Saturday, May 15, 2010
We are leaving the park after a wonderful salmon dinner and closing celebration. We will arrive in Seattle close to 10:30 to 10:45. Your child will call you when we are about an hour away. Once you get the call, please plan to be at school on time. All of us are pretty anxious to get home. You can come early and pick up your gear since it will arrive a long time before we do. Thanks.
Chuck Waggin' Tails - Day 6
Hello from the Chuck Wagon & Happy D6!!!!
Pretty warm night here in Goldendale, WA overall with no worries of freezing and any other outdoor elements to worry about in the morning. Once again, Sabrina (Elliott) is up at 5:30a to get coffee started and soon after others were soon up to help get breakfast set up. Just as I'm about to jump in I see Susie (Emmy) with her list... so their is much relief as we're in good hands today.
The plan is for the Chuck Wagon to get lunch, meet up with the bus and transfer whatever Susie needs for her dinner tonight so that the Chuck Wagon can head home early. The idea is for the Chuck Wagon to unload everything into the cafeteria ahead of time so that when the bus arrives everything from the chuck wagon can be returned to their rightful owners tonight.
The clean up at the middle school was pretty simple as we had lots of hands helping including little ones. Once the kids were out on teh road, a quick mop and taking out of the trash and we were done. Thanks to a scale in the boy's locker room, I was able to weigh our garbage. All of the garbage from the cafeteria, bathrooms and kitchen came in at ~40#, this doesn't include our recyclables. I would say this is probably about our average footprint at each stop.
So, after checking out with the night custodian Jodi, we are back on the road in search of lunch. This was to be our last meal to be served out of the Chuck Wagon. So we have tortillas, 3# of cheese, tomatoes and bowl full of hummus...sounds like something quesadilla-ish. Well after a couple of quick stops in The Dalles, we set up lunch in front of the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center in their picnic area. I asked if we could have lunch for about 40 people there...but accidentally left out the part that we would be setting up a full-on kitchen as well. Thanks to Dave's cousin Phil who lives nearby... we were able to get lunch served on-time:
1. Hummus sandwiches on fresh baked baguettes from a bakery called Petite Provence in The Dalles, with lettuce cheese, salt, pepper and EVOO
2. Pan fried quesadillas - wheat or white flour options
3. sides included fresh salsa (peeled and chopped tomatoes, cilantro, salt, pepper, EVOO), and an avocado salad (cubed, fresh squeezed lemon, salt and EVOO drizzle)
4. hand scooped 3 flavor sorbet cup: Zesty Lemon, Raspberry and Mango (ala Haggen Daz)
After lunch, we made a few more revisions to Susie's list to make sure that all of the tools/ingredients for dinner got on the bus. And we handed the duty of Chuck Wagon to the awesome team of Rob (Emmett) and Ron (Lila), aka The "B" team.
OK...sooooo... we left the bus behind at about 1:30p, and most people thought we were going to be home at 5:00... showering up and taking a nap until the bus arrived back. HA! We actually headed 3 miles up the hill overlooking (AMAZING lookout point, see video) the Discovery Center to cousin Phil's house to wash the lunch dishes and catch our breath. By the time we got back on the road an hot Portland it was 5:00. We grabbed a burger there and got home at 9:00p. Hahaha...so much for the plan. But we still got all the stuff unpacked and spread out. The pictures below don't do much justice to the volume of "stuff" the van carried. Sadly, much of it was excess and had to be donated or dumped.
Thanks to Julie (Emmett) and Robin (Mika) by the time we got stuff spread out, the bus arrived 30 minutes later and were greeted warmly with a round of applause by the entourage of parents and siblings. And as quickly as they arrived, families picked up their things and headed to the comfort of home and I'm sure a warm bath. Thank you Kent, Rob (Emmet), Paul (Shira) and Michaela (Conrad) for sticking around till 11:30p to relocating items left behind and excess food and un-claimable items.
Dave and I did share a final hug and a couple of words before he and Nikko headed home. We didn't say much, but it was enough to sum up the trip up and bring closure to the Chuck Wagon role as we return to normal life. We still get a kick out the comments we get from parents who think we do this for a living. "...so when you're not supporting Orca, what other groups do you do this for?", "NO, we don't do this professionally, but for a major nominal fee...???" A few final words:
Midway thru lunch Susie made an announcement acknowledging that this was the last meal served by the Chuck Wagon. It totally caught me off guard as I was in the midst of making a few more quesadillas...and all of a sudden I got super emotional. I'm not sure if it was relief or the fact that I was actually going to miss this job/role. Regardless, it was both an honor and privilege to be a part of this trip. And although I fell into the role accidentally, I would volunteer to do the job again if it meant kids getting out of the classroom and exploring their surroundings. Each night I heard stories of what the kids saw and learned. I agree that what Dave and I did played a critical piece, but it was a very small price to pay in exchange for the value of the learnings that the kids took away from the trip and how that will change their lives and perspective on life.
