Hoh River Resort

This is where we stayed for a couple days of last week. I think they use the word "Resort" rather loosely. I guess I just don't associate a "resort" with RV-ing.

This campground is just off 101 and outside the Hoh Rain Forest.

Look at the color of this river! Love it!

Notice the extra kid here? We took "Butch," our kids' cousin.

Did you notice something about this place? There is no one here but us. I just love walking down a trail that opens up to a riverbed and finding that we are the only ones there for miles. Love it!

We also love late night campfires!

Treasure Trip Part 6 -- The Hot, the Cold, and the Devil

We spent the first full morning at Ruby Beach. Actually, we were there a lot longer than expected. Originally the plan was to hit the beaches in the morning and head back to camp for lunch, then hit the Rainforest trails after. Well, we spent the whole morning at Ruby and everyone was starving by the time we hiked back up the cliff. We decided we had enough snack foods in the van and headed to the next beach to check it out. Beach #4 had no view. Just a trail down to the beach. So we hit the road again figuring we would check out the Kalaloch campground and picnic there. We were completely unprepared for what we found. There are many woodsy style spaces near the highway but then you drive out on the cliff's edge and every space has a gorgeous beach view. You would literally never have to leave your campsite to enjoy every tide phase of the ocean. The most astonishing part, was there were tons of spaces open with this glorious beach view and every one was calling my name. We stopped to look at how paying for the space worked at this park. It is first come first served. No reservations. Mark was told to just grab something, leave a chair or anything on the table and pay for the space. It fills up quickly as you might imagine. Well, it was past noon by then and we found a day picnic space and sat down to eat and enjoy the view while discussing what to do.

Of course, I could have packed up and moved right then but we had just gotten to the other camp the night before and hadn't even paid yet. Nor had we hiked at all. It was a 30 minute one way drive back to pack up and we had nothing to leave to save a space so we decided to go with the original plan. We would plan to head back to camp, settle up with the store, hike that evening and hit Kalaloch at check in exactly on time so we would have the best chance of a good spot. Of course, you could not reserve for the next day in advance. For whatever reason, it was a painfully hard choice for me because this place was "hot" and I knew we were supposed to be here. We ate lunch there, then headed back to the camp. I went into the store to let them know we planned to head out the next morning. That was no big deal to them. Of course we weren't sure when we were at Kalaloch if we might have to pay the third night because of the reservations. Had I known they were so lax about payment, we probably would have just moved that night.

We headed off to the Hoh trails later that afternoon. OF course the kids really just wanted to swim in the river by that point and it really wasn't that hot yet. I reminded them that they swim in the creek everyday and it isn't everyday they can come hike here. That didn't appease them much. We drove through the Hoh campground which is officially part of the Olympic National Park and it has some very nice spots too. Nothing like Kalaloch to me though. You could camp here right next to the Hoh River which would be cool. Driving through we also found the Hoh has a public corral and a horse trail so you could bring your horse and ride forever here. That sounded really awesome but I couldn't imagine Bud appreciating the long ride in the trailer to get there. Anyway, we walked the trail we had never completed previously and I don't know if it was just that we had already hiked so much already or what the deal was but it lacked the appeal it once had. It just didn't appeal to anyone this time. The Hoh River wasn't as green as it was when we were there before and the massive flooding has done a lot of damage to this area. I hiked and wondered why we weren't at the beach. This place was "cold." Samuel was not there. Neither physically nor in spirit. I never put my finger on why exactly until I posted the first Ruby pictures and what I wrote back at that time. It was Samuel who loved the Rainforest most. I loved the beach most. This trip was "for me" and the place I was supposed to be was the beach, not the Rainforest. It was the strangest feeling at the time. I don't think anyone cares if we ever return to the Hoh. That is not to say that the trails aren't fun because they are. We completed the trail we wanted to finish easily, like there was nothing to it. My heart just wasn't in it. Mark agreed that it was just kind of blah. You will note I didn't even take many pictures here. Mostly because the ones I took in 2005 were so much prettier.

We ate dinner at camp and spent the rest of the evening packing up and sitting around the fire. We were all quite tired after having put on many miles that day. We planned to hook up and head to Ruby in the morning to kill time until check in at Kalaloch. We were praying that the spot we liked best was still there. I figured that since we were supposed to be there, something would be waiting for us.

