Boulder River Falls

Last weekend our friend Meka joined us on a hike to a twin waterfall off of the Boulder River trail. I found this hike on a website which lists hikes in Washington State for young children. This hike was relatively short (only about 1 mile or 1.25 miles one-way), with hardly any change in elevation. It's an easy hike for young kids, although someday I'd like to continue down the rest of the trail (which is 4 miles one-way). There are a lot of trees that have bare branches which are covered in moss, too, which adds an interesting dimension to this area. The river is also full of huge boulders (hence the name), which is fun.

Although this was a really fun hike, it was a longer drive to the trailhead than I anticipated. I read online that this hike was "near Arlington" (which is true, comparatively speaking), but the trailhead is about 30-40 minutes from Arlington, at the end of a long dirt road. We ended up driving in the car for about 1.5 to 2 hours each way. Next time, I would probably plan to do this hike if I was already near the North Cascades.

Thanks for joining us, Meka!

Lately the weather has been really nice around here. I'm hoping that we can go on a few more hikes before the cold and rainy season kicks in.

Television Shows from my Childhood

 To follow up with my post on the movies that I watched as a kid, I wanted to jot down some of the television shows that I watched when I was younger. In my family, television watching was usually limited to the PBS station, although occasionally my Grandma J would record television shows for us on VHS tapes. These are the television shows I remember watching the most:

• Little House on the Prairie. I loved this show, although I was a little distracted by Melissa Gilbert's large front teeth when she was a little girl (she played "Laura"). I have a very vivid memory of standing by the back door of our house in Cincinnati. My mom and I had just come back from grocery shopping, and I said, "Mom! It's 4:00! Can I watch Little House on the Prairie?!?" My mom gave me permission, and I remember bolting through the house to get to the television in the dining room area.
•  Perry Mason. I loved this show as a kid, even though the ending was always predictable - usually with someone in the courtroom audience impulsively standing up and shouting that they were the murderer.
• The Andy Griffith Show
• The Lawrence Welk Show. We would watch this every Saturday night at 7:00 pm. When we were young, V and I used to make our little brother A dress up in a suitcoat and dance with us. Then we would pretend to be the dancing duo, Cissy and Bobby. I also liked watching Arthur (the tap dancer) and Jo Ann (the honky-tonk pianist).
• Lassie. This is one of the shows that my grandma would record onto a VHS tape for us. She actually made this tapes for my brother, A, but I would watch them with him.

• Welcome to Pooh Corner. My grandma used to tape this Winnie the Pooh show for us as well. The song for the opening credits is still very familiar to me. We watched this show a lot, especially because my brother A loved it so much. In fact, V sewed a stuffed Tigger animal for A one year, because A loved Tigger (and liked to pretend he was a bouncy Tigger!).
• The Wonder Years. Ah, Fred Savage. I remember that one episode on TV ended with Winnie and Fred breaking up, and then the next week our local television station reverted to showing rerun of previous episodes. I watched the show for weeks faithfully, to see if a new episode would come on, but it never did. Did Fred and Winnie get back together?
• Boy Meets World. Ah, Ben Savage. I didn't love this show as much as The Wonder Years, but I just liked to watch it and think about how Ben Savage was not quite as cool (or as good of an actor) as his older brother, Fred.
• Family Matters: Steve Urkel never ceased to amuse me. I have a vague recollection of my mom laughing hard at something that Steve Urkel said/did, but I might be conflating that memory with a more recent memory of her laughing really, really hard at something Dwight said/did in The Office.
• Beverly Hills: 90210. Confession: I most definitely was not allowed to watch this show. This was one of the shows that I would watch if my mom wasn't home (or out of the room). It seems so silly now, but I was very curious about such hip teenagers when I was experiencing the awkwardness of middle school. I also thought Jason Priestly ("Brandon") and Luke Perry ("Dylan") were very handsome. If I was "sneaking" a show like this one (or The Jerry Springer Show or Ricki Lake or Saved by the Bell) or I always had to quickly change the channel if someone walked into the room.

Did anyone else watch these shows? What were the television shows that you were allowed to watch, and what were the shows that you were forbidden to watch?

Diablo Lake: Thunder Knob Trail

 
Last weekend we went camping in the North Cascades. J's co-worker recommended that we visit Diablo Lake, and I'm so glad that we went on this recommendation. Diablo Lake (and a lot of the water in this area) has some of the prettiest, bright-bluest water that I have ever seen. One of the signs near Diablo Lake explained that the nearby glaciers deposit "rock powder" in the lakes, which accounts for the vibrant color.

