The Lives and Adventures of the McCune Dickerson Family

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Aurora Speaks

We have been enjoying incredible summer weather here in Bellingham. Last Sunday we picknicked at one of our local beaches and shot this, which we think is hillarious, film of Aurora.

Sauk Mountain Experiment


Quite a lot is happening in our lives currently. Tuesday of this week we said goodbye to the last youth that was placed in our home through North West Youth services. This ended of an incredible year of working with homeless and foster youth in our home. So in celebration of independent family living we took Aurora on her first backpacking trip!


Sauk Mt. is small peak in the North Cascades, easily accessed from Hwy 20 East of Concrete WA. I think that this is likely one of the most scenic 5mile round trip hikes I have ever been on.


The trail head is somewhere in that 4,000ft elevation range, so right out of the car there are incredible views of the Skagit Valley, the Sisters Range, the North Cascades, and beautiful meadows of wildflowers. In essence this hike starts our great and only gets better with elevation



Shannon's sister Erin was visiting with us and our plan was to backpack into Sauk Lake, camp out, and the next day enjoy the summit. Our plan however was less inviting as we viewed our destination still covered in snow and ice. We could have spent the night near the summit but with setting sun, lowering temps, hours before dark, and of course Aurora, we opted to hike back to the trail head and camp there for the night. Which was great. We had an excellent sunset and slept with Aurora in the van and the next morning went raspberry picking in Skagit Valley. Aurora had a great time, at least we think she did, she slept in the little front pack during all of the hiking and was totally content on the summit and camping as long as she was warm and had food on demand. All in all our experiment in family backpacking was a total success everyone had a great time!
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