Camp Week 8: MY BEST WEEK OF CAMP EVER!! Backpackers with Clover and only 3 14 year old girls!! (Hike up Mt Adams, to 9000 feet, the second highest po
I was a bit worried about being the counsellor of such older girls – and for the first half an hour I felt a bit intimidated by them, but by the end of the week I had made really good friends with them, and could talk to them like any of my usual friends, which was how mature these girls were. After a quick swim check, dinner, dehydrating some fruit, and campfire, we got stuck into packing for our trip to Mount Adams, the second highest point in Washington state. Clover, Healthy and I slept outside because smelly toto is my UL and she has been living in cielo 2 for most of the summer and everything reeks.
We left on Monday morning, piling into a van, with Clover driving. The drive took 9 hours. The car has a DVD player for those in the back seat, but I sat in the front to keep clover company, meaning that we had to endure just listening to 4 movies on the way there. After stopping at safeway so the girls could buy whole peppers (capsicums) to snack on (Wtf?,) we stopped for lunch at a fish hatchery and the girls (iron women) went swimming in icy snow melted water. My excuse was that I am australian and I am used to hot tropical waters.
In goes Chicago into the DVD player, and clover and I listen to corny Chicago accents and annoying music for 3 hours, while following a never-ending road that skirted the entire cascade mountain range. So we relieved ourselves with some dixie chicks. Bahaa. Clover was about to say “Joey, you need to take over driving before I kill myself”, when Mount adams came into view. A giant snowy mountain, like we had just run head into the swiss alps. That was the most amazing thing I have ever seen, until that point.
I got really excited to see snow, and couldn’t wait to start walking, but we had no idea where to walk, and went to the ranger station, being just 15 minutes late, and the ranger PUSHED us out of the building as if she was going to pull a gun on us otherwise. We found an entrance to the national park and clover had me drive. It was the weirdest thing driving on the right side and having the steering wheel on the left. I didn’t do too badly, I thought. Well, I am alive at least. Not to mention the road was really bumpy. We found a campsite by a shallow lake, with mount adams in the background. We cooked on our stove (the weirdest camping stove ever – it set the stones on fire,) by the lake, while the girls went for yet another swim in their sports bras (our signature soon became the ‘sports bras drying on our backpacks.) We had falafel and and cous cous – trust clover to cook gourmet meals on a trip – she’s amazing.
We met up with the rangers who gave us some nice topographic maps – and we found out that we were camping on native American land belonging to the Yakima tribe, which was pretty cool.
The next day we moved the car up to the start of the trail, and finally started walking. We walked up 2000 feet, but it only covered 2 miles. At the first sight of snow we dumped our backpacks and climbed down to a snow patch and had a snowball fight. Then we had lunch by a snowy tundra with purple wildflowers and an icy creek running through. I can’t believe how amazing it was – and I was being paid for it!! We tobogganed using socks for gloves and garbage bags for sleds, until we actually found a rescue sled, which was nice for some peace of mind, clover said.
We continued up as high as the trail would take us, to a similar place as we had lunch, with a lot more snow. This is where we set up camp for the night. We dumped our stuff, had some me-time (me, I tobogganed of course), and we set off to explore. The girls climbed a giant pile of rocks, which was reckless, but clover and I were breaking the rules of counselling for the whole trip from start to finish. We also explored a cool lava tube ice cave, which went down really deep and it was pretty scary. Then we climbed up a huge ‘hill,’ which looked like a 200 metre high pile of rock rubble at a quarry. It was pretty slippery, but we got to the top and looked up to the summit. Then looked down at a lake with bright light blue water and an ice-burg floating in the middle. For a moment I thought I was in Antarctica. Crazy Cassandra wanted to slide down to swim in it – a gradient of a hill being about 80 degrees!!!
We had this wonderful plan to sleep out under the stars because it would be so clear, but by 7:30, after a weird dinner of potato soup and chocolate pudding, we were freezing our butts off. We got out the emergency blanket, which we soon discovered only gets you warm when you are in direct sunlight, or when you burn all the energy trying to unravel the damn things!!! We had the bright idea of setting up a tent using the emergency blanket as an extra fly. One of my biggest memories of camp was that night trying to set up the tent, on a snowy mountain ridge, with hands like ice, windy and using rocks to keep the groundsheet down. We were grunting and making these miserable noises, and it was just insane.
