Mouse Photo

Okay, you can exhale. Kayak Bandit Caught the mouse.
The first thing I did was call Steph to tell the grandkids. Lily was very happy. Lily wants me to turn it loose in a park on the play structure. I am in favor of that. Do you want this mouse released in the park next to your home? You will never know. I am telling no one where I release the mouse.
The mouse has had no opportunity to groom himself since he was trapped in a small space with a lot of peanut butter. He is having a bad hair day.
May little mouse life long and happy.
Kayak Bandit

Makin' Hay

So here is the question. Do I make the beds for everyone, or do I let them make the beds for themselves? I tend to be lazy and want to find an excuse to not make the beds. I can legitimately claim that the bunk beds are hard to climb around on. But the real clincher is that I do not know what amount of covers each person wants.
All of the bedding is currently stacked up on one bed. You see, I stripped the beds and washed all the bedding after the last guests left. As each load of laundry was done, I just dumped it onto the largest bed. Yeah, I know, it has been several months!
Well, if I was to have enough time to make the beds, it would have been the time I took to write this blog. You folks needed to hear from me. When Steph shows up, I will tell her I ran out of time.
Kayak (Lazy) Bandit

Deception Pass - - Day One

The last time I posted, I said I was going to Baker Lake to camp and pick berries. I lied. Strike me with a wet noodle for my deception. Ya get it deception - - - Deception Pass! Sometimes I amuse myself.

I did go to Baker Lake and look around. I checked with the locals who assured me that the berries were not ripe yet. I found a few thimble berries and a very few himalayan blackberries that were ripe enough, but that was it. As for the lake itself, it was covered with drift wood so far from shore that there was no place to put a kayak into the water unless you paid money to stay at a campground. The weather was very cool in the mountains, so I came back out of the woods.

I cut some branches from maple trees to make into treking poles. I always have a collection of them for anyone that wants one. I was looking for vine maple, but could not find any the right size and straightness to suit me. The maple tree as opposed to the vine maple are much straighter by nature. The vine maple is much stronger though.

I took several pictures of the lakes in the North Cascades. They are truly magnificent. I stopped and compared my wildflower guide with what I saw beside the road. It is amazing how many prolific species were brought to the Americas from Europe.

So, I arrived at Deception Pass State Park in the afternoon on Tuesday. This is a day earlier than I planned to arrive. As I was checking out my campsite, a couple from Moses Lake engaged in conversation. We enjoyed a conversation filled evening. He is orriginally from Germany and she was born in Spokane.

The noise from the Naval Jets are horrible here. Somehow, I got some sleep. This morning, as I was returning from the restroom, I engaged in conversation with a couple that have the site that Stephanie et al will stay in starting this evening. They are visiting here in the US for four weeks. They are from Germany. He is an attorney and she is a journalist. They are having a wonderful time traveling around the US. Their last stop was at Riverside State Park in Spokane, Washington. As you know, that is my home town.

Steph will arrive here shortly. She called to say she is still a couple hours away, but doing okay. Jenny will arrive tomorrow sometime. Life does not get better than this. I can hardly wait.

Kayak Bandit

Gas Prices

Has everyone had enough of the high price of gas yet? I have. It is getting in the way of seeing my grandkids.
Steph called today saying she had been trying to arrange a surprise trip to visit me with her four kids. When it came right down to deciding she had to side with frugality. It is just under four hundred miles and the cost of fuel alone would have been close to two hundred dollars. When you add in all the other costs of traveling it put it over the top.
I hope we are not forever hostage to these prices. I still have a nice pickup and camper that I am not using at all this year. When I haul the camper and tow my boat, the pickup only gets about seven miles to the gallon. That mean a trip of eight hundred miles would cost around four hundred and fifty dollars in fuel alone.
So the next thought is to sell the truck. The truth is that you cannot even give the truck away. So I am stuck.
I hope we have the political will to find better ways to supply our energy needs for the long term while drilling to supply our needs for the short term. I suspect the urgency is helping to find alternatives. There will be some breakthroughs when someone sees a way to profit from their effort. Let's be grateful to that person.
Steph, I hope we can get together soon.
Kayak Bandit '(*!*)'

The Prize

I am always telling about my family. This story is probably my favorite.
Bear was a picky eater. He loved home cooked food, but hated peas. As for me, the more veggies in a beef stew the better. Not Bear. He would work at the bowl of stew as though his tongue was a scalpel. His head was huge. It amazed me that he could even know the existence of a pea in the stew.
I think you could have counted out ten peas and stirred them into the stew and he would still segregate them. And then when you counted them there would be ten peas in varying degree of smashed. He would not have injured the peas, but were probably injured by the person stirring the stew.
Like I said, Bear was a picky eater. He would not be interested in the dry food in his bowl. He would come into the house and glance at the bowl, but walk on by until he had to eat or starve.
But there was a way to get Bear to eat these dry morsels. It was a game for our two daughters, Steph and Jenny. One of the girls would take Bear into a closet with the door slightly ajar. The other girl would start a domino trail from this closet door. The domino trail would be made up of his rejected food spaced about a foot apart.
Some times the trail would lead in a serpent path through the whole house. When the trail was complete, it always ended at a different closet with the door slightly ajar. The person that constructed the trail would call out that it was time to find her. Bear would almost jump out of his skin in anticipation of the hunt. He would eat each and every nugget as if he had not eaten in a month. Some times the trail would be very near to other nuggets that were farther along on the trail, but he would not cheat and skip any of the trail.
As the hunt progressed, Bear would occasionally look to his huntmaster for assurance. He would hear "goooooood dog" with excitement. Some times you could hear uncontrolled giggling coming from the eventual closet. Still, Bear would continue his Hansel and Grettel hunt.
If I was busy, it rarely was so much so, but what I would be on hand to watch the happy reunion at the end of the hunt. Both girls would be giggling so hard and Bear increased his intensity in a crescendo as Bear nudged open the closet door. There were hugs for everyone and a very happy howl from Bear. What a happy memory.
Kayak Bandit '(*!*)'

Long, Long Ride

My daughters love to help tell this story. It seems my perspective selectively dismisses some of my guilt in the good parent category. Their version always paints me as a slightly bad parent.
We had this very reliable older 1962 Chevrolet pickup. It had a shell canopy. I built a shelf at the front of the pickup bed as well as seats along each side of the bed. I upholstered them so they would be comfortable for sleeping or sitting. When we went camping, I would pull our trailer house with the pickup, and Kathy would pull the boat.
On this particular trip, we were camped at Pelton Dam, or Lake Simtustus. Lake Simtustus is created by Pelton Dam. The entire lake is very pristine. There are no homes along the edges of the lake. The fishing is fabulous at times and the rest of the time it is pretty good.
Shortly after this trip some of the campsites slipped into the lake. And for many years afterward, they canceled all camping at the lake. I see that they now have 71 camp sites. So, they must have resolved the problem.
Well, one nice day we decided to go for a drive. Kathy and I rode up front. Steph and Jenny always wanted to ride on the bed in the back. So after a little debate about the safety of that, it was decided we would only drive on secondary roads. No fast highways for us. Oh, and Bear would also ride in the back with the two girls.
So we set off, enjoying the view of the central Oregon desert overlooking the deep chasm of the Crooked River. Here is where the recounting of the story is tricky. It seems the girls were trying to get our attention. I suspect that we saw them waving their arms and interpreted there gesturing as appreciation for the fine ride. They contend that they were desperate to get our attention because Bear was having a fart attack. According to our indignant young girls, the farts were borderline lethal. And they agree that the frequency between farts was intolerable.
Well, if this was not bad enough for my little darlings, Kathy read the map and suggested a route that was long. We rode for much of an afternoon. My memory is all positive. It was a magnificent day. We crossed a bridge that I did not previously know about. Fun for everyone? Not quite.
If the situation with Bear's farts was not bad enough, the longer the trip went, the rougher the road got. So, these two girls, that were eager to start the trip were even more eager for it to end. I can only imagine how rough the road must have felt to those two very full bladders.
I have to ask. Girls, was the pain worth the memory? I sure hope so.
Kayak Bandit '(*!*)'