A Month of Lakes

     I have been having too much fun to update this blog.  In the past three weeks, I have visited more lakes that I have in the past two years; been swimming, hiking, cliff-jumping, and camping... plus had a huge garage sale and sold basically everything.  Thankfully we still have a couch, which I am making use of right now, although I sold the tea-kettle, and hear no end of complaints from our prayer team guys... apparently they can`t handle tea out of a soup pot for the next two months.  TWO MONTHS!!! I know, you read that right, it is now less than two months before we head off to YWAM.  Seriously though... I`m not sure my life could get more fun that it has been this month! 

      

 Let me tell you a few stories... 

       One week we went to Woodsman three times.  It became a ritual, Z gets up from naptime at 3:30pm, then we`d put him in the car, along with some supper, towels, and our friends Juno and Jacob, and we`d be off to the lake.  Melissa is another friend here at camp, who has a car, so she started filling up her car with friends every afternoon too, and we`d all go together.  Melissa was a fearless swimmer, and convinced me to stop being afraid of the water... so a bunch of us did a long-distance swim (maybe a km round trip), and swam to a different island where there is a cliff to jump off.  Melissa again challenged me to stop being afraid by jumping off the cliff first... then I did it!  Me, Melissa, and another friend, Ryan, jumped off at least three times each before we swam back to the Woodsman beach to dig into our healthy dinners of yogurt and cookies. 

      Z and Dave stayed at the Woodsman beach and played in the shallows the whole time.  Thankfully Dave doesn`t swim much, so I get to be in the water the whole time while he bonds with his son.  Works out for everyone.  

     Another week we got adventurous and started looking for new beaches and lakes to swim at.  We found quite a few... who knew Quadra was so big?!  

     We explored Morte Lake by ourselves, and I had to brave the water alone while Dave and Z played on the shore.  That lake was full of salamanders, which were quite easy to catch.  I put some in Z`s bucket, but he was scared of them and wanted them to “go away in the water”.  

Z getting ready for hiking. 

Then came our Newton Lake trip.  It deserves more space/pictures than the rest because it was more epic.  Our friend, Matt, really likes hiking, and so when we were all planning yet another Woodsman day, he said, “no, guys, I know a really good lake instead.”  So we all agreed, and packed a lunch and drove almost an hour to the trail-head for Newton Lake.  He said it was a 45min hike... which was untrue... especially since some of the girls were wearing flip-flops.  Haha...

Dave took Z in a carrier most of the way to the lake, but Z was determined to hike by himself for at least part of it!

After about 50+ minutes of walking through beautiful, serene woods we came to the lake... and discovered that Matt`s perfect swimming spot just happened to be on the side of a cliff.  I came into the clearing and said, “This trip was clearly planned by a single male.”  Nevertheless, we set up camp and Dave and Z got down to work playing in the mud, while I went swimming, praying that Z wouldn`t fall of the side of the rock face.    

The lake was AMAZING though, and we got a good distance swim in, by swimming across the lake to retrieve a log to play on.  Look closely at the center of this picture... that`s us swimming.  

The Newton Lake crew.  (From left to right:  Dave, Me, Melissa, Curtis, Annika, Jacob, Matt, and Roxanne, ... and Z, of course.)  

We got back to the cars in a lot less time than it took to hike into the lake... since it was DOWNHILL the way back... and loaded up into Bruce and Bessie (Yay for 1999 Toyota Corollas!), but not before Z got in a potty break.  

 

I had been thinking that this week would be a nice quiet week at home to prepare for Gramma`s arrival (She`ll be staying with us for July, yay!)... but then I decided to go with the gals on the overnight camping trip to Open Bay... 

Next blog post:  Bacon in the Rain, and other outtrip adventures.