planetruth: A Break-in of the New Camper!!

We decided to break the new trailer in over the weekend. It was a fun trip. It rained some, but all-in-all was really good.

We went to Iron Creek Campground, which is about 12 miles south of Randle, Washington. On Saturday it stopped raining and we decided to go try and see Mt. St. Helens. Cora has never seen it for various reasons, some of which she claims is a curse, but suffice it to say she hasn't seen it. I had hoped to disprove that "curse," however, as we reached the turn-off it turned out that the road was closed due to snow...so her "curse" holds...for now. We turned around and stopped at Iron Creek Falls. A place we visited about 15 years ago. We have had a picture of Cora and I standing in front of those very falls for all of our marriage. Now we have something to replace it with!

We did a little exploring down stream and we found a little cave. By little I mean it was about 3-4 feet wide and up to 6 foot tall and about 15-20 feet deep. It was pretty cool. "Smooky" as Chloe once described. Chloe and I explored by the light of my iphone...since we did not know a cave existed there and left the flashlights in the car.

Not finished with our day, we decided to go see ANOTHER cave after our picnic. We had to use hot dog buns for sandwiches because I might have forgotten to put the bread in the trailer...oops.

We traveled back the way we had come and took a right and drove up and up the side of a mountain. Finally we reached a sign that said "Layser Cave." we took a trail that the internet said was 800 feet of easy hiking...turned out it was nearly straight down...okay, maybe for young FIT people it was easy, but yours truly has not been fit for awhile and it winded me a bit. It was a larger cave, probably 30 or more feet in depth. It was at some point in the dim, distant past, around 4000 years ago inhabited by native peoples who used the cave for butchering deer. At least, that's what the placard says at the mouth of the cave. Pretty neat, really.

More recently, people have used the cave for a campfire apparently.

Chloe LOVED the trail, running up and back to her oxygen deprived parents with apparent ease.

Back at camp, we enjoyed some nice lazy afternoons and evenings. We roasted some marshmallows and a few hot dogs. At one point Chloe handed me a roasted marshmallow that she had eaten the skin off of and it immediately stuck to my hands. She was immediately occupied by putting a new one in the fire. I was left with a sticky ball of goo. I went to fling it in the fire and was only rewarded with it sticking to my hand, and then the camp fire grate, then, finally desparate and accompanied by Chloe and Cora's giggles I flung it one last time. It landed square on Chloe's newly roasting marshmallow in the fire...Chloe almost busted a gut. My misfortune is her comic relief.

I took several photos. I did not have the camera with me all the time though so I missed our snail hunt. We managed to find 6 large terrestrial snails. Chloe invited a few to spend the night in her critter keeper which was purchased especially for campground use. The snails really had a taste for lichen.

I captured this photo and promptly fell in love with it.