Oregon Adventure - Tarzan Style

The kids were busy with summer camps the last two weeks, and hoped to finally return to their daily routine of eat, sleep, and play.  However, after some quick deliberation, the mom's decided to take one last road trip up to Oregon to visit the grandparents.  It was our last week of California summer before returning to Alaska, but we thought we could make the trip with enough time left to pack up our things and swim in the pool a bit.

 

The house in Oregon where my husband grew up.

My in-laws were ecstatic to have us visit and show us all the restoration work they did on their turn-of-the-century Victorian home.  I hadn’t seen it for several years.  They labored for months to strip the hardwood floors, hidden for decades under carpet, to their original glory.  They updated wallpaper and vinyl floors, painted cabinets, fixed cracked ceilings and windows, and breathed fresh life into the home where they raised four kids.  Now, they were preparing to sell it and relocate closer to their kids.  The transition was a strain on them and we hoped our visit would be a pleasant distraction.

 

Tree-2-Tree Aerial Adventure Park at Hagg Lake, Oregon.  Like Disneyland for mild thrill-seekers.

They took us to a place called Tree2Tree Aerial Adventure Park at Hagg Lake.  It touted itself as a zip line destination, but it was so much more! It offered six different obstacle courses, varying in elevation and difficulty, plus a little kid obstacle course and a strictly zip line tour.  The courses each contained approximately six or seven ‘obstacles’ and a couple short zip lines.  The obstacles were variations on a 15-40’ traverse from one tree platform to another with different steps and handholds (or lack thereof).  They used cargo nets, suspended logs, heavy gauge cable, wobbly wooden planks, and rope.  Access to the more difficult courses was based on height, so we prepped the two younger kids to think tall and stretch their little finger tips to the mandatory 6’6” mark.  All of the courses were contained in a half-acre area of tall trees and overlapped each other at multiple levels.  Each course required us to connect double safety clips to a metal cable (called the "oh-my-gosh" wire) at the beginning of the course, which was designed to not unclip fully until the end. Thus, we were deemed secure and largely left to our own devices, unless we fell and couldn’t pull ourselves to safety.  It was a fairly fool-proof system.

 

It takes bravery, even with the safety clips and the Oh-My-Gosh! wire.

Must. Watch. Your. Step.

Need a hand hold? Use the dangling ropes on the left.

 After the first traverse across a wiggly bridge of wake-boards, my youngest niece decided to join here Grandma as the ground crew.  The two mom’s, two older kids, and the grandpa forged ahead.  However, we were all re-evaluating our own prowess.  My son doubted himself.  He wore a permanent look of worry on his face and walked as if on eggshells.  When he asked to get down mid-course, I told him there was only one way to go, and it was forward.  Something finally clicked in the confidence part of his brain (probably prompted by frustration at my insistence that he finish) and he raced across a long, narrow plank bridge without even bothering to grip his safety rope.  After that, his confidence only grew.  He finished 5 ½ of the 6 courses by the end of the day.

 

He needed perfect timing to dismount this free ride.

Gives the term "balance beam" a new meaning.

This is one reason for the height limit.

Zipping down was his favorite part.

We each faced our own particular challenges during the courses: balance, grace, fear of heights or falling, self-doubt, physical ability, or simple anxiety.  I dared myself to get through as many obstacles as I could without grabbing onto the oh-my-gosh wire.  For most of the obstacles, the oh-my-gosh-wire was the only stable element, making it an attractive stabilizer on the more wiggly parts.  Some people never let go of it, but I won’t name names.  Frankly, we were all proud of each other just for finishing each course, cheering each other on, regardless of how the course was completed.  Completion was an accomplishment, period.

 

I challenged myself not to touch the safety wire above my head.

I confess.  I loved every bit of this.

Grandpa maybe needed to stretch his hamstrings before this obstacle.

I wonder if my sister-in-law realized how high she was?

