Gildergreen Grove with tio Jamie

Date: August 26th-28th, 2018

Location: Gildergreen Grove, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, WA, USA

Activity: Camping!

I finally get to work on the blog post while I’m actually out camping!

Drove out here Sunday night after work, and it was RAINING! If you’re not in the PNW, this might not seem like something to be excited about, but for the past few weeks the skies of Seattle have been BROWN. There are fires in eastern Washington, fires in BC, a fire on Vancouver Island, and fires in Oregon. Basically, we’re surrounded by fire. Oh, and the taiga was burning, so we got smoke from freaking Siberia as well. Seattle air quality has been worse than Beijing’s. So not only does it LOOK disgusting (you can’t even see downtown from the West Seattle Bridge…or Capitol Hill…), it’s not safe to be out in, especially for people who already have breathing issues.

So what a joy to be driving down to the Gifford-Pinchot National Forest and have it start raining! It made driving a little difficult, though. Not because it was WET, per se, but because the rain brought out HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF FROGS. The last 17 miles of forest service road was VERY FROGGY. I’m a big ‘do no harm’ person, but damn, those frogs weren’t making it easy! I’m pretty sure there are a couple little frog bodies stuck in Majel’s tires. But hey, the air quality is great down here, and the sky is so blue!

The campsite with direct river access that we’d initially wanted was already taken by a group of farmer-looking types (MASSIVE litterers, left garbage and gross stuff everywhere), but we were able to find a spot a short ways back that we’d passed. This site had a trail that seemed to eventually lead down to the river, so we called it good and parked. Set up in the rain, got the kids inside, and crashed.

Early Monday morning, I went to check and see if maybe the litterers had just spent the night and moved on, but no such luck. Jamie, meanwhile, had tremendous luck with finding us a better campsite! A short ways down the trail was a barely visible turnoff that lead down a hill to a nice area by the river! The kids hung out in their carriers in Majel while Jamie and I packed everything down to the new site.

Wow, what a site! We’ve got plenty of room for both tents (even with my giant 4-person tent that I bring for the kids), the Happy Habitat, my hammock, and a huge sitting area/kitchen.

We set up my Kelty Noah’s Tarp with my new Kelty poles just in case it starts to rain again, and because the trees were still dripping from the good rain that had just stopped.

Finally, it’s time to let the kids explore! Leeloo climbed every tree, and Sieh went up the big hill!

Leeloo checked out the edge of the water,

and wanted to climb across this tree trunk bridge,

but I’m a mean mom, so I totally went across but wouldn’t let her. I think if we come back and it’s really hot out, I want to try the kids with swimming, but only if they want to, haha.

Sieh tried to snack on all of the local flora, which he of course was not allowed to do.

After he went up the big hill and walked around for a while, Sieh decided that he’d had enough of adventuring for a bit, so he got to take a nap in the tent.

Leeloo hung out in the Happy Habitat for a bit, then had a little more adventuring, and then she went in for a nap as well.

There’s SO MUCH trillium here! It’s seriously everywhere! Since it’s so late in the year none of it is blooming and a lot of it is getting pretty dried out, but it’s still amazing how much of it there is. It’s all native plants out here. I can’t wait to come back in the spring and early summer!

We had some visitors of the stingy persuasion, so we set up the mosquito netting under the tarp, and I put the bug net on my hammock. After a bit of reading and relaxing, tio Jamie took a walk to figure out where the rest of the trail goes: overgrowth. He headed back and obliged me by putting the kids in the hammock with me.

Sieh kind of dug it,

Leeloo wasn’t so sure.

The litterers had cleared out midway through the day, so we took the kids on a pre-dinner walk over to the campsite we’d been originally aiming for. Leeloo went with her tio and Sieh went with me. We explored the stream and a small stagnant area that had little fish in it.

Tio Jamie kept trying to get Leeloo to see the little fish but Leeloo was too impatient.

Sieh just wanted to eat the grass and drink the water which was a big no-no.

Leeloo was being very good, climbing lots of trees and exploring the underbrush. I didn’t get a picture of it, but tio Jamie reports that she fell out of a little vine maple and her leash got snagged so she just hung there in her harness slowly rotating until tio Jamie got her down. This is precisely why Leeloo wears such a supportive harness.

Sieh used a bridge (twice!)

He also found down from some kind of warbler (tio Jamie’s Best Guess) and huffed them so hard they got stuck to his face and he needed my help getting them off.

Whoa, that’s a lot of water.

Leeloo and I ran back to the campsite, and she stopped to climb a tree along the way, but I can NEVER get video of her climbing trees! Tio Jamie and I were just complaining about this when Leeloo decided to oblige us.

Then it was time for dinner and bed.

Tuesday morning I woke up at 7:30 again, went and got our food from Majel, came back, set my water to boil, and puttered around the campsite tidying and setting things up. I got my short morning yoga routine in, washed my face, made some chai, got the kids their breakfast and ate mine. Oh, and the kids did their circus cat routines for treats. 10:00 and we decided it was time to wake up tio Jamie, so I stuck Leeloo in with him while I went to move Majel down to the now vacant river campsite. It’s going to be much easier to pack our things out when we don’t have to climb up that steep hill!

Time for the kids’ morning walk! We’d just gotten started when some douglas squirrels showed up! These are the indigenous red squirrels of the area, but there’s so few of them now because of the invasive asshole grey squirrels. Leeloo treed one and then was waiting patiently for it to come down until she noticed that Sieh was stalking another one. She took off after it at full speed—until she hit the end of her leash.

After his foiled stalking attempt, Sieh wasn’t really feeling the walk vibes, so after he’d been out for a bit and nibbled on some grass he headed back to the tent to hang out.

Leeloo kept hunting the squirrels for a while before we called it quits and headed back to camp.

After relaxing around and having some lunch, we decided to grab the Happy Habitat and head over to the vacant campsite for some river fun. The kids rode in our arms as we waded across to a little island, and then alternated hanging out in their habitat with exploring the mini island. I went across the water to the main island and looked around a bit until Leeloo got panicked that she couldn’t see me.

Came back to the mini island and let Leeloo explore while Sieh hung out in his ‘cave’ (a Beatles beach towel slung across one corner of the Happy Habitat).

Then Sieh wanted to come back out, so they checked out a little tangle of trees together.

Then both kids wanted to hang out in the Happy Habitat a bit before we went back to camp.

Snapped a quick pic with the sun in our eyes and then headed back to camp. Tio Jamie reports that Leeloo tried and almost succeeded in eating a bald-faced wasp before he pulled her off of it. She is so obsessed with trying to catch the ‘spicy’ snacks!

Hung out reading and writing until evening, then packed up and headed back to the city.

The kids were TIRED. Sieh hardly made a peep, and he usually yells any time we’re on slow, meandering roads. They both slept almost the entire ride back. One hilarious note: we stopped for ‘road trip dinner’ and a Taco Bell employee was trolling HARD and wrote our names for our orders as “Vrasity” and “Jammy”. So amazing, I wish I could have tipped her.

We definitely have plans to revisit this site many more times, in all seasons, because it was so beautiful. I can confidently say that it’s my favourite campsite ever.