a quiet weekend - not quite

After being on the road, better on the trail, for a couple of weekends in the row, the last weekend was supposed to be a quiet home weekend (talking about the weekend that already is 7 days ago). Well we had a BBQ invitation on Saturday afternoon and did not want to turn that one down. But Sunday honestly was supposed to be a day home doing some gardening and other stuff. One after another, let me start in the beginning.

The last week at work was pretty quiet, many colleagues were at the OceanObs meeting in Venice. I tried to use that time to do some re-calculations of dissolved oxygen changes in the ocean, new mapping, different error calculation and a lot of literature research on geostatistics, mainly variogramms and correlelograms - brrr, but finally they do make some sense, hey I think I might be able to use that with a few of my other projects. We will see. In general literature research weeks always makes me feel like I did not really achieve much, but I think it was worth it this time. In no time it was Friday, my day to work at preschool.

Katrin called me at work in the morning and told me that Theda and Jonte are sick - thus I went to preschool to work by myself. It is great to work there, really different to every day science and the projects the kids are supposed to do are interesting. Well, the boys would rather fight with pillows, use hammers and such than having to draw, glue or paint the next number, letter, shape, their name. But in general the opportunities they have are multiple and since here in the US preschool for 3-5 year old ones actually is some kind of 'school', I guess it is desired to be this way. This Friday they did bake cookies, they analyzed old sunflowers with magnifying glasses the other day, ... many great activities.. . I worked in the writing area, - always some kind of project is prepared for each area, which is sad in my eyes. Since many different parents do help out at pre-school, I think the different ideas of anyone would constantly enrich that system more and the person in charge would be more enthusiastic about it than just helping the kids. On the other hand that certainly would require more preparation time, time most, including me, hardly have or don't want to spend. - During outdoor time we started to play chasing - the kids at Victory Heights had great fun chasing me - it was great fun but I was physically pretty exhausted. Running 35 minutes nearly non-stop being chased by 4-9 kids aged 3-5 - back and forth, up and down, under and over obstacles. These little ones actually are already pretty fast. Lucky me the outside play did not last longer.


After preschool I went to home depot to buy some wood as well as a saw to build a raised bed for the vegetables. Arriving home we immediately started to saw, hammer and screw the frame together, leaving filling the bed for Saturday. And this is what we did. After home made fresh buns on Saturday morning we went out to enjoy a warm late summer day and moved the compost into the raised bed. Really enjoying the sun we felt bad about missing maybe the last nice warm weekend of the year, not being out in nature. In the afternoon we went to the BBQ and came back just in time to get the kids into bed. A little later we followed, after deciding to stand up early and drive down to the big volcano that dominates the southern horizon on any clear day.

That was our Sunday - hiking the 'Naches Peak Loop' situated on the eastern border of the Mount Rainier National Park. It was 100miles and took us two hours to get there - same on the way back. The drive was worth it. We really hoped the kids would catch some sleep on the way there, since we have the feeling they are overtired since long (I guess learning English AND all our activities just take their toll). Unfortunately they did not, thus in the end we had two every tired kids on the last miles of the trail. They had a lot of fun and looked covered in dust after half the round already. Due to the dry season the trail was very dusty, resulting in the fact that the kids slid several times and sat down unwillingly - to a large degree this originated certainly in their tiredness. We analyzed some ice crystals, saw something that Katrin states was a chipmonk and turned many many rocks. (Why? I don't know, you have to ask the kids they were looking at them ;-) We had perfect weather, great views onto Mount Rainier and a nearly flat hike of about 3.5 miles around Naches Peak. An ideal hike for kids, 2 lakes many rocks and always changing land side and views along this hike. The only surprising and to a degree annoying thing were the many hikers with dogs, half of them even roaming free, on a hike you are officially not allowed to take any pet. Annoying to that degree that Theda and Jonte are quite scared if an unknown dog about the same size they are comes running up to sniff in their faces ... I certainly would be! Overall I think it is definitely a hike we will do again and is definitely worth the drive of two hours!

  

 (Theda doesn't wear any glases, she just 'borrowed' Katrins driving glasses.)

Monday again back to normal, Katrin started to plant the vegetables in the raised bed and the weather finally turned from summer to autumn. I even got wet on my bike already, I wonder if I should start counting the days I get wet - or better the ones I don't. Further there is the news that the bathroom in the basement is finished. It got cleaned twice afterwards and officially ready to move in. Well, going down with a vacumer, cleaning everything once more - the vacumer bag was full. Going down with a bucket of water and a mob - the water was black. I think I will have to wipe atleast once or twice more down there.

The next worth mention experience I had was Costco. Costco is similar to the German Metro I guess. Everthing in boxes sized XXL for a better per pound/unit/liter deal than elsewhere, ideal for a family of five. I filled our supplys: one packet of 36 rounds toilet paper, 1 box of 4kg of oats, 12kg bag of rice ... I think rice and toilet paper will last for a while, but most other items soon will be used up and we will head there again. In general it will cut down our grocery costs quite a bit I guess.

Again it is Saturday night and today was quiet, just some shopping of plants, new power cord for the dryer and a ball to play soccer for the kids. Same is planned for tomorrow - our first real quiet weekend since we have got the car. ;-)

Orienteering and National Forest Weekend

The days are passing faster and faster. This may be due to shorter daylight periods from approaching winter time, but more likely it is the amount of things we would like to accomplish and squeeze into these 24 hour days. Weeks as well as weekends just seem to fly by. By tomorrow we are six weeks in the country but it seems like ages. Quite often we are amazed what got achieved within these weeks.