As we progressed through the six courses, the obstacles became more challenging and the heights higher.  We all crossed obstacles that, at first, seemed impossible, or at least a cruel joke.  How exactly should one tackle a 30-ft tightrope wire suspended 20-ft above the ground, with nothing to hold on to except a series of dangling, knotted ropes on just one side and increasing space between each.  Approaching the obstacles was like sizing up a Rubik's cube with all the colors mixed up.  How exactly am I to go about this?

This obstacle was a toughy.

I'm  not sure which was scarier, doing it, or watching it.

The two kids and I were the only ones still eager to continue by the time we reached the sixth and final course, aptly marked with a Black Diamond.  This course was so challenging and the afternoon so far gone, however, that we had to get permission to begin.  We were informed, to our dismay that our allotted 3-hour time limit was up and we couldn’t go on.  It felt wrong to have come so far and not be able to go the whole distance.  We went to plead with the lead guide with the suggestion that we compliment his mustache in order to win him over.  I approached the young man in the orange shirt and red bandana tied around his neck, and begged for his mercy to let us finish.  The kids gave their most innocent and hopeful puppy dog looks as I explained that they had come so far that it was a shame to stop them now. Pleeeeaaase?  He told us the course was very difficult, much more physically challenging than the previous obstacles.  Our smiles widened.  Seeing that we were so determined, and that he had people staying late, he graciously relented.  I almost hugged him, but thought better of it and rushed the kids to the start.

Only three of us ascended the cargo net climb to the final course.

The first obstacle was a 25’ vertical climb up a column of cargo netting and a ladder.  As if hoisting ourselves up the netting wasn’t hard enough, we also hauled a safety rope contraption, which had so much tension that felt like carrying the dead weight of a toddler on my belt.  It was a true feat of determination, especially for the kids.  At the end of that first challenge, my son wisely chose to finish on a high-note.  He went with the bailout option of descending the final zip line of the Red course, which branched off after the cargo net, instead of forging ahead onto the Black.  I assured him I was terribly proud of him and we parted ways.  Then there were two. 

I am giddy to find out what the Black course has in store for my niece and I.

My oldest niece and I traversed another zip line and a wooden swinging bridge before arriving at a series of Tarzan swinging ropes.  The platforms on this course were much higher and only as wide as my feet were long.  My nerves became tingly.  I clipped into the safety line and slowly reached out for the dangling rope between the two platforms.  By extending one leg out behind me, I counter-balanced my weight enough to lean out and grasp the rope with my fingertips.  After a surprisingly easy hop, while clutching the rope with all my might, I landed safely on the other platform about five feet away.  The second rope swing was the same, but the third was missing the rope.  We had to jump.  The platform was not far away, but it was barely 12” wide.  I measured my leap, not too much, nor too little, and went for it.  My foot found the platform and my arms braced against the tree to stop my momentum.  Whew!

My niece completed the three Tarzan obstacles like a real Jane-of-the-Jungle.

The next obstacle was the most difficult of them all.  With faintly shaky legs we tackled a succession of smooth, round logs suspended like swings end-to-end across a 30’ span.  Each hung slightly akimbo to the other and increased in length from 5’ to 8’ long.   I finally relented to using the oh-my-gosh wire when my arms were not long enough to hold either one of the rope supports on the end as I inched across the log. Nothing about this obstacle was stable and it took the longest to traverse.  On the other side, we faced the final series of obstacles, called the Voodoo Triangle.  My niece decided, since it was optional, she would opt out. 

These super-smooth, swinging logs were the most difficult to navigate.

I eyeballed the three short spans of inventive challenges and decided I hadn’t come this far to quit now.  I scissor-stepped awkwardly across another set of independent swings, then tiptoed wobbly-legged over fifteen four-by-fours turned on end (again needing the oh-my-gosh wire for stabilization), and finally faced an obstacle I wasn’t sure I could complete.  

The beginning of the Voo-doo Triangle.

I summoned my inner child for the final monkey bar obstacle.

