HoodedHawk

This past weekend Preston and I had a great time “primitive” camping in the Green Ridge State Forest, about 100 miles west of our house. “Primitive” means no facilities other than a fire ring and a picnic table are provided. WOW! This was idyllic. Most sites are 1/2 mile from nearest neighbor. ~44,000 acres and only 100 camping sites. This is definitely my idea of camping. We drove for about 2 miles on a dirt road to get to our site. You could drive for ~50 if you did a full loop of all the sites. You can see the dirt path (off the dirt road) that leads into our site in one of the pix below.

We stopped first at the Ranger HQ, and the ranger there (and staff) were very nice and helpful. I asked him to recommend good sites for a 5 year old. He crossed off the ones near the C&O canal with steep dropoffs. He asked me what kind of vehicle we were driving. He smiled when I said “minivan” (its NOT mine; and it does hold a lot more gear than my car), and crossed off some more sites. The site he suggested was secluded, and huge! Lots of space for Preston to run in, but also lots of shade to setup the tent. The site was about 0.7mi from a creek, and Preston had a great time catching tadpoles and throwing rocks into the water. Beautiful setting. And the best part? NO CROWDS! No screaming kids, barking dogs, loud music, or neighbors’ banging pots in the morning.

I got up early (before Preston!) and made a pot of coffee and the only sounds I heard were the birds. SO much nicer than the State Parks, which pack everyone in like sardines. They have an atmosphere akin to camping in the parking lot of a daycare center. My only regret is that I didn’t find this place sooner.

One of the last-minute, spur-of-the-moment things I picked up was a butterfly net and bubbles at Target. That was the best $6.00 ever spent! Preston wore himself out chasing bugs all over the site, and in the creek. Preston also decided at the last minute to take some of his blocks and a train set. I said, “Sure! we have room in this van! They also kept him occupied in camp while I did other things (like try to rest in the hammock – until he found me).

We are going back in ~ 3 weeks. So looking forward to that!

A few weeks ago our board game group played “Conquest of Empire“; a remake of a “classic” game from 1984. This definitely required a lot of space! Fun game, though after ~4 hours we called it without completing. I didn’t win. I had fun, though! :)

Dylan and I played another round of Power Grid: First Sparks tonight. This is a fun game I picked up last week; third time playing. Some of the mechanics are similar to the regular “Power Grid” game, but overall this is “Power Grid light”, playing in an hour or less. One significant change is the removal of bidding for technology (power plants in the regular game).

My first play was with Dylan, and I (barely) won. This play he trounced me. I placed my initial clans too far to one end of the (elongated this time) “board”, and ended up where each turn I could only feed the clans I had, but had no resources left to expand or buy new “technology” to get more resources. At that point Dylan placed 5 clans to end the game and win. Hmmm. I do like this game. Only took about an hour.

Next time, better starting position! The board changes each game, as board tiles are chosen randomly and placed by players in turn to form the playing area. The previous games were more “square” than tonight’s “elongated” one. Tonight was tough for me due to poor initial placement on my part. Dylan was able to put some obstacles in my path (clans) making expansion more expensive. I keep underestimating his ability for strategic play in these games! Also, this time we correctly refilled the resources (harvest), so didn’t run out of bears or mammoths. Fun game!

[Update 6/21/2012]: Bummer. Before the little eggs hatched, I went to check on them and the eggs were gone. Part of the nest was broken off. Appears some critter (I’ll go on record as blaming some neighborhood *cat*) got them. Must have been a new Robin mom, as I assume most robins build nests in trees, not bushes easily found by cats. Oh well.
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We have a Robin family living in the bush right in front of our house! I can remember one of my chemistry professors telling me to wait until the reaction turned “robin’s egg blue” color to indicate it was done. More than 20 years later I now see what color he was referring to. :)

I haven’t mentioned the presence of the nest to Preston or Olivia – it is at their level, only a few feet off the ground, so too tempting for them to disturb the little eggs. Preston has noticed “a bird living in the bush”, but hasn’t seen the nest yet. :)

No pictures of the mom robin yet, as she flutters away to the tree across the yard when we go by. She chirps at us from her perch there until we leave the nest area. We’ve been careful not to touch it. I just hope no neighborhood cats find the little eggs!

Recently at our weekly board game night we played a quick game of Tongiaki. It’s a semi-cooperative tile (and boat) laying game. You basically try to grow your population and move to as many new islands as possible. Each tile laid has a number of beaches, and each beach has a certain number of berths for boats. Once a beach is full, those boats must sail for new territory. This gets tricky, because if the next tile drawn is a water tile, and there are fewer different colors of boats than the number on the tile, the all the boats are lost. This means you do want to mix up colors (players), just in case.

When the last tile (of either water or island) is placed (there are 16 of each), the game ends. You add up the points for islands you have a boat on – most points wins. Fun, if sometimes frustrating (all my boats sank due to water tile!) game.