I had a terrible sleep though, we were so cold and the ground was so cold. The next day we refused to leave before going Tabogganing, so we whacked on the gloves (socks) and boarded the plush means of snow transportation, ie a garbage bag, and tobogganed for a few hours. The creek had frozen, which was fun to step on. We didn’t get hiking again until lunchtime. It only took us half an hour to descend, clover and I running to keep up with these girls. We took a different trail around the mountain, and stopped at a lake which was as icy as the arctic, for lunch. We laid out our sports bras on the rock to dry (our signature thing to do) after swimming in this glacier lake, with Mount Adams in the distance. It was so cold that I had a brain freeze. We attempted to wash down using the bio-degradable soap, and everyone but me had the guts to wash their hair. After a very messy lunch involving eploding hot chocolate and dripping maple syrup, we set off again, eventually finding a beautiful meadow – not an official camp site though. It was a clearing in the woods, filled with colourful wildflowers, and an icy creek dribbling in zig-zags through it. We set up camp, refusing to sleep under the stars because of the bugs, and started on dinner: pad thai with all the peanut butter that was left (too much!!), and trefoil girl scout cookie cheesecake, which we cooled in the creek (it floated away of course!!). We had a massage chain too, and I got an invigorating massage from clover, which was amazing after carrying a heavy pack.
That night I got the best sleep in a while. We packed up pretty quickly in the morning, and after a literal RUN back to the car (where do these girls get the energy??), we embarked on another long (and eventful) road trip home. Clover couldn’t face driving so I drove for an hour down the twisty bumpy road, most of which was one way, and I nearly side-swiped a trailer coming up the opposite direction. Clover took the driving from there!! We decided to take a detour to the beach, and to the World Kite Museum. We ran down the shorel, through the grey sand which made me appreciate Australia to no end), into the icy surf. It was so exhilarating, and we felt pretty reckless, until we realised we were being dragged out. We had full clothes on, and they were getting pretty heavy. Cassandra was the furthest out, and for a moment she disappeared under the water, which we find out later was to remove her jumper which was weighing her down.
I couldn’t believe how quickly a situation could go from euphoria to panic. I remember clover running into the waves with this giant smile on her face, and saying “I am so happy right now,” and seconds later, her panic-stricken face yelling “Cassandra… Cassandra… come in shore.” After some hard swimming we made our way back up to the beach, the reality of the situation and the possible consequences dawning on us.
For the rest of the trip, clover and I were exhausted – a bit of a shock to the system. We had some good conversation going on though, about how americans at camp are lazy and how we’ve become accustomed to being active nomads, and deeper stuff like ambitions. She really inspires me – she’s the only person I can talk to, in America at least, without it being awkward at times, and she just knows what really matters in life – not the technology, but meeting new people, farmers, not the business workers etc… (“ when I was your age, television was called books” – from the movie the kids were watching in the back of the car) American, Australian stereotypes etc… She has the idea that one day the world will turn back on itself, and we will all have to live without technology, and people will realise the importance of farmers.
She told me that she has a lot to learn from me, but I think the same as her. Its sad to realise that realistically we will probably never see each other again, although she is very keen on meeting up with me in Australia and going on a big bike trip, or maybe even living with me, which would be pretty amazing. She is very similar to my friends back home, and would especially get along well with monica and could have some deep conversations with jessf or james.
The radio was weird on the way back – we found a techno channel which was a series of continuous rnb songs, and had silly catchphrases like “move your waistline to the baseline,” and “its fat-free and commercial free.”
We had fun listening to Love Songs with Delyla, particularly a song that went something like “one, you are the one for me, two, oh baby can’t you see….” Clover was dancing behind the wheel and I couldn’t resist video-taping it.
We got back to camp after dark, and apparently smokey was about to send a search party out for us because we were seven hours late, because of our forbidden detour!! Clover found out that her mum was in a car accident on Wednesday, and she’s ok, but the people in the other car (they were the ones speeding), are in a pretty critical condition in hospital, so she is pretty shaken up. After such a good week, this was such a let-down, and clover found out that she had to go home on Saturday.
On Friday we climbed the rock wall for 2 hours, washed the car, (which the kids didn’t even complain about - they were amazing), and then did the tri dock in 25 minutes – I did it in 32, beating my record by 10 minutes, which goes to show how much these kids push me.
It was really depressing being back at camp, going to the lodge and seeing the mass of yellow crockery, the scheduling like flag raising and me-time. All I wanted to do was climb back up that mountain and live there forever.
I expected the last closing camp fire to be really sad, but it just felt surreal. It took me a while to get to sleep that night, because I was dealing with clover leaving the next day - its hard, because you really really get to know someone for 3 months, and suddenly they are gone out of your life.
