Jill's Away...

Jill arrived safe in Mexico. She can text me or call me each day but I've been missing her calls. It's easy to get out of phone range around here.
I've been working half-days, bringing the girls to the office with me. We had an interesting Friday. Over memorial day I vowed to be finished with car-camping. No matter how remote a spot you think you have someone will always drive up at 9pm, set up camp right next to you with lots of noise and leave you frustrated. That combined with constant barking dogs and people partying way past the 10pm quiet time has given me a strong distaste for car camping.
It always struck me as funny that people want to 'escape' from suburbia and so they relocate to a crowded campsite, set up their tent or trailer, put out lots of chairs, tables, radios, bikes, etc. But then you look around and realize that everyone has exactly recreated their urban life on a grass parking lot, 40 miles from home.

It's humorous, did you know that urban camping is apparently a 'real' thing to some?:

So anyway, I thought we'd try backpacking. Having a 7 and 5 year old go backpacking might be too much for some kids, but not ours! We all loaded up our packs. When Kay had her pack filled with clothes, sleeping bag, sleeping mat and gear I put it on her and  she literally fell backward and flailed like a turtle. So I took some of her gear and left her with about a 15 lb pack. Syd did well, she carried all her own gear. I got the tent and other essential gear. My pack was about 40 lbs which was not easy (if I go alone it's more like 30 lbs). We then hiked 1.5 miles (up about 800 feet) on the Herman Creek trail. It was about 4:30 pm.

We were all sweating like crazy, it was 75 degrees out. There was poison oak everywhere. Our goal was to get to a river (a must for cleaning up and drinking given how sweaty we were. But the river was 2 more miles in and a lot more elevation gain. The girls were struggling and I was dripping wet.

 Then the mosquitos came out. We decided to go back to the car and find a place where we knew we would have access to water. So we hiked the 1.5 miles back to the car and drove further east. The Deschutes river is a neat area that is more desert-like (less mosquitos) and you can camp anywhere along the 50 mile river stretch. There is a campground at the beginning of the parking lot. It was packed, and it was loud, lots of dogs and parties going on (by this time it was 6:30pm). We geared up and walked through the campground down to the trail. I felt proud to be marching the girls past the urban-campers and onto the wilderness trail. I could here the thoughts of the people in the campground as we passed 'I wish I was that cool', 'I wish my dad was that awesome'. (Of course in reality they were saying 'that guy is nuts taking his kids in that rattle-snake infested canyon' and 'how sad, that homeless family doesn't have enough money for a campsite.')
You cant wilderness camp unitl you get 1.5 miles in. So we got to about 1.5 miles, found a good spot among the sage brush and camped.

There was a big mule deer near the site, it freaked us out as it leaped from the bush. We saw a couple good sized snakes but no rattlers. I used my old tent because it's smaller. But somehow, while getting it out of the bin the 2 vital plastic pieces that hold all the tent poles together fell out of the bag (found them later in the garage). I had to lash everything together with paracord and hope it didnt rain since the rain-fly doesnt work well without the poles to stretch it out.

There was a lot of poison ivy everywhere. The girls are good at identifying it but Im sure it got on our boots and pants. I can get a bad rash just by touching my shoelaces after walking in it. So we carefully washed up and went in the tent. It rained. Our tent got a bit wet.

We went for a kind of creepy night hike.

There are mountain lions there so I decided to bring a gun (probably crossed a redneck line there). They usually fear man but have been known to stalk small people and children, so that kinda scares me. But they are rare. Though a friend at work showed me a picture of 5 lions walking in this area that he took last year.
We went home and washed and dried out all our gear (I have a paranoia about poison oak, as a result I have the cleanest gear you've ever seen because I wash it so often  -OCD, I know). We all found some ways to help lighten our packs for the next trip. We definitely need mom to help us with some of the carrying. I didnt have the room to bring the good camera, these are all pics with my phone.

Im pretty proud of these girls. They are tough and are getting tougher.

Random cartoon of the day: