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This week, Jameson and I went to Naturalist + Survival Camp. We made carvings, did archery and shot blow guns, foraged and made tea from what we found, and flinted arrowheads. After camp, we went to the river to cool off.

We jumped in over and over.

On Friday, we celebrated the 4th by going rock climbing at Smith Rock.

The rope was red and white and my clothing blue…so sort of festive!

For dinner we had bison burgers with duck fat fries. The Mother found it amusing that our 4th of July feast was bison burgers with American cheese on English muffins with a side of French fries :).

I was in charge of dessert. I made fruit and yogurt cups,

topped with appropriately colored whipped cream.

On Saturday Jameson and I went mountain biking. We snacked frequently.

We also tried very hard to evade The Mother’s bothersome picture taking, but she always caught us.

14 miles later, we hadn’t had enough, so we headed to the skills park to jump things.

When we got home, it was time to start the cherry harvest. Our tree is positively bursting with fruit.

So far, we’ve picked 13 of these buckets. About 39 pounds of cherries. There are still many, many more to pick.

On Sunday, we hiked Iron Mountain. About 20 years ago, The Bigs hiked it with Nana.

It was a gorgeous hike with amazing wild flowers (which you can’t really see in this picture)

and terrific views.

After that, it was time to go to Camp Tamarack for the week. Here is the swimming area.

The fire pit and stage. Each cabin has to put on a skit.

The mess hall.

The ‘tree’ cabins.

I am in the Douglas Fir cabin.

This is what I will do each day.

This is what I look like when The Bigs promise my best friend will go to camp with me, but his mom doesn’t get him signed up in time and I am alone.

On Friday, we headed to the Ochocos for a bikepacking trip near Big Summit Prairie. Here I am just before heading out:

We had beautiful weather and a beautiful ride. I was an animal, as usual, and powered through 50 miles and 4k feet of climbing no problem.

We saw a bunch of cool old cars braving the washboards on the gravel roads.

We found a nice campsite next to a creek.

On our second day of riding, we saw a lot of wildflowers.

When we finished our ride, we found a great campsite for our camper.

On Sunday, we went for a hike on Lookout Mountain, where we saw the Motherlode cinnabar mine:

The hike was great, though the expected 7 miles turned out to be more like 10 (to be expected when you’re dealing with The Bigs), and there were loads of wildflowers.

They don’t show up well in the photo, but we could see ten Cascade volcanoes from the top.

Climbing wall for gnomes?

Nan and Pop where here so we went to Smith rock.

On Tuesday we went to the High Desert Museum and saw the ‘Raptors of the Desert Sky Show’ which was amazing.

The next day we went mini golfing. Pop won, but I got my revenge.

On their last day we went to a Mexican restaurant for lunch and then to the go-karts. The go-karts were closed, so we played another round of mini golf which I won!

Another mural for Bend visitors to find.

While they were here, Nan and Pop cooked, cleaned, and helped us get caught up on some much needed gardening.

I made shrimp scampi for dinner, yum! You’ll notice Nan and Pop took the warm weather with them. It was 50 degrees F at dinner!

On Saturday, I helped Dad with a tire rack project

This week, I have outdoor climbing camp, but it doesn’t start until Tuesday. The weather warmed up Sunday, so we packed up the camper and headed to Trout Creek for some fishing.

Nan and Pop are in the house! We have been busy. Pop and I built a raised bed. We planted gold nugget cherry tomatoes.

On Saturday, we celebrated Pop’s birthday at the Sisters Rodeo. Nan and Pop tried out a few saddles but decided not to participate in any of the rodeo events.

Afterwards we celebrated with the traditional birthday steak and pesto pasta and then finished up with homemade ice cream sandwiches.

The next day we went to the Old Mill for coffee

then up to Elk Lake for some paddle boarding.

Costco sells $100 gift cards to a local Thai restaurant for $75. We got them on sale for $60, so we went to Noi Thai this week. I had the clay pot shrimp with glass noodles:

Mom had the spicy eggplant:

and Dad had the tamarind duck:

I built a speaker out of paper this week.

It works!

Jay was in Portland for a conference last week, so we met up in Hood River. Dad and I both got two days of windsurfing in.

Here I am working on getting into the footstraps:

Mom and I went to Ferment to drink Kombucha and beer while Dad was out sailing:

We stayed right down the street from Merle, the spurred African tortoise:

We also got to see Ben Webster at his son Max’s high school graduation party:

Only new food this week was flourless banana pancakes:

Check out these stairs. Pretty cool! Guests to Bend should see if they can spot them as they take in the sights.