After the kids left on Saturday we got stuck into cleaning – toto (argh I couldn’t believe I had to clean cielos with her), healthy (who is amazing and made up for toto), and frodo, who is insane but fun – and is the biggest star trek type I have ever met. We had to do a really thorough job, iuncluding sanding off the tie die and the grafitti, and waxing the floors. We passed the time listening to queen.
That evening we went into carnation, to Blakes (the hottest place in carnation is a bloody sandwich shop), then to Tolt McDonald park, by the river, where they bought wine (I actually had some and it wasn’t that bad.) Star and I went swimming in our underwear, and I was initially wearing my flip-flops, but I took them off when one floated away “argh! My thong is floating down the river.” Then I realised I shouldn’t have said that in America!! I must have left my lovely watch there that I have had ever since I was ten ☹ because when star and I went back for it later, it of course wasn’t there. The next day we had to clean the lodge, which was boring, then we had some time to ourselves, before the staff banquet. We had a fantastic dinner of salmon, cous cous, seasoned chicken etc… and presented our final tilly presents. I felt sorry for fox, who got her tilly just M&Ms because she didn’t really know her (we also had to publicly present them). I got Dixie a frog balloon, some aussie merchandise, and some aussie cereals, wrapped in foil to commemorate her “shmur shmur” dance where they dressed up in foil and sang the lullaby song to the kids in jibberish, to get them to sleep. We received our staff books, our flower pots, which we planted, and had some final photos.
Then we headed off to the last ever campfire, which was surreal again – we all really got into the lively songs, then told some funny stories, like the el m’fud story with frodo and strawberry and the coyote through camp and shutterbug locking herself in the lodge to hide after walking along the road at night with no flashlight!! I was trying really hard not to cry when London sang “a pleasure to know you”. And I cried when I hugged my first co, dandy. And with that, camp was officially over.
On Monday, our first day of freedom, I spent the day sorting through my stuff and throwing things out, and sending stuff home. I also got to ring elle and eliza and home, and apparently I have a twang of an accent - and I could really hear the Australian accent - especially you el!!! That night we ‘slept’ in the troop house. We watched some footage of camp on my laptop, and star asked me how much ‘brain’ my computer has, which was funny. Then I hi-jacked her dutch dictionary and had fun trying to pronounce things, my favourite word being “ bevukmits” which means balaclava. It was hilarious. I couldn’t sleep that night because I was nervous and had finally come to the realisation that it was all over and I wouldn’t see a lot of these people again. But I think it was also the anticipation and excitement because I was finally into the big travelling part of my trip – and I am so glad kitty is accompanying me to new york!!!!
“how much brain does your computer have?” - star
We left on Monday morning, piling into a van, with Clover driving. The drive took 9 hours. The car has a DVD player for those in the back seat, but I sat in the front to keep clover company, meaning that we had to endure just listening to 4 movies on the way there. After stopping at safeway so the girls could buy whole peppers (capsicums) to snack on (Wtf?,) we stopped for lunch at a fish hatchery and the girls (iron women) went swimming in icy snow melted water. My excuse was that I am australian and I am used to hot tropical waters.
In goes Chicago into the DVD player, and clover and I listen to corny Chicago accents and annoying music for 3 hours, while following a never-ending road that skirted the entire cascade mountain range. So we relieved ourselves with some dixie chicks. Bahaa. Clover was about to say “Joey, you need to take over driving before I kill myself”, when Mount adams came into view. A giant snowy mountain, like we had just run head into the swiss alps. That was the most amazing thing I have ever seen, until that point.
I got really excited to see snow, and couldn’t wait to start walking, but we had no idea where to walk, and went to the ranger station, being just 15 minutes late, and the ranger PUSHED us out of the building as if she was going to pull a gun on us otherwise. We found an entrance to the national park and clover had me drive. It was the weirdest thing driving on the right side and having the steering wheel on the left. I didn’t do too badly, I thought. Well, I am alive at least. Not to mention the road was really bumpy. We found a campsite by a shallow lake, with mount adams in the background. We cooked on our stove (the weirdest camping stove ever – it set the stones on fire,) by the lake, while the girls went for yet another swim in their sports bras (our signature soon became the ‘sports bras drying on our backpacks.) We had falafel and and cous cous – trust clover to cook gourmet meals on a trip – she’s amazing.
We met up with the rangers who gave us some nice topographic maps – and we found out that we were camping on native American land belonging to the Yakima tribe, which was pretty cool.