In the moment we try to prepare the garden for winter time. We got told from neighbors that it is possible to grow some vegetables in winter time and thus we try. Katrin and the kids planted broccoli and salad seeds. The broccoli sprouted already, but will it really grow during fall and winter? I am still skeptical, but looking forward to home grown harvests. I will try to get some railroad ties as soon as possible, so they can finish the raised bed for the veggies. Do we need to cover it?  - When we moved in a lot of plants suffered from the draught and some roots Hanna did find and moved to new places did not look too good in my eyes - anyway they seem to do pretty well, despite it is already mid-September they grow at a significant rate. Maybe, with the certain care even vegetables will flourish over fall and winter. I will check if I find some good online resources for this climate zone about that topic. Mild and wet winters seem not to be a major threat for most plants.

Last weekend was packed with nice activities again. Saturday was a rainy day, nearly ideal for our first orienteering meet here in Seattle. They held a newcomer event in the Woodland Park right next to the zoo. We met many nice people and joined the Cascade Orienteering Club (COC). Katrin did a stroller friendly 1.5km beginners course with the kids and I went onto a 3.5km course. Knowing orienteering maps I was quite surprised at the start line picking up the map for course 3. It had the outer limits of the park marked, out of bound areas marked, a few stones and height contours - nothing else. Well, in a park like this any more information probably would not justify to call it orienteering otherwise. Anyway I thought it is a great idea for training, since I normally don't really pay enough attention to height contours and go more for special objects. This way I had to concentrate on them and found it to be a great experience - I think I need more training orienteering maps with purely height contours (not even vegetation). Orienteering season is just starting over here, since ground vegetation is to thick in summer they mainly meet in fall, winter and early spring.

After orienteering we headed straight to the US Health Works to get a tuberculosis test. We do need this for our voluntary work at pre-school once a week with the twins. They injected something just under the skin on the arm and rechecked the arms today for a anti-body reaction on that spot. Both our tests were negative; thus not stopping us from taking turns working with the kids now. On our way home we stopped at a hardware store, getting a second set of keys for our car and buying spate and fork for gardening. The rest of the day we used just for relaxing and hanging around the house. At night looking at the National Forest Services web page we decided to go hiking again on Sunday.

After baking fresh raisin buns and having a reasonable quick breakfast we were on the road by ten. We drove straight to the Verlot ranger station and visitor information and bought an annual pass for the North West National forests (since we definitely will be in all the national forests around Seattle more than five times a year). We had a rough idea where to go but asked the ranger for further suggestions in that area of what to do with kids. She suggested the "Big Four Ice Cave Trail". It was another 14 miles up into the mountains.
Arriving at the parking lot I knew why they call it the Big Four: a steep mountain with nearly identical peaks.
It was a 1.1 mile hike to the base of the nearly vertical wall of that mountain and the ice field.
Due to wind circulation underneath the ice shield the massive caves form in late summer. It can be lethal to enter them, since constant melting makes them pretty unstable. Standing in front of them was amazing enough. It is hard to guess how high the cave was, but certainly 8 to 10m - just have a look at the pictures we took.

If I understood it right, even several ice caves can form in some years. Despite quite a warm day, the air blowing out of these caves was freezing cold. They form since huge amounts of snow slide down the steep face of the mountain in numerous avalanches during winter time. There is more than enough proof of these destructive avalanches in the forest several hundred meters away. In the closer vicinity of the ice shield only shrugs are growing.

Due to the cold air fan we did not stay very long at the cave to the disappointment of the kids, but it was just too cold. Maybe we should have checked the other ice shields, but we headed back from that north facing shading spreading wall into the sun. We did some huckleberry picking on the way back to the river bed, we crossed on our way up. Amazing that there are still man-high bushes full of huckleberries around this time of the year. (Huckleberries are a type of blueberry, also called 'American Blueberries')

Finally arriving in the warm sun of the river bed we had an extended late picnic lunch. Chocolate, fruits, veggies and many raisin buns! At different times of the year the position we sat is most likely covered under water just above freezing point. Luckily we had a dry warm late summer ;-).

Narne enjoys all the hikes in is backpack seat on my back, but we try to take him out of there as soon as we stop, though he never complained about being up there at all yet. He really seems to like that position up there overlooking everything.
The hike was only 1.1 mile per direction, but we did not want to do anything more challenging for the kids. Enough to experience, do and explore is on the shortest trail. Again we faced a little furry fellow we were not able to identify. We realized that we are in urgent need of a small light, but still comprehensive field guide of birds, plants and mammals (deliberately left out insects and reptiles in this list). Maybe depending on the area of the hike, one for the shore line, one for in land lakes and one for the mountains is needed. The ranger station had a variety of them, but we did not decide yet which one - but we did buy a book: Hiking in the North West with children. It is a description of 184 hikes in Washington state that are suited for kids. We will see if we only stick to them or find even more nice ones. Looking in the internet I realized already that trying to hike every single trail in Washington would take a live time, thus we better stick only to the most recommended ones and a few lucky choices, for the time we have here.