Camping Somewhere other than Lily Lake

Well, after our long, wet, wild winter a lot of roads were flooded out in and around Mt Rainier and one of them turned out to be the road to our Lily Lake. Keith went out with his dad and found the road gated and when they explored they found water flowing over it in one place at least. So now we have to find out who to contact to see about getting the repair nearer the top of the list so we can go back to our 19 year tradition.

In the meantime we had to find a different place to go. Kevin and Shirley found a spot near Lake Chelan a few years ago so we decided to try that spot. It was a long drive, 3.5 - 4 hours, about 200 miles one way (LL is only 100 miles). So Rach couldn't convince Tony to go, since he already wasn't liking the idea of camping anywhere. But Denny and Heather and Kevin's family all wanted to go, even if it was only for 24 hours or less.

My drive out was eventful. I have hauled my little paddle boat on top of my car for years but we hit some wind next to the Columbia River near Entiat that was a lot stronger than anything I've experienced up til now. So when the boat was airborne and felt like it would lift the car right off the road one rope broke. I got off the road and we re tied everything and took off again. The wind continued to blow and the boat was airborn again when the thing it was tied to, the handle, just broke and the boat went flying right over the car. I drove over the rope and then watched in the rear view mirror while our little fun boat was dragged behind the car just a few feet before the rear handle broke and it slid off the road into the ditch. Fortunately half of our group was in a car following me (at a distance) so no other cars were involved. We stopped and checked everything out, the boat had a little road rash and the cover was a little torn but was otherwise fine. So I backed up to retrieve the rope and found it had wrapped around the rotor. We had to jack up the car and remove the tire to be able to wrestle the rope out. The shoulder was narrow so the friend doing the work was sticking out in the road so I told the other 2 useless bodies to go down the road and make sure the traffic moved away so he wouldn't get hit. They turned it into a dance and were taking videos of it. Soon we were back on our way again, this time I tied the boat down in the middle, throught the windows so it wouldn't become airborn any more. The rest of the drive went fine, we were only about 25 miles from camp.

So we found the camp but couldn't see any "awesome" site as Kevin described it. We threw up a tent and split up, one group drove around looking for something else and the other group went into the paddle boat to look for a jumping off spot with a camp site near it. We found the spot but it was a little hard to get to but we did it anyway, I drove my car down a nasty dirt road and scratched up the sides and determined I wouldn't move it again until we were leaving. It was so windy I didn't even dare try to start a fire. There actually was a fire burning a few miles away and we had lots of smoke and ash falling on our spot. So we all hit the hay pretty early.

The next day was warm and beautiful so we spent pretty much the whole day laying on floatation devices on the lake getting varying degrees of sunburn. In the evening another friend of Dane's showed up and we had a fire but my other boys didn't get there so I was by myself.

Saturday morning was pretty dull, the 4 kids now spent all their time together, driving to town a lot and I was left alone at camp - boring. I brought a book so I did some reading and then actually took a nap. When I woke up I decided to sweep out the tent, it was dirty when we set it up. While I was sleeping I heard some new voices and - hurray!! - it was Denny and his doggy Gage, pregnant Heather was still on her way from the car. He brought his quad so we went back to the car and unloaded and set up their camp. He got a new tent and it was HUGE!!! Probably about 8 x 16 and you can put up a wall and have a screened in patio-like section, all screen on one end. But HUGE!!! I told him he should bring it to Lily Lake and we can all sleep together. A couple hours later Kevin's family showed up. They set up camp and little boys played in the dirt. We did the usual camp stuff. Kevin and Denny made a project of breaking up the firewood and ended up using the quad to try to break the larger pieces, couple of numb-heads, very definitely brothers. Kevin threw a fishing line out at dusk and had bats hitting the line, they flew real low through camp too. The kids tried to find a hiking trail a few miles away and the driver was a typical 20 year old guy in a junk car and was driving 45 MPH on the dirt road and finally broke a sway bar but managed to get the car back 20 miles to camp. Then he had to find some phone service so he could call his daddy and ask him to come out with the trailer to take his broken car home, a 400 mile round trip. That evening it began to rain very lightly so in the morning when the little boys woke up I'm sure Shirley simply had had enough and didn't even want the boys to be out playing in what was now MUD so they packed up and left first thing. We all took our time breaking camp and I was the last one out. But as I was trying to get back out that nasty dirt road I got stuck and finally had to have Denny pull me out.

I sure hope Lily Lake is available again next year but if not, at least we're educated as to this other spot which could really be nice without all the excitement of this year.