nearly to Cottonwood Camp after about 4.5 hours of walking up the old road that has been washed out in a few places.

 We had been told that both Cottonwood Camp and Basin Creek Campsites were full and that we couldn't camp that far upvalley, so we got backcountry camping permits to camp at Park Creek for 1 night (knowing full well that we had no intention of camping there) and Cottonwood the next night.

Topographic map showing relevant locations of things. Don't know what the orange blob is - couldn't get rid of it!

 We got to Cottonwood Camp around 3pm and found no less than 6 campsites which were vacant. There was a group of about 8-10 guys who were camping here too, but they only took up 2 sites. It is SUCH a stupid booking system that the North Cascades National Park has in place... I can't even get started on that rant because it really makes me mad. Anyway, back to the story...

We found a couple of lovely sites to camp on and we all went fishing for a couple of hours before coming back to set up tents and cook dinner. It was a gorgeous evening with the crescent moon slipping behind Glory Mountain above Trapper Lake. We had a campfire and listened to some country music that Kristin and Eric had brought along to play on their ipod-player-thingy.

I had my own tent which I had borrowed from Bob, along with a sleeping pad, and it was so nice to have my own space and to sleep outside in the fresh mountain air.

I nearly forgot that we saw our first bear of the season when we went down to refill our water bottles in Flat Creek (just after passing Park Creek)! I had left my backpack on the main trail and just scampered down the little footpath to the creek, and I caught a glimpse of a full sized black bear who was grazing on some bugs inside a fallen tree. He was crouched over eating but stood up to look at me when I was about 100 feet away from him. I stopped in my tracks and backed slowly away back up the trail to tell the others.  We took pictures for a few minutes, then continued on our way to find another spot to refill our bottles!

Lower valley fun

I ended up kind of bullying my brothers and their wives into going backpacking/ camping for 2 nights up valley. They had already been planning to do this independently and privately, but I talked them into all going together. As this transpired on Monday afternoon, and we were to leave Tuesday, there wasn't enough preparation ahead of time to be able to make it a proper Gans Sibling Expedition so in the end, Heidi and John and Rhodri stayed in the lower Stehekin Valley with Grandma Bucky and Grandma Debi and the kids.

Grandma Bucky on the front porch with the yurt in the background

They all went river rafting one afternoon, which looked like a lot of fun!

Rhiannon in her wetsuit

Rhodri, Grandma Debi, Heidi and John with the troops

Action shot of the back of the raft from Aunt Heidi's perspective

Good times on a sunny day in the North Cascades

Group photo as they rafted out into Lake Chelan and were towed across to the shore.

Stehekin reunion

We took the boat uplake today and it was a cold windy unsummery day! Still gorgeous, of course, but definitely on the cool side.

Millie and the troops on the Lady II en route to Stehekin

 We were met by Grandma Bucky, Grandma Debi and Aunt Heidi at the dock, and we all piled into Bruce, our old pickup truck, to drive up to the Bakery for lunch.

Grandma Debi, Aunt Heidi, Rhiannon w/ Millie, and Grandma Bucky at the wheel in Bruce.

Rhodri and Tryfan in the back of Bruce, with Castle Peak in the background

We had lunch at the Bakery and were soon joined by the rest of my siblings and their partners who were just back from a fishing trip with John Wilsey. It was a happy reunion in a happy place.

The fishermen and women all suited up: John, Rebecca, Will, Eric and Kristin

The afternoon was spent making plans for the upcoming days and general hanging around Grandma Bucky's cabin.

Sussex to Lake Chelan in 1 day

We had the longest travel day in history today! First we drove to Gatwick airport to catch the 11:35am bus to Heathrow, arriving at 12:45pm. Our flight to Seattle was at 3:10pm so we had plenty of time to check our bags and have some lunch before going to the gate. The flight itself was about 10 hours, and the kids slept a little bit in between watching children's movies and cartoons. When we landed in Seattle it was nearly 5pm local time and we went thru immigration, gathered our bags and took a bus to the rental car place to pick up a car, and were on the road by 6:10pm.

