Bend Camping Trip 2015: Aug 12-16 2015

This week was the second year a big group of homeschool families all went to Bend, OR together to camp at Tumalo State Park. Instead of outlining each day, I'm going to do a rough outline of the whole trip here, and then to another post with some stories from the week.

First of all, we left Bellingham around 9:30am on Wednesday. We dropped by the Bagelry to get bagels on our way out, and then headed south. We stopped just south of Olympia to each lunch at a rest stop, and then powered through with just one more short bathroom break. We were delayed by having to take a detour off of Highway 26 because of a brush fire. We made it to the camp ground at around 6pm. That night, we made hot dogs as people slowly drifted in, and all went to bed relatively early.

Thursday: The younger kids all were up early and we all were up and eating breakfast by 9ish, and were heading out on our first rafting expedition by around 11. We took one short ride down the river (maybe 20ish minutes), then most of us headed back to the campsite to eat lunch. After lunch, we went back and did another, somewhat longer run. We hiked up about a mile, and then rode back down to the camp. HK and I took another long run, while most of the other kids played games. We had soup for dinner, made by my mom and Julie, and then most of us played The Resistance (an awesome game you should all check out) for a few hours and went to bed around 11:30.

Friday: It was a lot colder, and no one did any rafting. We mostly hung around the campsite for the morning, and played more of The Resistence, and then headed into town. We drove to Pilot Butte, which was a great view of the city and surrounding area, and then got ice cream. After that, we drove to a neighborhood park where most of the kids and dads played wiffle ball. We headed back to the campsite, and had currey for dinner, made by Connie. Most people headed to bed a bit sooner that night, but Isabelle, Spencer, Ted, and I ended up staying up til about 12:30 discussing the "happy chair" problem (maybe I'll explain that later), why people use drugs like LSD, the strangeness of Gonzo journalism, and much more.

Saturday: Julie took a bunch of the kids to Starbucks before I got up, and when I went to the fire, there was a much smaller than usual group awake. We ate breakfast, and got ready for our big rafting trip. The idea was to start at the spot we usually stopped and then ride all the way down to Tumalo, about 2 miles down stream. No one had gone that far before, so we didn't really know what to expect. It ended up being pretty mild, and a lot of fun. We got out in the tiny, tiny town of Tumalo, and some of the other adults came and picked us up. What had taken us close to two hours to raft took us less than ten minutes to drive. We ate chili for dinner, and played mafia. People drifted off to bed at all different times, and Mom, Isabelle, Ted, Spencer, and I were again the last to bed.

Sunday; We ate breakfast and started packing up to leave. We all left around 11:30. On the way south, we took I5 to Gresham, and then veered east, but going north, we went to Yakima, and then headed over Snoqualmie pass to Issaquah. That route was supposed to be faster, but ended up being much slower because of a slowdown on the pass that added over an hour to our trip. We ate dinner at the Chipotle in Issaquah, and made it home by 10pm.

Off to Oregon

In the morning, we are leaving for Bend, Oregon to go camping with four other families (about 85% of the typical Usual Suspects group). I haven't been camping since 2009 (wow, it's been 5 years!), and I've never been camping with other families like this. While I'm a little nervous that I've forgotten to pack some vitally important thing, I'm excited. It should be a fun trip, and I'm looking forward to it being warm, though hopefully not too warm.

I won't be doing any blogging until I get back Friday night, but hopefully at that point I'll have stories and maybe some pictures to share. I'm starting Driver's Ed right after we get back, and I might have a very small part in my ballet school's fall production of Dracula (though I'm not positive about that one yet), so hopefully all of that will also provide plenty to blog about. Plus, I of course still have a backlog of book reviews to finish and publish.

I have six books for the ride, which is 7 plus hours each way, which will hopefully be enough. My goal is to write a review for each of them as I finish them and post them when I get back.

Wish us luck!

Summer Update: School, Dance, and Books

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It's been a long time since I posted here, and lots has been happening. I've been working hard to try to finish up Algebra II and Medieval History. I've been doing art classes once a week (pictures to come eventually), Irish dance (soft shoe and hard shoe) once a week, and, starting this week, ballet two to three times a week! There have also been lots of parties and spontaneous get togethers in the nice weather, plus many birthdays to celebrate.

Sunset over Bellingham Bay, on a spontaneous evening excursion to the park with some friends.

I am currently reading The Prince for History, and just finished Are You My Mother? and Maggot Moon, both of which I have written reviews for which will come out soon. If I have time, I'll try to review Fun Homeas well, since it kind of comes before Are You My Mother?

It's been hot around here, in the high 70's to mid 80's all this week. It's supposed to get close to 90 soon, which is quite hot for NW Washington!

As usual, I'm staying busy this week with dance (I have 1.5 hrs of ballet and 2 hrs of Irish on Monday, plus ballet on Friday, and maybe on Thursday), volunteering at the library, a family soccer picnic tonight, a World Cup party tomorrow, and art class, golf, and probably other things I forgot. I'll be reading, doing school, and editing as well.

I'll try to get back to blogging more again soon, but probably not until August, when things really calm down a bit for us. We are camping in Bend, OR for a week in about 10 days, so I won't be blogging then either.

I'll get a few book reviews up this week, but other then that, I probably won't be on here until the beginning of August.