Friday: We packed all of our stuff on Thursday in order to make an early run out of town on Friday morning. I had to make it to the cabin for a Zoom department heads meeting, which we did easily since there was no traffic. The kids worked on the last of the week’s assignments (STEM 3, design a board game) in the morning while I did the Zoom. After lunch we headed out to raft the Upper Wenatchee. It wasn’t a perfect day, but we made it work and used a system of inflating the raft at the put in to make it much quicker in terms of the gear / prep. Edison guided almost the whole way and it was fun to see him keep developing his sense of how to move the boat and how to read the river currents. We stopped for a snack at “the island” which was now a bit more of an island than our earlier trip. But it started to sprinkle, so we shoved off in short order. We made it to the take out before it really opened up and started raining. Luckily we were all in wetsuits, ready to get wet, and knew we had hot showers waiting for us at the cabin. After dinner we watched a Harry Potter DVD and then headed to bed.
Saturday: Edison is the king of waffles. He made amazing waffles for us again this morning. After breakfast we packed up and hit the road for a long day of adventuring. We stopped first at the Pump Park in Leavenworth so the kids could ride the bike track before it got crowded. Then we drove to Mission Ridge and ate lunch on a lookout with a beautiful view of the entire Wenatchee Valley. Then we did a 3-mile hike (4 miles after going all the way around the lake) to Lake Clara and Lake Marion. Lake Clara was my favorite, a shallow lake with a beautiful, clear green color and a sandy bottom. There are a few small campsites here and it could be fun for an overnight when the lake got warm enough for swimming. There were also a ton of larches around the lake and coming back in September when they glow chartreuse would also be a really cool thing to do. It was fun just kicking it at the two alpine lakes for the afternoon, exploring over scree and meadows, throwing rocks into the water, etc. I love that my kids enjoy these hikes and their time in the woods. On the way down from Mission Ridge, we turned into Squilchuck State Park. I didn’t know much about it, but wanted to check it out. Turns out it is home to some really amazing mountain bike trails, courses, jumps, obstacles, etc. Of all the children, Reed enjoyed it the most and kept doing a ramp to a set of roller jumps over and over again. Then we hit the Pump Park - again - on the way home, due to popular demand. But it was quite a different scene on a Saturday night and more crowded than the morning. Reed rode a few laps, but then we called it a day and headed home for dinner. We were beat - it was a long day, but definitely very cool.
Sunday: Edison did another amazing job of making waffles for us today. We got ourselves organized pretty quickly and then headed out to ride/hike the trail to Twin Lakes. It was the first time we combined a bike ride to a trailhead. The ride was on a gated off part of an old road and was pretty easy to ride. Bikes made it go so much faster than walking it, like we had in the past. It was chilly at the lake itself, as the wind rushed through the valley and right to the end of the trail at the lake. We walked a little around the shore and found a campsite to eat lunch at that was a little more sheltered. It also had some cool contraptions that past campers had rigged up to hang their food to keep food away from bears. The ride back to the car was awesome as it was almost all downhill - very fun! We headed back to LFP after the hike and discovered traffic on Highway 2 for the first time in three months. Ugh. We ended up having to do our family Zoom from the car - luckily the kids could manage the phone while I drove and it all worked out. And the grand finale of the day was to do an hour of lap swim at the Aqua Club - first time in the pool in three months!!! It felt amazing and I actually did 2000 yards!
No comments:
Post a Comment