Rhiannon with Millie in the rental car facility

Tryfan doing some Transformer moves while we waited for Rhodri to do the paperwork on the car

 We hopped in the car and drove 4 hours to Aunt Hobbie's house on the shores of Lake Chelan, arriving about 10:15pm. 

Aunt Hobbie with the troops

Me and Aunt Hobbie.

We went to sleep but woke around 4am ready for the day, so we had plenty of time to sort ourselves out and buy some groceries in Chelan before catching the Lady II from Fields Point at 9:30am this morning for our exciting trip uplake to Stehekin.

End of an era

It's the end of Tryfan's nursery school career and he is ready to start at big school. Since he attends two different places, there were a few different special events that took place this past week or so.

One of T's fav teachers, Christina, is leaving to pursue a different career so there was a goodbye party for her.

We made several batches of English Toffee to give as presents to the 19 people we needed to say thank you to. Here is Helene and Rhiannon doing the nut sprinkling.

The kids helped make the toffee - this was a first. Rhiannon ground up the almonds and Tryfan broke the chocolate into pieces and then scattered on the hot candy to spread around.

 We had the other Nursery's Sports Day and Helene had made all the t-shirts for the occasion by transforming hand and foot prints done by the children into camels, zebras, peacocks, and koalas.

Tryfan was on Team Camel

The running race

On another day, the kids from Nursery went to Wakehurst Place to spend a day with the Green Fairy.

Tryfan is the one wearing a blue sweater and long red shorts

Berry picking, Sussex style

Although it has been such a dreary and rainy summer so far, we have had some moments of sunshine. And fortunately the fruit doesn't seem to mind rain and coolness, because we had plenty of raspberries and tayberries to pick! This morning, Bruno and Cat came with us to do some harvesting.

Rows of raspberries at Oast Farm

Rhiannon, Tryfan and Bruno all did fantastic jobs of picking berries! We were very impressed with the quality and quantity of what went into the baskets.

Rhiannon with a mouthful of berries - caught in the act!

After picking enough baskets of berries to last us awhile, we had lunch at the little cafe. The cloud in the background was beautiful and we managed to finish up before the rain got us.

In fact, when the sun came out the temperature was about 80 F and really bright. We all put our sunhats on but Rhiannon didn't have one so she unearthed this pirate hat from the bowels of the car...

Grandpa Carl's birthday

Today would have been Grandpa Carl's 63rd birthday if he wasn't in heaven right now.

I know his favorite birthday cake of all time was chocolate angel food cake, which is a bit tricky to make if I remember correctly... and it uses a lot of egg whites I think.

So instead I baked a plain chocolate cake to have for "pudding" this night (knowing he probably wouldn't have complained!). We went around the table and shared memories of Grandpa Carl. I told the troops how he used to get really mad at me when I was young, and how I would start laughing right when he was most mad with me, and how that usually didn't improve my situation. He said that someday I would get in Big Trouble for laughing at the wrong moment. I can still remember the way his eyes looked when he was mad like that.

But then I told the story of when Heidi and I wrote a poem together after he was mad at us, which went:
I know you're mad.
That makes me sad,
'Cause now I'm mad.
I hope you're glad.

Or maybe it was just Heidi who made up the poem (she's the creative one) and I stood there with her for support... Anyway, we all had a good laugh around the table remembering Grandpa Carl's wonderful laugh and the thought of him listening to his two little girls reading this poem they wrote to him back about 30 years ago.

Polly's visit

Polly spent a couple of nights with us and it was so great to have her here. She read stories to the kids and came to Forest School with me on Thursday with Rhiannon's class. It was really nice to share this space with her because she is my oldest friend, having known her for the past 30 years.

Venice with Polly

I met my long lost friend Polly in Venice for 2 days and 2 nights of exploration. I've never really had a hankering to visit Venice, but when the opportunity came a-knocking, I couldn't say no! We both arrived in early afternoon on Monday and met up at the hotel she had booked, then started walking around getting lost.

