First Trip Home in Over a Year!!!

I got back from a few weeks in America about two months ago and I am just now getting around to writing this.  My cousin got married in January in San Francisco so they had a reception at our cabin in central Washington for their friends and family up there.  I also got to see my nephew, Jaxon, for the first time since he was a month old.  So here are a bunch of random pictures:

My mom has always wanted to go to the Lavender Festival in Sequim, Washington, out on the peninsula.  Mom, her friend Yvonne and her granddaughter Zoey and I went out there.  It is not the manliest festival I have ever been to, but it was fun. 

Just to explain my cabin: when I say ‘cabin’ I assume people have one of two images pop into their heads.  The first is a manufactured log cabin that is pretty much a house with a few trees nearby; the other is a small hunting shack that could follow apart at any moment.  Well, it is neither of those.  The story, if I am remembering it correctly, is that during WWII my great grandpa Vic bought scrap metal and then resold it to the government.  He heard that a sawmill in central Washington was going out of business.  He offered to buy the metal bits but was told the whole company was for sale.  So he bought it, like you do.

The mill was started in 1906 (I think) and a town sprung up around it (for my British friends imagine Bourneville in the mountains, and on a smaller scale).  Basically, Gandpa Vic bought a town.  When great grandpa bought it there were houses for families, bunkhouses for single male workers, a store/company office, a one-room school house next door to the school master’s house, a butcher’s shop, a mill pond for floating logs, a railroad running through the town and, of course, all the buildings and machinery used for the mill.  The mill burnt down a few times, each time being rebuilt but smaller, until the last time it burnt, sometime in the 80’s. 

As the different families moved away my family gave the empty cabins to other family members and family friends.  Some of the cabins, like my aunt’s, are composites of different cabins and bunkhouses, moved across the camp and spliced onto a different cabin.  There is a river that runs on side of the property.  Every Spring when the snow melts the river bed fills with water and new channels are carved.  Once the water recedes the deeper channels still run with water and we pick the best to use as a swimming hole.  We then make a small damn to make the water a bit deeper (usually the deepest part is around one and a half to two feet deep); we call it the ‘crik and it I the centre of the Cabin Creek social scene. 

On a good Summer day our schedule can go like this (and did, while I was there): wake up; have breakfast either at your own or at grandma’s or Jenny and Koko’s (Jenny is my aunt and Koko is her husband, who used to own a fantastic restaurant in San Francisco before retiring); maybe do a few chores or drive to town to go to Safeway for groceries; then get together and walk to the ‘crik; Once at the ‘crik we sit on chairs in the water, drinking beer, splashing ourselves with water to stay cool (or just dunk ourselves…remember the water is from the mountains and is take-your-breath-away cold), eating peanuts and talking.  This goes on until the sun disappears behind the trees (this summer that was around 5.30pm). 

This year we found a much deeper swimming hole about five minutes up stream from the one we usually use.  It was really nice to be able to actually swim in the water, as opposed to sitting in knee deep water.