Camping with Nathan

Some weekend, a couple or few weeks ago, Nathan and I took a hike up to the Shindagen lean-to.  The following pictures are not really in order, but that doesn't really matter.  We had a great time until it started thundering and POURING down rain in the evening and into the night.  Even then, it wasn't so bad, but we did get wet and did NOT get the best nights sleep.

This is my favorite camping spot... though I do like the one in the mountain biking section of the park, too.  It was a bit warm that day.

Since we only hiked a few miles in, I treated it like car camping and even brought a few cans of one of my favorite session IPAs.

There's been so much rain here this summer that the fungus situation has been just marvelous.  I took LOTS of pictures of mushrooms and the like. Amanita farinosa I believe.

Indian pipe, a parasitic plant. Monotropa uniflora

Nathan snuck this picture of me taking pictures of fungus.  Probably more amanitas, here.  The woods were lousy with them.

Nathan set up his tent, and I was keen to try out my rain fly as a tarp.  Doesn't it look old school awesome?!

This is a picture of Nathan looking silly, because he was taking pictures of me taking pictures of fungus, so that;s what he gets.

More Indian Pipe.  Notice that they have no chlorophyll.  They get their sustenance by tapping the mycelia of fungus with their roots. The fungal mycelia are tapped into the roots of nearby trees and the two beings pass nutrients back and forth.  The fungi and the trees are, therefore, symbiotic.  The Indian Pipe on the other hand is simply a thief, returning nothing to the system.  Still, it's cool to see such a ghostly plant.

A bolete of some kind.  Too far along in its life cycle to be edible.

Hemlock varnish shelf fungus growing on a hemlock stump.  Some fungi are easier to identify than others.  Ganoderma tsugae

I thought Grandma Cressman would really like this mushroom log.  It looks like it was deliberately groomed and planted it was so perfect.

I almost knocked this over by accident.  Seriously.  Not with my mind, like it looks like I'm doing here, but still.

During the day the weather was so great.  We had a blast playing in the woods, hiking, gathering firewood, and exploring the river.

Jonas napped in lots of different spots.  It was great to be able to take him, and he really seemed to be glad to be a part of the trip.  He got so used to Nathan that there were a few times I left camp and he didn't follow, he just hung out.

I thought it would be cool to try a little tarp camping.  Although it wasn;t popular with ANY of my camping partners, the Megamid was close to my heart.  I thought this might get me back toward camping in a tipi.  The set up was pretty good for the afternoon, but the open ends and sides came back to haunt me when the clouds opened up.

I'm sad that I lost a few pictures when I tried to upload. There was a great shot of sarah fire campfire. In the evening, she came out to meet us and brought some hot dog buns and fixings for our T-burg grillers. We all sat around the campfire and cooked hotdogs and chatted and had a beer. It was lovely. But then the rain started. I walked Sarah out as the rain got heavier and ran and stumbled back to camp as it started to pour. Jonas and I crashed into the tarp and moved to the center while Nathan hunkered down in his tent. The rain got heavier and the thunder and lightning crashed. We were fortunate not to have Highwinds in the woods and no branches came crashing out of their trees. But the rain continued and continued until Rivers ran through our camp. I climbed into the bivy-sack that I brought to try to stay dry and was excited to find that my plan worked. That is, it worked for a while until we had catastrophic failure as the rain and river and water began to soak through the busy sack and into my sleeping bag. After a quick consultation, Jonas and I decided to abandon our camp and make a run for the lean too. We had a little scare as we got turned around in the pouring rain, but managed to find our way to the dry empty lean too. It wasn't the most comfortable camping, but we were both happy to be dry and out of the elements. In the morning we woke up and shared battle stories with Nathan who's tent zipper had failed to keep the rain out. Then our little troop headed home on a beautiful hike. All in all a great little adventure