We hit the sack well before 9pm and that is when I started having nightmares. Apparently the devil gave ruining my trip one last try. The nightmare had every possible poke in it too. I dreamed I was home and received a call from Samuel's Onc who said that "Isaiah needs some surgery to remove body part A and B and his cancer is out of control." I was livid. I said, "Look here. His name is Samuel, not Isaiah. Do you think that after all these years, you might figure out our names?" That was poke #1. The fact that your child, the one you would give your own life to save, his name wasn't even remembered properly even when he was still alive. Your child who means everything to you is worthless to someone else. Poke #2 was surgery to remove something else. To that I said, "Are you kidding? No way!!" Poke #3, well of course his cancer is out of control! Wasn't it always in their minds? Poke #4 isn't as obvious to you though. Samuel wasn't with me. He was inpatient and somehow I was home. That never would have happened. And of course, in the dream, I never saw him at all. Poke #5 was that I had to call back to ask if I could just bring Samuel home to die. I had to ask. Poke #6 was that he was going to die again. The only thing worse than Samuel dying would be Samuel having to die twice. I don't know how I would do that again. I woke up and reminded the devil it is only appointed to man ONCE to die. That is it. And as if that wasn't enough, the next nightmare was that Anna was sick and dying. That one wasn't as clear as the first except that I realized how much I hate sickness and death. I do not want to go through it again with any child. Do you know, I haven't had dreams this awful in many months and none have had this amount of pokes in them. I didn't tell Mark about it either because I didn't want to give the nightmare "life" at that time. I mentioned that I had a bad dream but never gave details.

It was finally time to get up and I wasn't impressed. However, I recognized that for what it was. The devil just wanted to shake me up into a crying mess so I could not even enjoy what was to come. A year ago, this would have worked. Three months ago, this would have worked. But it didn't work on that day. I shook that off like a wet dirty blanket trying to suffocate me back into that grief cycle. No, I was having no part of that game. Looking back, I thank God for the healing He has put into my spirit because I know this not shaking me up isn't a result of what I have done, but what He has done in me.

For the record, with great blessings comes great anger about it from the devil. That was his second attempt to thwart God's plans for our trip and it didn't work. Perhaps if the devil hadn't tipped his hand to me by trying to blow us up before we even left, I wouldn't have been expecting him to try something else. I just knew by the nightmares, that something great was coming. I wasn't disappointed.

Treasure Trip Part 1 -- Just Getting There

Our much anticipated trip started out by nearly exploding in our faces. Literally. We were all loaded up and ready to hit the road by 10:30am. We drove about halfway down the block to test the trailer brakes as we always do and Mark noticed that they were not working. The error message was not one he recognized so we came back home to find the source of the problem. It ended up that some part of the electrical was shorting out causing the whole system to malfunction. He thought it would be a quick fix so the girls stayed in the van, Daniel helped his Dad and I printed out the "cheat sheet" for the brake system since as it ended up, we lost the original. Next thing I know, Mark is yelling, sparks are flying, then a huge plume of smoke is everywhere and he is getting out of the way. Apparently, he found the short. Some part of the old wiring had just burned up and it did it right next to the two full propane tanks. That could have been tragic as sparks were flying. I called the girls out of the van and because they were busily playing, they were oblivious to the whole thing. The kids came back into the house while Mark took the wiring apart and pulled out the burned up piece. I was thinking about how all this time, I was convinced that this trip was "for me" and here was my sign. Some freak accident almost gone very wrong that nearly prevented the whole vacation. Thank God He watches over us and stops things from getting out of control. It made me wonder what He had in store for us to find........