We hiked to an overlook of Diablo Lake by taking the Thunder Knob Trail. This was a beautiful hike, but it pushed Sam to his limits on that particular day. The trail was about 1.8 miles long one-way (and we hiked to get to the trailhead, so we probably went about 2 miles one-way). Even though the elevation gain was only 635 feet, it was still a long distance for his little legs. We had to walk pretty slowly, but he was able to hike to the top by himself. And, luckily, there were a lot of benches along the trail. Anyhow, despite Sam's whining and constant requests for "bweaks," we finally made it to the top.

Colonial Peak is visible from this trail. Unfortunately the hiker who took this picture for us didn't quite capture the peak in the shot.

Sam was thrilled when we came upon the lake. He stopped in his tracks and shouted, "OHMYGOSH! IT'S THE LAKE! I CAN'T EVEN BELIEVE IT!" J and I praised him for being able to do the hike all by himself, and you could tell that he was really pleased with his accomplishment. And then, as we sat and looked at the pretty water, he said in a sweet voice, "Sorry I stopped so many times." J and I both assured him that it was just fine. We were just glad that he kept going.

This is a shot on our way back down, near the end of the hike (not too far from the trail head). I wanted to capture the diversity of this trail. There are a lot of mossy areas in the middle part of the hike, and then some dry and exposed areas (with completely different vegetation) near the summit. And then, in this picture, you can see that there is an area that is completely covered with rocks. It looks like an old riverbed. I wonder if the Diablo Dam caused this river to dry up?

We camped at the Colonial Creek Campground, which is right on the water of Diablo Lake. In fact, the Thunder Knob trail head is just across the street from the campground. It costs $12 per night to stay here, and the sites are available on a first-come-first-serve basis. We were lucky enough to get one of the sites near the water.

This was the view from our campsite that evening.

We'd love to come back and explore more of this area another time. J is curious about the Ross Lake Resort, and we both think it would be fun to take the ferry between Diablo Lake and Ross Lake. We did have time to go on the Happy Creek Nature Trail before heading home - it's a fun 1/3 mile boardwalk loop which goes through some old forest growth. But I noticed a lot more trails in the area (even a trail to the Happy Creek Falls), which also look fun.

Cascade Falls in Moran State Park (Orcas Island)

 Last month my dad and siblings came to the Northwest for a visit. It was fun to spend time with them. We spent a few days in Portland and Seattle, and then went to Orcas Island for the last few days of their vacation. While we visited Moran State Park (which is an amazing place!), a few of my siblings and I hiked to Cascade Falls. We got on the trail head next to the parking area for Cascade Lake, and the hike was less than a mile to the falls.

This was a nice short hike, and I think that I could have brought Sam along with us (even though Sam had a fun time swimming in Cascade Lake while we were gone). The trail traverses directly and quickly across the mountainside, without any switchbacks, which is nice. If anyone is hiking in Moran State Park with small kids, I would definitely recommend this hike.

Or, if you don't feel like hiking, you can drive up to the top of Mount Constitution (also in Moran State Park) for a simply amazing view of the Puget Sound!

Movies from My Childhood

For the past week or so, Sam has asked to watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory every day. I'm much happier that he watch this show than some of the superhero shows that are available on Netflix. I've enjoyed having him watch this show anyway, since it feeds my own nostalgia. I remember watching this show as a kid (along with The Wizard of Oz and lots of the old musicals), whenever we visited my Grandpa T and Grandma J. Since we weren't allowed to eat very much sugar in my house, my siblings and I especially liked watching the opening credits. All of that chocolate!

As a result of this new Willy Wonka phase, I've been reminded of the other shows that I liked to watch as a kid. Whenever I associate movies with my childhood, I usually think of these:

