Day 7 - On Land Recreation and alternate uses of teapots; Rod

It was a day of recreation for Quijote crew.  It started with a marathon sleep-in.  Bob and I had a day long hike in mind that the books described as steep, slippery, and difficult - just what we needed to shake our limbs out of a week of lethargy.  Since the route was described as a couple of hours each way, there was clearly no need to get going early.  We slept in, had a leisurely breakfast, and relaxed the morning away.  Then discovering that the day was getting away from us, we mustered quickly and Kay ferried us to shore.

Charging up the trail, it started off easy, then disappeared. We continued following what trail remained but it kept getting steeper until we found ourselves hanging off a moss covered wall with dead trees and decaying roots as our only hand holds.  A faint path clearly forged ahead, but my inner voice was telling me we were off route, following others who had no inner voice.

We turned around, worked our way back, and found the real trail, wide and lovely.  As advertised, it was steep in places, and certainly strenuous, but anyone who is accustomed to climbing in the Cascades with a good pair of boots would not find it difficult.

After an hour and a half we found ourselves at the top of the trail where the remains of a log cabin rested next to an impressive waterfall.  Bob drew my attention to tree scars and devastation from rocks that come down from above.  He noted that it wasn’t a very smart place to build a cabin.

Returning to the boat an hour or so later, it was sunny and warm.  We jumped at the chance to do laundry and take showers.  Each of us started with a teapot full of hot water and added it to a bucket with enough cold water from the stern shower to give us a bucket of warm water.  We lathered up and scrubbed ourselves and a weeks worth of dirty laundry, then hung the laundry on the life lines to dry in the sun and handed the bucket off to the next person.  There is a hot water heater on board that is warmed by the engine or shore power, but since we hadn’t used the engine or had the luxury of shore power for a couple of days, the tea pot method worked nicely.