Anyway, Mark got the bad piece out of the good wiring, then unhooked the trailer and headed to town with Daniel to a nearby RV shop to see if he could get a replacement. He explained to the owner of the shop what had happened and asked him if that would cause the whole thing to burn up like it did. The owner thought it was possible so Mark got the piece and headed back. Upon arriving home, he replaced it and tested it to find that it did in fact fix the problem. Good news! So far, we had only lost about an hour to this process. But just as he was going to hook the trailer back up to the van, the whole thing shorted out again, this time with no fire thankfully. But by this time, Mark was irritated with the whole thing as you might imagine. He ended up taking apart and stripping all of the wiring at that point to try to look for the short. Nothing. Then he rewired the whole thing. During this interim, we used the battery power to check to see if there was any power to the trailer brakes at all and found it was completely dead. This was worse than before where the brakes had power from the battery, but did not communicate with the van. Mark hooked the newly wired lines back to the van and nothing happened. It still was shorted out. At this point, I suggested he come in and eat lunch and hopefully that would ease some of the irritation from this last hour. By now, we had lost two hours to the process. And by the way, he had just had this all hooked up, tested out and working perfectly about a week before the trip so this little episode was not expected. I was just glad we were not on the side of the highway for it. After eating, he fiddled with it a little longer before deciding to hook it all back up and drive the whole thing to the RV place and drop it off. The owner said he could look at it the same day if the part did not work. About 30 minutes after he left, he called me on the cell to say that he was coming home and to get ready to go. Apparently, the short, the second one, was a fuse in our van which the owner of the RV shop thought to check immediately because it is such a common problem. Rather than drop it off and wait, this man checked the wiring and replaced the fuse immediately and without charge. Now, there is the hand of God reaching down to put this trip back on track which was my prayer from the minute Mark left to drop the trailer off. Things did not seem so easy or like such a quick fix when he left. I thought I would be calling to cancel any moment.

So, we were all very happy to finally be pulling out at 2pm. We assured ourselves we had plenty of time and we were not in a big hurry. Mark's irritation from the "three hour detour" dispersed quickly and we were on our way. It is about 200 miles to the Hoh from here so we figured on getting into camp by 5pm or so. Everyone had eaten lunch by then so we were all excited about the steak and asparagus dinner we had planned. We got to Aberdeen which is just about halfway and all of this road was very familiar to us as we had driven it quite a lot in the last several years. We really like the area and I enjoy the whole drive. We drove another 20 or so miles out of Aberdeen and decided we needed a pit stop. Everyone had to pee and I figured the dogs did too. At some point during the drive, I was thinking we should have bought the dogs a couple of those really big bones so they had something new to do while we were out and about. We bought one for Max last year but he completely ignored it because he was too upset about traveling apparently. I told myself that he would probably just ignore the effort this trip as well. Anyway, Mark found a nice pull through logging road to stop at and we all piled out and each took a turn on the trailer potty. Well, each of the girls anyway. As Mark and Daniel walked down the road toward the hills and trees, they found piles of bones. Huge bones. Like a buck or elk. Mark figured that poachers probably dumped them here. The dogs were especially interested and I told Daniel to get a bag and scoop some up for the dogs to enjoy at camp a bit later and they did! It was so cool because I had just been thinking about how we forgot to get the dogs bones, and then "co-incidentally" ended up stopping on a logging road in the middle of nowhere and had our choice of sizes. It was cool! God is cool!

We happily piled back into the van and continue to enjoy the scenery. We passed through Amanda Park which is the city in which we rented the house in 2005 with Samuel. The drive then seemed endless then, like we were never going to get there. This trip, it seemed so quick to arrive there. Past that, you drive through parts of the Olympic National Forest which isn't logged and then into areas which have been recently logged and are ugly. I referred to them as Stickville.

Definitely NOT Stickville

Amanda Park

The highway is pretty treed in for awhile but suddenly opens up to the ocean bordering one side. There are five beaches in a row. Three are only referred to as "beach #4" and so on. The other two are named. The first named beach is Kalaloch which is the one we ended up staying at. It is gorgeous and incidentally, it is the beach I photographed four years ago and use as the wallpaper for my Heavenly Cloth Pads page. Ha!! Back then, we just drove by but never had time to go in. It was always on the list of places to return and check out though. Five miles beyond this is Ruby Beach. The first beach Samuel ever visited. I have been to this one twice and it was definitely on the list to go back to. I had noted the low tide times so that we could return and play there when the tide was out for once. That was the plan for the next morning. We have never been there in low tide so I couldn't wait to go.