The next day we moved the car up to the start of the trail, and finally started walking. We walked up 2000 feet, but it only covered 2 miles. At the first sight of snow we dumped our backpacks and climbed down to a snow patch and had a snowball fight. Then we had lunch by a snowy tundra with purple wildflowers and an icy creek running through. I can’t believe how amazing it was – and I was being paid for it!! We tobogganed using socks for gloves and garbage bags for sleds, until we actually found a rescue sled, which was nice for some peace of mind, clover said.
We continued up as high as the trail would take us, to a similar place as we had lunch, with a lot more snow. This is where we set up camp for the night. We dumped our stuff, had some me-time (me, I tobogganed of course), and we set off to explore. The girls climbed a giant pile of rocks, which was reckless, but clover and I were breaking the rules of counselling for the whole trip from start to finish. We also explored a cool lava tube ice cave, which went down really deep and it was pretty scary. Then we climbed up a huge ‘hill,’ which looked like a 200 metre high pile of rock rubble at a quarry. It was pretty slippery, but we got to the top and looked up to the summit. Then looked down at a lake with bright light blue water and an ice-burg floating in the middle. For a moment I thought I was in Antarctica. Crazy Cassandra wanted to slide down to swim in it – a gradient of a hill being about 80 degrees!!!
We had this wonderful plan to sleep out under the stars because it would be so clear, but by 7:30, after a weird dinner of potato soup and chocolate pudding, we were freezing our butts off. We got out the emergency blanket, which we soon discovered only gets you warm when you are in direct sunlight, or when you burn all the energy trying to unravel the damn things!!! We had the bright idea of setting up a tent using the emergency blanket as an extra fly. One of my biggest memories of camp was that night trying to set up the tent, on a snowy mountain ridge, with hands like ice, windy and using rocks to keep the groundsheet down. We were grunting and making these miserable noises, and it was just insane.
I had a terrible sleep though, we were so cold and the ground was so cold. The next day we refused to leave before going Tabogganing, so we whacked on the gloves (socks) and boarded the plush means of snow transportation, ie a garbage bag, and tobogganed for a few hours. The creek had frozen, which was fun to step on. We didn’t get hiking again until lunchtime. It only took us half an hour to descend, clover and I running to keep up with these girls. We took a different trail around the mountain, and stopped at a lake which was as icy as the arctic, for lunch. We laid out our sports bras on the rock to dry (our signature thing to do) after swimming in this glacier lake, with Mount Adams in the distance. It was so cold that I had a brain freeze. We attempted to wash down using the bio-degradable soap, and everyone but me had the guts to wash their hair. After a very messy lunch involving eploding hot chocolate and dripping maple syrup, we set off again, eventually finding a beautiful meadow – not an official camp site though. It was a clearing in the woods, filled with colourful wildflowers, and an icy creek dribbling in zig-zags through it. We set up camp, refusing to sleep under the stars because of the bugs, and started on dinner: pad thai with all the peanut butter that was left (too much!!), and trefoil girl scout cookie cheesecake, which we cooled in the creek (it floated away of course!!). We had a massage chain too, and I got an invigorating massage from clover, which was amazing after carrying a heavy pack.
That night I got the best sleep in a while. We packed up pretty quickly in the morning, and after a literal RUN back to the car (where do these girls get the energy??), we embarked on another long (and eventful) road trip home. Clover couldn’t face driving so I drove for an hour down the twisty bumpy road, most of which was one way, and I nearly side-swiped a trailer coming up the opposite direction. Clover took the driving from there!! We decided to take a detour to the beach, and to the World Kite Museum. We ran down the shorel, through the grey sand which made me appreciate Australia to no end), into the icy surf. It was so exhilarating, and we felt pretty reckless, until we realised we were being dragged out. We had full clothes on, and they were getting pretty heavy. Cassandra was the furthest out, and for a moment she disappeared under the water, which we find out later was to remove her jumper which was weighing her down.
I couldn’t believe how quickly a situation could go from euphoria to panic. I remember clover running into the waves with this giant smile on her face, and saying “I am so happy right now,” and seconds later, her panic-stricken face yelling “Cassandra… Cassandra… come in shore.” After some hard swimming we made our way back up to the beach, the reality of the situation and the possible consequences dawning on us.
For the rest of the trip, clover and I were exhausted – a bit of a shock to the system. We had some good conversation going on though, about how americans at camp are lazy and how we’ve become accustomed to being active nomads, and deeper stuff like ambitions. She really inspires me – she’s the only person I can talk to, in America at least, without it being awkward at times, and she just knows what really matters in life – not the technology, but meeting new people, farmers, not the business workers etc… (“ when I was your age, television was called books” – from the movie the kids were watching in the back of the car) American, Australian stereotypes etc… She has the idea that one day the world will turn back on itself, and we will all have to live without technology, and people will realise the importance of farmers.