Five swinging handles dangled beside a zip line like trapeze-style monkey bars.  It had been far too long since my monkey bar days to feel confident that my handgrip could hold my bodyweight in motion, but the worst-case scenario was only a tiny drop and a zip line finish.  So, I wrapped my hand around the first plastic bar and shoved off.  Thankfully, the sweat and grime on my palms acted as a sticking agent on the warm plastic and I stopped worrying about slipping.  Mid-way I had to swing my legs an extra time, forward and backward, before making a grab for the next bar.  I could hear the gasps and high-pitched outcries of my family watching from down below, worried that I was about to fall.  My niece cheered me on from the platform ahead of me, “Only one more, Auntie!”  And then I was across.  It was a fantastic feeling.  I wanted to do it again!!

The Best Things in Life are Free

-continued from “Making Memories at Monterey Bay Aquarium”

Santa Cruz Boardwalk Beach.

My sister-in-law and I promised our kids that we’d spend an entire day at the beach.  After all, it was the reason we’d driven 300 miles south to Monterey Bay.  We woke on our third morning in the yurt, at Mount Madonna County Park, ate oatmeal with dried fruit and packed the car for our final full day in Santa Cruz.  We decided to return to the Boardwalk Beach, mainly because we knew right where the bathrooms were, but also because we liked it.  I also liked that it had the option of getting an order of sweet potato fries, if I really had a hankering.  All temptations aside, though, we hoped to get through this last day on the cheap.

My wallet was positively wasted away after the previous two days at the Boardwalk and aquarium.  It was as useless as an empty chip bag.  Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t regret a single dollar spent, because they bought us access to some fantastic experiences (well, maybe those five on the deep-fried peanut butter and jelly pastry).  Today, however, I hoped to make the most of the food we still had left in the yurt and the natural wonders of the ocean shore.  My hopes were not disappointed (and I didn’t even need the sweet potato fries).

Our squatter's camp on the beach, in front of the Boardwalk.

The moment we dropped all our gear onto the fine golden sands of the Santa Cruz Boardwalk Beach, the children skittered off like butterflies to their favorite flowers.  The girls went in search of washed up treasures, again, and my son began digging a hole, again.  My sister-in-law and I set up camp and settled into our chairs, comforted by their fascinations and the promise of a beautiful day at the beach.

The wind was constant and cold, as it had been on our prior day at the Boardwalk.  But, today, I chose my clothes wisely: long pants, shirt, sweater, insulated jacket, and a hat.  Even still, we had to stake our two large beach umbrellas into the sand as a wind barrier, which helped tremendously.  The rest of the afternoon floated by like a daydream.  We read our books; she, Anita Shreve’s The Pilot's Wife, and I, Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert. 

Periodically, we gazed out at the children romping, skipping, digging, finding, playing, building, and laughing.  I can’t adequately express the contentment I felt watching my son with his cousins, all of them happy and innocent in the world, following their little hearts’ desires from moment to moment.  They were absolutely free, like birds let loose from their cages.  I could detach from my mother role for a time and look at my boy as his own person, observe his playfulness, his ingenuity, his bursts of physical energy, and I felt I could know him better.  Like a spy gathering reconnaissance on her subject, I studied him.  He exuded spontaneity alternating with single-mindedness.  When he worked on his hole-to-nowhere, he was in his own world.  When the girls joined him, he included them easily, seamlessly.  As quick as a thought, he would jump out of his hole and run to the ocean.  He enjoyed the feel of all-out sprinting in brief bursts.  Then he stood ankle-deep in the surf, staring out at the sea, contemplating some unknown idea for just a minute before running back to resume his ‘beach engineering’.  The whole day went on like this: mom’s reading and observing our children or the landscape, kids…being kids.  Until everyone got hungry.

 

My niece made a Seaweed jumprope.

Sometimes, a girl needs a hole, too.

You're never too old to dig a hole at the beach (see gray-haired boy in the background).

The girl's created a Mer-man, with six-pack abs!