Where we stayed was another 20 miles beyond Ruby, and the highway left the beach frontage and was back to Stickville for most of the rest of the drive. It was about 5:30pm when we pulled in, picked a spot and set up came. The Hard Rain Cafe had a nice little camping area but it was right behind the store and basically just off the highway. Not what I expected but we made ourselves at home and had a lovely area right next to a pond. It is a great spot kind of midway between everything you might want to do. The biggest town for supplies, Forks, is about 20 minutes up the road. The beaches are 20 miles down the road. The Hoh trails are 20 minutes drive. Swimming or fishing in the Hoh River is a half mile away. The dogs had a lot of fun on this river frontage. You can rent water toys and go play for hours. Very cool and yet, it wasn't quite right somehow. Mark went to the store to check us in and they did not even want us to pay that night which was interesting. They said to just come in the next day sometime and settle up. No big deal to them. I had originally reserved three nights here so I was surprised they did not immediately take our money. This worked out the way God planned it to. More on that later. The store was cute inside and I enjoyed looking at all the Rainforest souvenirs.

We ate our lovely dinner and headed out to the River front to explore and let the dogs run free awhile. Well, Max anyway. Bush Woolly will drown himself because he loves water. It looked as if you could camp here too. It was too late to do any swimming for the kids but they sure wanted to return the next day. We sat around the campfire eating junk for about an hour before going to bed everyone forgetting the original troubles that almost stopped this trip before it ever started. It was a fun evening and we had great anticipation for the next day's fun. The traffic on the road in front of the store died off by 7pm and it was silent all night. Complete silence which was lovely. Daytime, however, it is a lively place with people coming in and out frequently.

We were up by 5am the next day with plans to eat breakfast and head to Forks to get gas and a gourmet coffee, then head to Ruby Beach while the tide was out. After that, the plan was to drive to all the other beaches and especially check out Kalaloch to see if we might want to stay there on a future trip. We were completely astonished by the treasures we found everywhere we went. It was like playing hot and cold. Certainl places you knew you were hot, and other places felt cold. It was really really fun! Lots of smiles, lots of Backus humor, and no sorrow. More in the next post.

If Home is Where the Heart Is.......

And it is not my time to go to Heaven, then I need to live here.....

A few days before we left, I had an overwhelming feeling that this trip was planned "for me." The rainforest was where "I" wanted to go. No one else had a real preference. But, I did. To me, there was no where else I could think of even worth the trouble of packing up for.

I made the trip plans with reservations well ahead of schedule to stay just a few miles outside of the Hoh entrance but it became very clear after the first night, that we were being led in an entirely different direction. We did visit the Hoh trails and completed the hike we had cut short in the past but the Rainforest has lost it's ambiance for me. For all of us really. Samuel wasn't there the way he should have been and the time spent there was very bland and short lived. My plan was detoured and we ended up where I believe God and Samuel had planned all along.

We camped here!!!!! This was Heaven on earth and I don't believe it was co-incidence. Have you ever seen anything so awesome? I have never stayed anywhere that beat this! The weather was gorgeous and the site was perfect!

No, this was no accident. "Someone" planned not just this but many more surprises which I will tell you about in the next few days. Suffice it to say, I was sad to come home. Not at all ready to leave this little slice of what I think Heaven should look like behind.

We gave props to Samuel in this glorious place. His name forever left as a conversation piece on the fence board that borders the cliff among many other names and remembrances carved out to all future passers by to wonder about.


And this....the first beach we ever took Samuel to, was just another of many unexpected treasure troves. Wait til you see what we found here.

Finally, if you are going to spend time in a Heavenly place, do so with your best friend.

I am blessed! Thank you, Jesus.

There are more pictures in the sidebar and more pictures and details to come.

Shunts and Stomas and Surgeries, Oh My!

Kaysha and Daniel's SAT scores are back. Wow! Kaysha took the 6th grade level test and most of her scores were high school grade equivalent. Needless to say, this is her best year ever. I always look at her math scores the closest because this is her weakest area overall. She averaged 8th grade there. Since we schooled basically all the past year, she is going to take the summer off from formal schooling and just do a lot of reading. This will be good for her.

Daniel's scores were a bit more average. He took the 4th grade test and scored pretty much within the grade level or a couple above. His weakest subject remains Language Arts year after year. His strongest is Math. He is going to also spend the summer reading but will also be working on Language Arts. I have changed his curriculum here several times trying to find something that works for him and we just received a brand new system right before the testing that I am excited about. So, much to his dismay, he will be working on that all summer.