Thank you again for the privilege to support such an awesome trip!
Dave and Koichi
"get along lil' doggies"
Pretty warm night here in Goldendale, WA overall with no worries of freezing and any other outdoor elements to worry about in the morning. Once again, Sabrina (Elliott) is up at 5:30a to get coffee started and soon after others were soon up to help get breakfast set up. Just as I'm about to jump in I see Susie (Emmy) with her list... so their is much relief as we're in good hands today.
The plan is for the Chuck Wagon to get lunch, meet up with the bus and transfer whatever Susie needs for her dinner tonight so that the Chuck Wagon can head home early. The idea is for the Chuck Wagon to unload everything into the cafeteria ahead of time so that when the bus arrives everything from the chuck wagon can be returned to their rightful owners tonight.
The clean up at the middle school was pretty simple as we had lots of hands helping including little ones. Once the kids were out on teh road, a quick mop and taking out of the trash and we were done. Thanks to a scale in the boy's locker room, I was able to weigh our garbage. All of the garbage from the cafeteria, bathrooms and kitchen came in at ~40#, this doesn't include our recyclables. I would say this is probably about our average footprint at each stop.
So, after checking out with the night custodian Jodi, we are back on the road in search of lunch. This was to be our last meal to be served out of the Chuck Wagon. So we have tortillas, 3# of cheese, tomatoes and bowl full of hummus...sounds like something quesadilla-ish. Well after a couple of quick stops in The Dalles, we set up lunch in front of the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center in their picnic area. I asked if we could have lunch for about 40 people there...but accidentally left out the part that we would be setting up a full-on kitchen as well. Thanks to Dave's cousin Phil who lives nearby... we were able to get lunch served on-time:
1. Hummus sandwiches on fresh baked baguettes from a bakery called Petite Provence in The Dalles, with lettuce cheese, salt, pepper and EVOO
2. Pan fried quesadillas - wheat or white flour options
3. sides included fresh salsa (peeled and chopped tomatoes, cilantro, salt, pepper, EVOO), and an avocado salad (cubed, fresh squeezed lemon, salt and EVOO drizzle)
4. hand scooped 3 flavor sorbet cup: Zesty Lemon, Raspberry and Mango (ala Haggen Daz)
After lunch, we made a few more revisions to Susie's list to make sure that all of the tools/ingredients for dinner got on the bus. And we handed the duty of Chuck Wagon to the awesome team of Rob (Emmett) and Ron (Lila), aka The "B" team.
OK...sooooo... we left the bus behind at about 1:30p, and most people thought we were going to be home at 5:00... showering up and taking a nap until the bus arrived back. HA! We actually headed 3 miles up the hill overlooking (AMAZING lookout point, see video) the Discovery Center to cousin Phil's house to wash the lunch dishes and catch our breath. By the time we got back on the road an hot Portland it was 5:00. We grabbed a burger there and got home at 9:00p. Hahaha...so much for the plan. But we still got all the stuff unpacked and spread out. The pictures below don't do much justice to the volume of "stuff" the van carried. Sadly, much of it was excess and had to be donated or dumped.
Thanks to Julie (Emmett) and Robin (Mika) by the time we got stuff spread out, the bus arrived 30 minutes later and were greeted warmly with a round of applause by the entourage of parents and siblings. And as quickly as they arrived, families picked up their things and headed to the comfort of home and I'm sure a warm bath. Thank you Kent, Rob (Emmet), Paul (Shira) and Michaela (Conrad) for sticking around till 11:30p to relocating items left behind and excess food and un-claimable items.
Dave and I did share a final hug and a couple of words before he and Nikko headed home. We didn't say much, but it was enough to sum up the trip up and bring closure to the Chuck Wagon role as we return to normal life. We still get a kick out the comments we get from parents who think we do this for a living. "...so when you're not supporting Orca, what other groups do you do this for?", "NO, we don't do this professionally, but for a major nominal fee...???" A few final words:
Midway thru lunch Susie made an announcement acknowledging that this was the last meal served by the Chuck Wagon. It totally caught me off guard as I was in the midst of making a few more quesadillas...and all of a sudden I got super emotional. I'm not sure if it was relief or the fact that I was actually going to miss this job/role. Regardless, it was both an honor and privilege to be a part of this trip. And although I fell into the role accidentally, I would volunteer to do the job again if it meant kids getting out of the classroom and exploring their surroundings. Each night I heard stories of what the kids saw and learned. I agree that what Dave and I did played a critical piece, but it was a very small price to pay in exchange for the value of the learnings that the kids took away from the trip and how that will change their lives and perspective on life.
Thank you again for the privilege to support such an awesome trip!
Dave and Koichi
"get along lil' doggies"
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