She told me that she has a lot to learn from me, but I think the same as her. Its sad to realise that realistically we will probably never see each other again, although she is very keen on meeting up with me in Australia and going on a big bike trip, or maybe even living with me, which would be pretty amazing. She is very similar to my friends back home, and would especially get along well with monica and could have some deep conversations with jessf or james.
The radio was weird on the way back – we found a techno channel which was a series of continuous rnb songs, and had silly catchphrases like “move your waistline to the baseline,” and “its fat-free and commercial free.”
We had fun listening to Love Songs with Delyla, particularly a song that went something like “one, you are the one for me, two, oh baby can’t you see….” Clover was dancing behind the wheel and I couldn’t resist video-taping it.
We got back to camp after dark, and apparently smokey was about to send a search party out for us because we were seven hours late, because of our forbidden detour!! Clover found out that her mum was in a car accident on Wednesday, and she’s ok, but the people in the other car (they were the ones speeding), are in a pretty critical condition in hospital, so she is pretty shaken up. After such a good week, this was such a let-down, and clover found out that she had to go home on Saturday.
On Friday we climbed the rock wall for 2 hours, washed the car, (which the kids didn’t even complain about - they were amazing), and then did the tri dock in 25 minutes – I did it in 32, beating my record by 10 minutes, which goes to show how much these kids push me.
It was really depressing being back at camp, going to the lodge and seeing the mass of yellow crockery, the scheduling like flag raising and me-time. All I wanted to do was climb back up that mountain and live there forever.
I expected the last closing camp fire to be really sad, but it just felt surreal. It took me a while to get to sleep that night, because I was dealing with clover leaving the next day - its hard, because you really really get to know someone for 3 months, and suddenly they are gone out of your life.
After the kids left on Saturday we got stuck into cleaning – toto (argh I couldn’t believe I had to clean cielos with her), healthy (who is amazing and made up for toto), and frodo, who is insane but fun – and is the biggest star trek type I have ever met. We had to do a really thorough job, iuncluding sanding off the tie die and the grafitti, and waxing the floors. We passed the time listening to queen.
That evening we went into carnation, to Blakes (the hottest place in carnation is a bloody sandwich shop), then to Tolt McDonald park, by the river, where they bought wine (I actually had some and it wasn’t that bad.) Star and I went swimming in our underwear, and I was initially wearing my flip-flops, but I took them off when one floated away “argh! My thong is floating down the river.” Then I realised I shouldn’t have said that in America!! I must have left my lovely watch there that I have had ever since I was ten ☹ because when star and I went back for it later, it of course wasn’t there. The next day we had to clean the lodge, which was boring, then we had some time to ourselves, before the staff banquet. We had a fantastic dinner of salmon, cous cous, seasoned chicken etc… and presented our final tilly presents. I felt sorry for fox, who got her tilly just M&Ms because she didn’t really know her (we also had to publicly present them). I got Dixie a frog balloon, some aussie merchandise, and some aussie cereals, wrapped in foil to commemorate her “shmur shmur” dance where they dressed up in foil and sang the lullaby song to the kids in jibberish, to get them to sleep. We received our staff books, our flower pots, which we planted, and had some final photos.
Then we headed off to the last ever campfire, which was surreal again – we all really got into the lively songs, then told some funny stories, like the el m’fud story with frodo and strawberry and the coyote through camp and shutterbug locking herself in the lodge to hide after walking along the road at night with no flashlight!! I was trying really hard not to cry when London sang “a pleasure to know you”. And I cried when I hugged my first co, dandy. And with that, camp was officially over.
On Monday, our first day of freedom, I spent the day sorting through my stuff and throwing things out, and sending stuff home. I also got to ring elle and eliza and home, and apparently I have a twang of an accent - and I could really hear the Australian accent - especially you el!!! That night we ‘slept’ in the troop house. We watched some footage of camp on my laptop, and star asked me how much ‘brain’ my computer has, which was funny. Then I hi-jacked her dutch dictionary and had fun trying to pronounce things, my favourite word being “ bevukmits” which means balaclava. It was hilarious. I couldn’t sleep that night because I was nervous and had finally come to the realisation that it was all over and I wouldn’t see a lot of these people again. But I think it was also the anticipation and excitement because I was finally into the big travelling part of my trip – and I am so glad kitty is accompanying me to new york!!!!
“how much brain does your computer have?” - star
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