Lucas Camilo

It feels like a weird time to be on vacation… Coronavirus still ravaging the country, Black Lives Matter uprisings becoming more intense again after Federal agent arrived in Portland last week. But back in January — which now seems like years ago — we set aside the third week of July for our annual family road trip. Our plan was to rent the wheelchair accessible RV in Vancouver, check out the music festival there, and then go camp in the Canadian Rockies. Alas, that plan became unrealistic, but we stuck with the vacation week and instead decided to travel closer to home. In the end, we’ve spent about a week at Burke’s parents place on Whidbey Island along with a two-day foray to the Olympic Peninsula.

Lucas says he doesn’t like to blog anymore but he took a break from doing summer school reading, vocabulary study and video games on his tablet to write this:

6 things about our family vacation.

1. We went to a house in the woods called the Ravens Lodge (named after our cat, Raven).

2. At the Ravens Lodge there was a wheelchair accessible firepit. Each night for 2 nights we would sing songs around a campfire.

3. I learned Yahtzee at the Ravens Lodge. A Yahtzee is 5 of a kind, so a Yahtzee is super rare

4. On Whidbey (beginning of trip) we flew all of our kites at once, a squid, a dragon, a poison dart frog and a turtle

5. We went on lots of hikes. We’re creating a website of wheelchair accessible hiking trails in Washington.

6. We flew kites everywhere. Squidy, Darty [the poison dart frog] and our newest, Kite-her

Indeed, exploring wheelchair accessible trails and flying kites have been two of the main themes of our time away from home. It was pretty cold for part of the week but Burke and Ida still managed to jump in the Puget Sound a lot. Another feature has been good times with  grandparents, including  Krista’s mom who also came to Whidbey for a few days with her boyfriend Gary. Overall its surprisingly relaxing for a family vacation, probably because we haven’t gone more than 50 miles from home. We’ll post more pictures and the new “Rolling Washington” website about wheelchair accessible trails soon.