On Saturday, we hiked part of South Sister for some…skiing. Yes, skiing.

It was a beautiful day and the snow was great.

We were skiing above Moraine Lake. It is starting to thaw. The blue of the water was a brilliant turquoise.

Also blue, my get up. My take on matching is to make sure I am wearing all of the same color. Usually blue.

When I got home, I designed and built a sail scooter…

and a morse code machine that worked!

On Sunday, we went rock climbing at Smith Rock with Riley and Dallas. It was awesome.

I won two gift certificates to Mountain Burger in the Pole Pedal Paddle, so we went and used them this week.

When the weekend came, we loaded up the camper and headed out east to Spray, OR (pop. 145) for the Spray Rodeo.

We camped on the John Day River.

I did some fishing,

and some swimming,

and some marshmallow roasting.

I slept well in my new bunk:

On Sunday, we went for a bike ride. It was beautiful, though a bit tough.

The last climb kept going and going. I took some breaks:

On Monday, we stopped at the Painted Hills National Monument on the way home for a short walk. Papa should remember this view:

We made it home just in time for my riding lesson. I rode Jack this week, and we did a lot of loping.

This week, Dad made a recipe from The Mother’s new cookbook. Porchetta chops ( pork chops wrapped in pancetta and seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic, orange zest, fennel fronds, sage, and rosemary)

and he served them with a fennel salad and green beans.

Big week this week. I started it out with some horseback riding – and some poop shoveling!

It was Pole Pedal Paddle weekend. This year Dad and I raced together in the Family Pair category. Dad started things off with the alpine ski.

He passed me the timing chip, and I was off on the Nordic ski. I hammered right from the start and just started dropping people.

Here I am coming up to the finish. Notice all the adults close behind me.

Now notice that, not but 20 yards later, I have completely dropped them. I passed the chip to Dad, and he took off on his bike, racing toward town.

Once Dad got to Bend and tagged me, I was off on the run. I ran fast. Really fast (8 min and 24 sec miles).

When I finished the run, I tagged Dad, and he was off on paddle leg. Would someone please tell this fool that paddle boards are not fast.

After the paddle, all that was left was a sprint to the finish.

We won our category. By a lot. And, we got mugs! Our team name was “The Manimal and his Dad”. Good name.

For being the fastest Family Pair, we also won a prize bag filled with hundreds of dollars of gift cards and goodies. I was most excited about the gift certificates to Mountain Burger.

The Mother was most excited about the goodie bag.

That evening I set up a celebratory PPP bar:

Sunday, we went mtn. biking. It was cold.

After biking, we went to my school’s fundraiser at a new park in town.

The best part was the super cool bouldering area in the park – although the soft serve sweetened with manuka honey was pretty darn good.

Dad and I bought The Mother a new cookbook for Mother’s Day. Yup. You guessed it – that means new meals. Maybe ones we might not like. This week didn’t look great but was yummy – mostly. Za’atar Tofu Bowls (not photogenic). ..roast carrots, turnips, and broccoli, za’atar seasoned tofu, white beans, with radishes and shredded beet garnish.

It is spring time on the river walk. Goslings everywhere.

Next week I will do the Pole Pedal Paddle with Dad. I will do the Nordic and run legs (the race is a downhill ski followed by a Nordic ski, then a bike, run, paddle, and sprint. We practiced the Nordic leg. Because it was Mother’s Day, I let the Mother keep up.

There is still a lot of snow, but it is disappearing fast. I could ski right onto this chair only a few weeks ago:

Afterwards we went for coffee. Thank you Nan and Pop.

For dinner we took The Mother to the Yacht Club for a reuben. They were out of reubens but thankfully there were cubans.

I went with pepperoni pizza.

This week we made two lime and two bean salad.

We planned to go skiing on Saturday, but when we woke up – it was raining at the mountain and in town. We canned the plan to ski and headed to the rock gym. But you can only climb for so long – or The Bigs can only climb for so long. So after lunch – it had stopped raining – so we headed to the park for some basketball,

a game of catch (and some hitting practice),

and a little soccer thrown in for good measure.

Upside to the rain? Flowers. Check out these trees.

Sunday morning it was cold…but the thermometer at the mountain kept climbing – so we packed up the car and headed out for a ski. Jameson met us there. It turned out to be a pretty great ski morning – followed by a soccer game.

This week, Dad made shrimp and chickpeas with chermoula,

and I made Vietnamese pork tenderloin.