Since the weather has warmed up and the rain has mostly stopped, the big kids spend endless hours down at the creek. The same creek we always took Samuel to play. The same creek where Anna was throwing rocks and accidentally hit Samuel in the side of the head right after we found out he relapsed. The bruise lasted forever and we have this shining moment on video. In it, Mark asks the kids if they want to go throw rocks in the creek and they all of course do. When we watched it, Mark heard himself ask this and said, "No, don't go throw rocks.......bad idea." This is the same creek that flooded the whole neighborhood last winter. We have lived here over nine years now and the big kids are finally able to enjoy the freedom of going there by themselves. Well, not exactly by themselves. There is a huge group of kids the run with these days and for the most part, they all get along really well. Daniel has a lot of friends which is a huge difference from last year where he had one. He still battles shyness but if swimming is involved, he will put himself out to be included. There are only two girls in the neighborhood that are Kaysha's age. Both go to school and of course, don't like each other. Kaysha is the type of girl who will give anyone a chance, usually likes everyone and especially enjoys little kids so it is hard for her to wrap her mind around cliques. I explained to her the reasoning behind one girl not liking the other and what going to school was like when you had an obvious handicap. It was a foreign concept to her that someone would just look at you and base being your friend on appearance. In the case in our neighborhood, there is the cute thin popular girl with lots of friends and the direct opposite; the heavy goth girl with thick glasses and few friends. Ever since meeting the less popular girl, Jocelyn, Kaysha normally runs with her. She spends endless hours at our house and we all enjoy her presence. I cannot say the same about the other girl. We had invited Jocelyn to church with us last weekend but then we took the flu detour so that did not quite work out. Hopefully, she can come this weekend. (YES!!!!!)

It is Jocelyn who consistently asks about Samuel. She is the one who asked about his pictures and just this week, asked where his room was. Kaysha told me she asks about him a lot. She wanted to know what he was like and what he liked to do. It is surreal in a lot of ways. It has been a good thing in that previously, Kaysha never really talked about Samuel at all. It has been as if she just ignored the fact that he is no longer here. A few weeks ago, we were sending pictures to Esther in Ghana and she wrote that Samuel was seven now. As if he moved away. And I guess that is exactly the way it is, just interesting how they process. I suggested that she show Jocelyn Samuel's baby book and maybe some of his videos. She plans to soon. Everyone has been dragging his baby book around lately. Anna showed it to her friend just yesterday and everyone agreed that Samuel was the cutest baby ever. Kaysha wants to have a baby boy that looks just like Samuel. Daniel's friends have come in and mistook Samuel's pictures as being Daniel. And then Daniel came and asked me how old Samuel is now. Not was. Not would be. Is.

And speaking of the baby book, there are a few pictures in there of Samuel's shunt when he was still shaved and the stitching was new. Also, of his stoma with no bag. Anna asked me about these. She wanted to know what happened to his head to which I replied, "Remember when you played dinos and he was the three horn and always hit you with his horn? Well, that was how the horn got there."

And look at how happy he is!!!!!

That was a sufficient enough answer for now. I am certain we will revisit it in the future. Then she asked me about his stoma and what that was. That answer was a little more difficult since she doesn't understand the parts of the gut and why one would be sticking out.

So I told her that the stoma was like his butt and he pooped from there into a bag. She said, "Well, his butthole is in the wrong place." I laughed and said, "It sure was." She doesn't remember the stoma at all. I then showed her the picture of the surgery and scar where they put it back inside and told her that this was where they put his butthole back in the right place. That ended that conversation although the "wish we had never done that" thoughts raged around in my mind.