I offered to fix our lunch, partly because I needed a break from the beach wind, so I retreated to the Boardwalk parking lot and set up the Coleman stove and put the kettle on to boil.  It was a bit odd to set up a camp stove on the asphalt between two cars , attempting to be discreet, and prep our MRE-type meals with the tailgate open.  People kept stopping to ask if I was leaving. I waved them on and went back to looking busy by rearranging our picnic basket and waiting for the water to boil.  The small bit of embarrassment was worth it in the end.  We had hot buffalo chicken and southwest fajita filled tortillas right on the beach.  The warmth in our tummies fueled us for a couple more hours.

 

Buffalo-chicken with avocado...pretty good eats at the beach.

At the end of the day, my oldest niece and my son decided to take brand-new boogie boards out for a try in the waves.  The kids had gradually gotten wetter throughout the afternoon, playing chicken with the incoming waves and sometimes losing.  Getting fully submersed was the logical next step.  The waves crested perfectly just off shore and, after a little coaching, they got the hang of jumping just ahead of the curl and coasting on its turbulent momentum into the beach.  The strong undertow of the surf turned each wave brown with sand, and the kids too, but they reveled in their new game.  Their smiles drooped when we told them it was time to go home.

There ARE two kids in this wave.  Or, there was.

The sandy surf spits them out.

At last, they got the hang of it.

We packed up our wet, sandy kids and things and departed the beach just prior to sunset.  I felt full; not of nourishment in my stomach, but full of satisfying experience, of kids’ smiles.  They rode in the car in silence, lulled into a contented stupor by the day’s beach-y activities like eating too much turkey at Thanksgiving dinner.  That kind of fullness can be a rare thing, but it is especially rare and beautiful when it is had for free. What’s more, I got the very best thing, which is ALWAYS free, and that was the gift of seeing my child as himself.  His joy, his ideas, his movement, played out on a sandy stage in time – it cost me nothing and yet was a precious treasure.  Given space and access to the wonders of nature, I viewed his personality let loose, the choices he made with his own freedom, and it filled me with life.

This memory is a keeper.

Memory Making at Monterey Bay Aquarium

-continued from "Santa Cruz Scares Me."

Monterey Bay is a paradise for marine flora and fauna.

The next day, we descended from our mountain retreat and traveled south to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  From previous experience, I knew this would be another wallet-gouging all-day event.  But it had been almost seven years since I brought my little boy here as a five-year old and I was pretty sure he didn’t remember much.  So, I shelled out the $55 entrance fee and focused on the airline miles I was earning with my credit card and the meaningful experience I hoped would soon be forthcoming.

 

Touching is understanding.

Even these fish tanks need cleaning.

If you have never been to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I have one important bit of advise.  Get there as soon as it opens and plan to stay ALL DAY.  This is not only so you will get your money’s worth, but it’s also the only way to see everything without rushing through it. 

 

Wandering through the Aquarium's multiple themes inspires curiosity (take your time).

The kids enjoyed Sea Otter feeding time.

The exhibits at the aquarium had clearly evolved since the last time I’d visited.  They are clearly on the cutting edge of technology when it comes to engaging visitors in learning.  I’m an unforgiving critic when it comes to scientific interpretation, and I was honestly impressed by the variety and ingenuity of Monterey’s marine exhibits.  Long, curving, darkened halls were illuminated by various sized windows into habitat tanks and by moving digital images on the walls.  Some of the most interactive displays allowed visitor’s to influence the digital projections with dials, buttons, hydraulic-like pumps, and even their fingers.  Want to know what kind of plankton was floating by on the wall?  Touch it and it expanded to 5x its size with accompanying factoids.  Touch it again and it shrank back to its original size and floated on.  Other interactive exhibits let you draw a sea creature and watch it swim across the wall, or adjust a seahorse's camouflage to protect it from a roving predator.  

