Adventures with Abigail & Nathaniel: 2024

Thursday, December 26, 2024

merry merry!

It was a cozy Christmas here! Kids and I celebrated on Christmas Eve and had a chill day opening presents, wearing matching jammies, cuddling with cats, enjoying gifts, and then Abby and I walked Richmond Beach and visited my fave tree while Nate was at swim practice (no rest for these high school swimmers!). A great day.

Saturday, December 7, 2024

student of the month

Very proud of Nate! Highlander of the Month for the music department. 💖

swimmer

High school swim team warmup suit! 💯💯💯

thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving crew for the win! So much good food, drinks, laughter, and people. And a very large, stubborn turkey. THANKFUL! We missed Kapena and Bridget, Alan, Jonah & Charlie.

camping crew

Pre Thanksgiving Clocktower / Sounders / Tamales gathering!

Thursday, November 21, 2024

bomb cyclone

A bomb cyclone rolled through earlier this week and blew a few branches out of our trees. Also knocked the power out for a while. We were less than 24 hours so lucky compared to some people who are at 48+ hours now. Electricity is pretty great. 💡

Sunday, October 20, 2024

august thru the eyes of your fav guest blogger.... ABBY

On July 31st, 2024, your blogger today (Abby 😘) was dropped off at her favorite place on earth, YMCA Camp Orkila! This blog post will feature photos and anecdotes of the four weeks that followed (07/31/24-08/27/24), within which I spent many hours and 120 nautical miles kayaking in the San Juans without any technology, people I know, or running water.

This is a picture of my group right after we'd finished our last paddle from Point Doughty to camp. We were greeted on the beach by many people- counselors, campers, previous counselors (my counselor Quinn from last year was there!), and some people's family members. They played music and cheered and people in boats honked horns as we paddled in in a straight line, our paddles in sync. From left to right, the top row is: Tristan, Annika, Cassius, Darren, Milo V., Abby, Elliot, and Khofi (Khofi was a stand in counselor for the last few days for my counselor Lucia who had to leave a little early to go back to school). The bottom row, left to right, is: Leisl, Ryan (my other counselor), Amelie, Aliza, and Milo L.

This is the map we used every day, the Leaders of the Day (we alternated throughout the trip) would strap these to their kayaks, with the route we'd planned out the day before using buoy data for tides and currents drawn on with grease pencil. The paddle depicted in this picture is our paddle from Satellite Island to Point Doughty on Orcas.

Our whole route was as follows: We started at Camp Orkila, Orkila to Sucia, layover on Sucia, Sucia to Patos, Patos to Matia, Matia to Clark, Clark to Doe, Doe to Obstruction (on Orcas Island), layover on Obstruction with a day paddle into Eastsound (downtown Orcas) and back, Obstruction to James, layover on James, James to Spencer Spit (on Lopez Island), layover on Spencer Spit with a walk into Lopez Village to take showers, Spencer Spit to Jones, layover on Jones, Jones to Turn, layover for 2 nights on Turn because we couldn't paddle due to thunderstorms, day paddle from Turn to Friday Harbor (on San Juan Island) and back, Turn to Griffin Bay (on San Juan Island), layover on Griffin Bay with a walk to American camp from the Pig War, Griffin Bay to Posey (this paddle was 23 nautical around the west side of San Juan Island! We left at 5:30 in the morning, took a 4 hour break about halfway through, then continued paddling and got to Posey at 8 in the evening), Posey to Stuart, Stuart to Satellite, layover on Satellite, Satellite to Point Doughty, and Point Doughty back to Camp Orkila!

We saw orcas three times!!! This was the third time we saw them, on that long paddle from Griffin Bay to Posey. We were handrailing San Juan, as close to the coast as we could be, and at times they were within 50 feet from us! There were about 10 of them, and we guessed they were hunting as they seemed to be moving in different directions.

I mentioned that we had to stay on Turn Island for 2 nights, that was because of this huge thunderstorm that came through! Cassius, someone in my group, took this photo as we were all lined up watching the storm near it's way towards us. We'd prepared for the storm, setting up our tarps (we didn't have tents!) with cans on the stakes to keep them secure, and stayed mostly dry throughout that very stormy windy night.

I made lots of watercolor paintings over the course of the trip, the first picture is on Clark Island, the scene I painted is in the background of the photo! The second picture is on Turn, I made the top painting and Aliza made the bottom. It was interesting to see how they differed due to our different styles because we were painting the same view.

This was a scene that was common over the course of the trip, many card games were played at many different picnic tables. Our top choices were Egyptian Ratscrew, BS, Gin, and Cambio.

This was a different picnic table use, the kitchen. Here I think we're making chicken curry, which made an appearance several times over the course of the trip. Cooking was unpredictable, cooking for 13 with just a Coleman and a couple Dragonfly's is difficult. Many pots of rice were burned, but after a day of paddling really anything tasted good. One of my favorite meals that we made were pancakes, I made these 3 times. We would put oatmeal in them to make them more filling and we got M&M's in a resupply one time and added them to the pancakes.

To wrap this up, here's some pictures of what we looked like out on the water. We would pack everything we needed into the boats in the morning, paddle to wherever we were headed that day, then unpack, set up, turtle boats, and sleep, all to repeat the process the next day. Our boats all had names: The Queen of Slay, G'Looks, 10 lb Salmon, Ernie the Oyster, Raccoons on Jupiter, and one unnamed boat that we, over the course of the trip, decided on naming "Bajazinga Blast". I made amazing friends throughout these four weeks, had so many new and challenging and fun experiences, and can safely call this August one of the best months of my life.

Guest blogger signing off!!

❤, Abby