In other news, I received word this week that I am officially part of Compassion International as a Child Advocate. I now represent this ministry. Child Advocate seems a natural title for me given the last several years of my life. The interview process took several weeks and one of the things I was asked to share was my testimony. That is a strange question to be asked given I have known the Lord my entire life vs. spent most of my life rejecting Him until some climactic moment where I accepted Him. I have walked with the Lord for all the days I can remember. Sure there were varying degrees of obedience and fruit from the labor, but He was always there and I knew it. I shared a brief synopsis of my life culminating with the events of Samuel's life and death. I have walked through the pits of hell where most people would give up on God. Most would ask, "How can a loving God allow all this suffering?" Most would be so angry with the way things turned out that they would not even want to hear God's name mentioned alongside loving kindness, mercy, grace or love. My testimony is that I am not most people. I am chasing the Lord with all my heart, all my soul and all my being. My life is more about loving the Lord and serving Him now more than ever. I know who the enemy is. I know where Samuel is. I have come to the place in my life where I am willingly surrendering MY will for what I thought my life was going to be about and allowing God to lead me into what His will for my life has always been. In all my wanderings here on earth, I represent Jesus Christ. I don't want to let Him down. I have never been more serious about the commitment.

I have lately been praying that God open the eyes of my Heart to see things the way He sees them and then show me how I can help. Little by little, He has allowed me to see things around me. Things in the neighborhood. Things in the spirits of others. You know what? It is breaking my heart seeing the way people treat their kids, each other, and take for granted all their God given gifts. It hurts to see people with so much potential wasting their lives. I actually asked Him to give me a break from "seeing" because things were so sad. Day after day, life goes on, people do whatever they please, and they constantly break God's heart with their actions, their words, and how they treat others. That behavior stops at the doorpost of my household. It is not coming into my house. If it sneaks in, it is quickly reminded of the rules. Like it or leave.

With that said, if you are feeling overwhelmed by the condition of the world, don't allow that to be a reason for inactivity. Start by straightening up the atmosphere in your heart, then in your home. From there let that change spill out into your daily contacts and into your neighborhood. One touch from God can change a life and He will use you to touch people if you allow Him to. Let God take your life and lead you where He wants you to make a difference. One thing I can tell you for sure: He will. But I also know that true change begins with you, in your heart. I have spent the last year allowing God to work on mine and He is far from finished. It is a painful process but the rewards are worth the work.

The Lord honored my request for a break I just realized. We have all been stir crazy ready to take a trip and get out of this house for awhile. Our little day trip around the mountain was nice and all but we were mainly stuck in the van the whole time. Things have come up seemingly every weekend that have stopped us from getting away....until now. The kids pretty much want to swim wherever we go while Mark and I want to hike. Mark suggested we go to the beach for a day and then trek over to the Hoh Rainforest for a day hike. You might remember we went to the Hoh in 2005 for Samuel's birthday. This is the trip I always refer to when I think of how well he did and felt with the ostomy. He was the little trailsman leading everyone on the gorgeous trail. Unfortunately, storm damage has closed this area for years after we had been there and there was no place to stay unless you liked tenting it (which I don't) or had an RV which we didn't until last year. I did a quick search to find trail conditions and found this. The store was always there but the website wasn't and I don't know if the RV park was either. It is perfect. 20 miles from the ocean shore and about 15 minutes drive to the Hoh trails. So, we are going.

I have been to the Hoh twice in my life. The first on a spring trip with some college friends. We were not able to stay very long and I always wanted to come back and spend some quality time there. The second was with Mark and the kids. We weren't able to stay long that time either. Anna was just a year old and Samuel had many medical needs which meant day trips were short. We also did not have the "Backus Bus" (van) then either so traveling was very difficult. Today, it is a snap. This place is gorgeous! You can drive all over Western WA and it pretty much looks like the same place anywhere you go. But when you drive off the hiway into the Rainforest entrance, it is like you entered another world. And let me tell you, I need to "go to another world" to refresh my spirit. This is probably my favorite place on earth, next to the beach. Being very close to the beach is simply a bonus. So, we are going next week. Not for a day. Not for two days, but for several so I will actually finally have time to explore and enjoy it. Mark is certain Samuel will come along with us and I am sure he will too. Lately the lights flash in nearly every room I walk into and there is still no reason for it unless I give off an electrical charge I am unaware of. We are all very excited to go but probably no one more than I. Of course, I wish Samuel could really go, you know with a body we can see and a laugh that echoes miles away. I wish he could lead us down all the trails and jump and play in the water. I pray that I will feel his presence close to me there the way I felt him so strongly at the beginning of April. Then I know sorrow will not infiltrate our trek there. At any rate, God obviously had His hand in me finding this now, at the exact time I was ready for it, so I know there will be "treasure" there. I cannot wait to find it.

Hoh Rainforest 2005