Self-take of Polly and me

 

We explored on foot and took a few prosecco breaks to rest in between. The weather was very hot and muggy but in a good way -- especially for me coming from such a cool and rainy Britain. When we got too sweaty and tired, we went back to the hotel to take showers and freshen up for the evening. We went to a fancy hotel that had a patio area right on the Grand Canal and so we sat and had some snacks and vino while trying to take stealthy photos of gondoliers paddling past.

Two gondoliers in adjacent gondolas paddling past our viewing area.

We also watched the nearly full moon rise right before our eyes on this gorgeous night. It is the little yellow dot just to the right of the red/black striped post

We found a little bistro to have dinner and were delighted to see that the charismatic waiter we had was wearing pink/ lavender jeans. Nice. This was the view right next to the bistro.

The strange thing I found about Venice is that the people who work there seem to make a huge effort to have people see what they expect to see and hear what they expect to hear. The gondoliers wear the little outfits and everyone is sort of pitching in to give the tourists a proper "Venician" experience. And its strange to be somewhere where everyone is a tourist except for the people inside the shops/cafes.

On Tuesday morning we bought vaporetto (boat version of the city bus) tickets for all day and went out to visit Burano, which is an island about 50 minutes ride away from the main island of Venice.

Burano is known for its colorful and tidy buildings and houses

We got back to the main island and then did some walking around.

Polly on the Grand Canal in late afternoon muggy sun

After a brief stop back at the hotel to refresh, we went back out to see San Marco, which is a big beautiful building and plaza.

Then we started doing cartwheels. We did cartwheels and more cartwheels, trying to capture the blurred movement and the full moon in various spots throughout the city.

Polly cartwheeling with the full moon in the background

Me doing cartwheels with the full moon behind.

There was some crazy gelato displays! I like this one with blue Smurf gelato

The next day we just basically got up, had breakfast, did some quick last minute shopping, then made our way to the airport for our 12 noon flight back to Gatwick. I then went straight to work and Polly went for a little spa treatment before we headed home.  It was a whirlwind trip, but it was really great. Thanks so much for inviting me, Polly!

Wye Valley camping Day 3

Today was the first day of July and it started off beautifully (except for the earache and vomit in the wee hours).

Here is the breakfast scene in front of the lavvo.

 We packed up camp just as it was starting to rain again. I HATE that because it means we will have to set up all the tents again and let them dry out once we are back home again (assuming the sun comes out at some point). So that wasn't too good. But then we went to play for a little bit more at the Brockweir village shop again. And then we convoyed up the road to Symond's Yat (East) to meet Nain and Taid and have a grand Sunday dinner together. Nia had thoughtfully made reservations at the Saracen's Head Pub but we had a bit of a job to get there! First we ended up on the West side of the river because we thought it didn't matter since a hand ferry went across the river. But there were mean "No Turning" and "No Parking" signs on the very narrow residential lane we found ourselves on, so we had to backtrack and find the correct way to this place. We all laughed when we passed a road sign that said "DO NOT USE YOUR SAT NAV" because it was a bit tricky to find this place!

Anyway, once inside we had a large table all to ourselves and ordered excellent food and drinks. Yay!

Tryfan and Gabs having a thumb war

Taid and Valentin spent some time outside in the fresh air and peeked through the windows at us

Sioned, Rhodri, Nia, Rhiannon, Nain, Gabriel, Cris, Valentin, Tryfan, Taid and me by the hand ferry that we never took

The Lewis ladies smiling in front of the Saracen's Head pub, Nia holding her birthday present

We walked back to the car along the river and said goodbye to everyone.

It was sad to say goodbye to everyone but it had been SUCH a great weekend. Thank you to Nain and Taid for driving all the way down to meet us, too! From here we drove straight back to Sussex and arrived around 8pm to get a good night's sleep before Monday.