The Nielsens: Olallie Lake

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Olallie Lake

This past weekend we accomplished our August backpacking to Olallie Lake. It was really hard to get motivated and go on this trip. We didn't even get in to pack up our backpacks until after breakfast Saturday morning. Peter even made a comment about just staying home. But in the end, we went. We did this hike years ago, so we knew the hike itself was easy. We arrived at the lake in just under two hours. Peter and I worked on setting up camp, while boys spent some time in the lake looking for crawdads. The last time we were at this lake was when the boys were around 3 and 4, and Clifford found a huge crawdad at that time. So their goal was to find one again on this trip. That kept them busy for a while. As it started getting later in the day, the wind picked up. We headed into the tent to play some card games and eat dinner before retiring for the night. Peter and I slept a good two hours before we were rudely awaken by a loud gust of wind.....and then that was the end of any kind of sleeping for either of us. The rain came next, which we were expecting. Everything would have been fine had we been in our normal tents, but Peter wanted to try out a new tent system on this trip, using our mesh tent liner and a tarp. The tarp itself, which had previously been used as a liner for the hole that was dug at the bottom of the slide in our backyard and filled up with water, had little holes throughout the entire thing. Peter tried his best earlier to patch it up the big ones with duct tape, but it didn't keep the rain from seeping through and dripping onto us. Had the tarp not had this issue, we would have been fine in this setup. What a headache. No sleep for either of us. We were too concerned about staying dry. The boys, however, slept like babies. It was a little before seven the next morning when another huge gust of wind jolted us upright. We had enough and started packing. We were out and back to our car by 10:15 am. On the bright side of all of this, we at least kept our goal. This coming weekend is Labor Day, which we'll be back out for our September trip. But at least this time the forecast is for sunny skies. Yay!

Peter couldn't remember if he locked the car or not, so he had to head back down the trial to take care of it. Boys and I continued on hiking. Here's Peter and I each taking our own selfies while on the trail.