• Mary Poppins (When we used to live in Los Angeles, I remember watching the a scene of this movie when an earthquake happened. I remember feeling the ground rumble at a point in the movie when there was a close-up of Julie Andrew's face when she was clad in the white hat).
• The Ten Commandments (I could probably quote this movie verbatim. This movie, along with the next four ones in the list, were some of the only things that we were able to watch on Sundays.)
• The Genesis Series (This is from "The New Media Bible" which came out in 1979. The Book of Luke was also filmed by this same director, John Heyman, and the footage eventually became the Jesus movie from 1979).
• Jesus of Nazareth
• The animated videos by "Living Scriptures"
• Saturday's Warrior
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
• Bedknobs and Broomsticks
• Pollyanna (I don't think that we ever owned this movie, but we rented it enough - and watched it at my grandma's house - that I still associate it with my childhood.)
• The Parent Trap, with Hayley Mills
• Freaky Friday, with Jodie Foster (The opening credits and this "body swap" scene are so familiar!)
• Candleshoe, with Jodie Foster (This scene with David Niven is quite fun!)
• The Shirley Temple Collection (Really, any Shirley Temple movie reminds me of my childhood. I remember that we had one VHS tape that highlighted a couple short films, including "Kid 'In Africa" and "War Babies." I also really loved the film The Little Princess.)
• The Buttercream Gang
• Split Infinity
• Girl of the Limberlost
• The Incredible Mr. Limpet
• Anne of Green Gables
• The Narnia series by Wonderworks (The trailer for "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is available online.)
• The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe cartoon (1979)
  

What movies do you remember from growing up? J has a completely different list than mine; I never even watched his favorite movie, The Karate Kid, until I was in college.

Rosa Parks vs. James Blake (Times Two!)

I'm in the middle of reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. I've thought a lot about myself, J, Sam and my friends while reading this book. I score straight down the middle on the Myers-Briggs personality test (half-introvert and half-extrovert), but J is almost completely introverted.

The book is really interesting, and I'm especially intrigued about how the Culture of Personality developed in the 20th century (as opposed to the focus on inner virtue and character in the 19th century). It makes sense that our culture has idolized movie stars for almost a century; these film stars seem to embody the Culture of Personality that has been upheld for about that long. Oh, and I also think it's interesting how Cain suggests, "From an evolutionary perspective, introversion must have survived as a personality trait for a reason" (p. 15). I like thinking about introversion and natural selection!

While reading, it has been obvious to me that Susan Cain holds Rosa Parks in high regard. Rosa Parks, an introvert, is introduced in the first page of the book, and she has been mentioned a couple other times (and I've only read about sixty pages so far!). (The continual references remind me a little bit of how Joanna Brooks talks a lot about Marie Osmond in Book of Mormon Girl. Is it popular for recent nonfiction books to somehow "anchor" themselves around certain historical/cultural figures?) Anyhow, Cain wrote this story about Rosa Parks which I found especially interesting. Although this anecdote doesn't deal too much with introversion, I think it's interesting that Rosa Parks had two separate run-ins with the bus driver James Blake:

"Not many people know that twelve years before her showdown with the Montgomery bus driver, [Rosa Parks had] had another encounter with the same man, possibly on the very same bus. It was a November afternoon, in 1943, and Parks had entered through the front door of the bus because the back was too crowded. The driver, a well-known bigot named James Blake, told her to use the rear and started to push her off the bus. Parks asked him not to touch her. She would leave on her own, she said quietly. 'Get off my bus,' Blake sputtered in response.

Parks complied, but not before deliberately dropping her purse on her way out and sitting on a "white" seat as she picked it up. 'Intuitively, she had engaged in an act of passive resistance, a precept named by Leo Tolstoy and embraced by Mahatma Gandhi,' writes the historian Douglas Brinkley in a wonderful biography of Parks. It was more than a decade before King popularized the idea of nonviolence and long before Parks's own training in civil disobedience, but, Brinkley writes, 'such principles were a perfect match for her own personality.'

Parks was so disgusted by Blake that she refused to ride on his bus for the next twelve years. On the day she finally did, the day that turned her into the 'Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,' she got back on that bus, according to Brinkley, only out of sheer absentmindedness" (Cain, p. 58-59).

Historical Halloween!

The Wishcraft Costumes catalog arrived at our house a few weeks ago. Sam and I have poured over these costumes several times, almost on a daily basis. Naturally, Sam loves all of the superhero costumes. I love all of the historical costumes. If I had a little girl, I would buy her the Empress Josephine costume or the Marie Antoinette costume in a heartbeat. If only they made those costumes in adult sizes!

Wishcraft does make some other historical costumes for families, though. My absolute favorite is the "Vampires of Versailles" family costume. (How can you turn down a costume with a name that awesome?!?) Or, as a backup, I wouldn't mind if J and I were Victorian ghosts.

"Vampires of Versailles"

"Ghostly Adults"

Unsurprisingly, these historical costumes are too pricey for merely trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. (They are actually rather expensive, with each adult costume marked somewhere around $140 to $200.) I almost want to throw a posh Halloween party, just so I'll have a reason to wear something this awesome...