Category Archives: travel

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Kitchen skills

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: cook.

I really do like to cook. Eating is a pleasure too and I am blessed with children, now young adults, who always liked to eat. No fussy eaters in our house! I wouldn’t allow sodas in the house and when we went to restaurants, they could choose soda as a dessert or a dessert but not both. I harped on the evils of sugar and television, at least, too much of either. We did and do eat chocolate.

This is my cousin’s cabin, at Lake Matinenda, from 2012. The earliest cabin is from the late 1930s and they all have pretty basic kitchens. We filter the lake water now but used to drink it straight from the lake. My family stayed in a tent mostly and my parents, mostly my mother, cooked on a single burner camp stove. Bless her! A lot of work! We all took part in the cabin work. Trash taken out by boat, filling water buckets, working with hand tools and cooking on burners. The propane refrigerator is much better than trying to function out of a cooler! It taught all of us good camping kitchen skills and we have family recipes for the lake stay.

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door to the past

For Norm2.0’s Thursday doors.

These are taken on a 2004 school trip to a pioneer farm and native american village site with a school trip. I don’t think I got a photograph of any of the cabin doors, but it was certainly an interesting trip. The parents chaparoned the kids, staying in the cabin over night. We all slept in sleeping bags on the floor. I did sleep, since I am lucky enough to be able to ignore noise. The kids got to dip candles, explore the cabin, explore the village, and were assigned the farm chores in the morning. My son was delighted by a young pig. I think the parents enjoyed it as well and were glad not to wash clothes using washtubs and a wringer.

students hanging dipped candles to dry
Dipping candles
student in vest, cowboy hat and bandana
dressing as a settler
students at pioneer cabin learning about curling iron that you heat in a fire
curling iron and other tools
two students in sun bonnets using washtubs outside a cabin, while two others watch
old style laundry
three students patting a sleeping pig
morning chores
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yep, yep, yep

My daughter and two friends and schoolmates at Mount Saint Helens at the end of eighth grade. And what do you think is happening? Present, facing the speaker, yep, it’s a teacher going over the rules. Let’s get on with it. We know the rules. Face forward, mind might be elsewhere.

Setting up camp.

picnic table in the woods with containers to set up camp
Group camp at St. Helen’s
shelters tied over tents for rain protection.
rain preparation
Teachers and annoying parent chaperones with cameras
Teachers and annoying parent chaperones with cameras
8th grade audience at park
audience for each other
Seven 8th grade girls performing a song they made up.
group song

All taken in 2012 on the end of the year 8th grade trip to Mount St. Helens, to get the students together before starting high school. Huge thanks again to the teachers, the parents and the teens too.

Mount St Helen's
Mount St Helens
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water doors

For Norm2.0’s Thursday Doors.

We walked on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Park while we were visiting Maryland and Virginia. It is 184.5 miles. I’ve biked it twice, starting at the West Virginia end and ending in Georgetown.

The locks that we went by were not functioning, but you can still see where the gates were. Those are doors to hold water back, aren’t they?

brick work at a lock on the C & O Canal
walls of a lock entry

Chesapeake & Ohio Canal
parts of the canal have water

The stones are worn where tow ropes ran.
lock with part of a gate in place
worn stone where tow ropes ran

Parts of locks are still present and some still are functioning.


This bridge building was used for flood control.

stone work with slot for flood control
bridge building

When the river was flooding into the canal, boards were lowered into the slots that diverted high water away from the canal and back to the river.


It was a beautiful day. We all enjoyed the sun.

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Next

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: segue.

My daughter and I hiked at Deception Pass yesterday. We went up Goose Rock. Neither of us had hiked it before and the views were fabulous. I only had my cell phone.

My van is dead, cracked head block, so now I want to move the tow to my scion. Then I can tow the little Panda Minimum trailer. It is becoming clear that we all need to reduce airplane travel as part of our carbon footprint, so I will explore my Washington State Parks.

Have a very happy New Year’s Eve: and be careful out there.