I think the next great innovation in interpretation needs to address visitors urges to take pictures.  It seemed that every person between the ages of 7 and 97-years old wielded a picture-taking devise with which they tried to capture the beauty of the exhibits (including myself, obviously).  Flashes from cameras were already a problem, indicated by the presence of signs directing visitors to not use them on certain exhibits.  Crowding was also a problem.  The desire to create a permanent keepsake of yourself, or a loved one, standing in front of a Giant Pacific Octopus or a Thresher Shark is simply ingrained in the modern human psyche.  Whether it was a cell phone, a point n' shoot, or a long-lensed SLR camera, each photographer seemed compelled (driven almost) to point their device at every swimming thing.  For many, the experience of the exhibits existed only through the viewfinder of their camera.  Once a satisfactory photo had been captured, they wandered off in search of the next subject.  This was a testament to the quality of the exhibits, but I wondered if it was also a hindrance to making deeper connections on a being-to-being level.  What's more, most digital cameras are not suited to taking decent pictures in such low light conditions.  I guarantee that most of the images captured that day were blurry, grainy, or otherwise poor renderings of the awe-inspiring sights their creators hoped to save.  I tried to step back and remember this by taking my time looking at each exhibit with just my eyes.  I absorbed each room and its theme, and then tried to make eye-contact (if they had eyes) with the inhabitants of the exhibit.  I searched for a more real experience.  I memorized as much as could in my own brain cells and then asked myself what that experience meant to me.  That is the ultimate goal of science interpretation: to engage participants in knowledge to the point of influencing their actions.

 

There are window's galore that allow glimpses into another watery world.

Find out what it's like to be in the center of a sardine ball.

The Weedy Sea Dragon is bedecked with amazing camouflage.

In my observation, the live creatures at the aquarium totally trumped technology when it came to fascination.  Inspired themes did their part to enhance the displays, but it was ultimately the natural state of those wondrous marine animals that really captured people’s attention.  My favorite was the bizarre, but totally beautiful, Weedy Sea Dragon.  It’s hard to imagine any human mind conjuring something so perfectly adapted to its environment, yet so otherworldly.  Unfortunately, another one of our most anticipated sights was missing from the exhibits.  Seven years ago, my son and I saw a Sunfish (Mola mola) for the first time and its alien looks burned indelibly into our memories.  We learned that these huge prehistoric-looking animals have to be specially trained for feeding, but they sometimes don't take to it.  In that case, the fish has to be released back into the wild before they get too big to move.  They can weigh over 1,000 lbs in the wilds of Monterey Bay and measure ten feet across; they reach up to fourteen feet and 5,000 lbs in other locations!  From tiny hatchling to humongous adult, they increase their size 60 million times over.  The aquarium had housed several Sunfish during the year, but had to release them all due to problems training them to be fed.

Photo of Sunfish is courtesy of Monterey Bay Aquarium website.

Despite the omission of the Sunfish, the irresistible enchantment of the aquarium enthralled our kids at every turn, to the point that we had to make a decision.  Did we let them linger as long as they want, but probably miss out on seeing the whole facility?  Or, did we keep them moving and ensure that they saw everything there was to see?  We opted for the latter.

 

Jelly's, like, are totally awesome, man!  Far out.

Sea-Nettles cause an irresistible urge to take a photo.

Egg-yolk jelly.

Except for a brief foray out of the aquarium to refuel our bodies with shrimp and chips at Bubba Gump’s, we spent the entire day inside the aquarium.  We finally dragged ourselves out the door as the overhead speakers announced “five minutes to closing.”  At my son’s request, we boarded the free downtown trolley and rode it the four blocks up Cannery Row to our parking garage.  

Ride the free trolley through Cannery Row in Monterey. 

That night, as the kids snuggled into their beds, with bellies full of delicious reconstituted freeze-dried blueberry cheesecake, I guessed that their dreams were swimming with all manner of glowing marine memories: Seahorse daddies, polka-dot jellies, underwater flying Manta Rays, playful Sea Otters, or a rainbow of tentacled marine invertebrates.  I cherished the motherly satisfaction of that hopeful thought, and deemed it priceless.