New Beginnings in 2016

2016 was a bit of a transition year seeing Mr. Bourget drop away from the expedition and not quite having Mr. Arsenault rejoin yet. This year Ms. Kelley Georgianni came with her boundless energy and enthusiasm along with Ms. Petrie as female chaperons and I took the helm all on my lonesome self. We also stepped away from the Great Wolf on our return (as mentioned in the previous year) which I thought may be a point of contention given that we have so many brothers and sisters who've gone on the trip; tradition is kind of a thing now. But it ended up not being too much of a big thing and we decided to stop in Seattle at the Pike Place Market instead (new traditions need a beginning) and then head up to Lynwood for our last night's stay. Speaking of tradition, this year saw my daughter (Zoë) come along for her second time (this was her grad year at Vanier and she had previously joined the second trippers nine years earlier).

I must admit I was a bit concerned about the health and longevity of the trip as our numbers were at the lowest they'd been in a really long time. This year just 27 students came along which is still a relatively decent number but it made the bus feel kind of empty. We've always given the students a fair amount of latitude on the trip (with a healthy expectation of maturity) so even when we had a full bus there was still a gap between us. This time there was both a physical and mental barrier and that just felt kind of weird.

Even though the top 1000 feet of the mountain was obscured by clouds the weather held and the students got a good view of Saint Helens. All was not smooth however, as this was the first year that we had a cave accident. One of our group of students banged his head at the end of the lower caves and suffered a small concussion. Ms. Georgianni and Ms. Petrie were on it right away and all was well. It seems odd that it took this long for a bump, or cut, or sprain or bruise. We've been lucky to avoid this for so long, so it was really good to have immediate assistance in the cave.

I haven't really talked much about Kelso, Washington which is odd because it is the staging ground that we use for our expedition (north to the JRO and south to the Ape Caves). Kelso is a really nice accommodating town. We've always experienced pleasant hospitality and it's easy enough to get around. We walk when we're there because we stay on the east side of the I-5 and the restaurants and Three Rivers Mall are on the west side of the I-5. There's Tam O'Shanter Park and the Coweeman River to walk next to our hotel which is a bit of a reprieve from being on a bus all the time. It's quiet and a good place to rest our heads.

When we stayed in Lynwood I had a person approach me on the Sunday morning at the hotel. She asked if I was "responsible" for the teenagers. You can only imagine what was going through my head at that point right? Panic set in, but she wanted me to thank the group. She had a young son that wanted to swim the previous night, but was a little afraid of the big kids in the pool. She wanted me to know how impressed and thankful she was that the teenagers (our group) invited the young boy to come in the pool to play Marco Polo with them. The kid had a great time and our group made him feel welcome and included him as a part of them. This, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the reasons why I love doing this trip.

An awesome game of grounders saw our grade 12's invite some young ferry travelers to join them. Look at the air time Chase got below :)

The problem with shifting travel from the Olympic peninsula to the I-5 is Seattle rush hour traffic. We always seem to hit the Seattle-Tacoma-Olympia corridor around the dinner time rush.