Mietzke's POST Holden Adventure

Yesterday I went with the girls class on an overnight field trip to Stehekin, and it was so much fun! We took the boat up and arrived around lunch time so we drove up to Rainbow falls and had a picnic at the base of the three hundred foot falls. It was so beautiful! The whole Stehekin Valley is in full autumnal swing and the colors of the trees are vibrant! We had a great picnic and then we headed up the valley to a horse farm where our friend Caroline worked all summer so we were able to meet the horses and get a tour of the ranch which is nestled in the valley between pine covered mountains and next to the Stehekin River. The horses on the Farm were Norwegian Fiords which are a distant relative of the Zebra and have a unique stripe down the center of their manes. They are tan with a black stripe. The horses were sweet and very interested in interaction. They came right up to the fence and we fed them grass and pet them. The children were enthralled. When we were finished at the ranch we drove further down the valley to a ravine where we could look down and see the Stehekin River running far below. Every time we saw the river we were on the look out for salmon that are running at this time. They are land locked salmon but still spawn up the river and their red bodies are slowly decomposing as they make their journey. The children were fascinated and sad at the idea that all of the fish we saw in the river would die. There was one spot in the river where there were thousands of fish near the banks and in the shallows. We went down to the water and the girls counted sixteen dead fish on the bank. The part that amazed me was the likeness in color to the changing leaves; it was strange, disturbing, and beautiful.
We were fortunate enough to know some people in Stehekin and so we got to visit a couple of rustic resort type places on the river. One of them had a wonderful tree house with climbing rope, a rope swing, two stories and a rope bridge and nets for climbing. The kids had a blast playing on them! There was also one of the best rope swings on a tree near the river where several of the children played a game where they tried to see how many kids they could get on the swing at one time. I heard the record was ten. There was a rope that was tied way up in a fir tree and Jordyn climbed up very high and the Stehekin kids were impressed and said she was the first girl to go that high. One of the boys told me that he was even to nervous to go that high.
We spent the night in a small community hall heated by a woodstove that we got too hot and we all roasted. We stayed up playing mad-libs until the children could hardly keep their eyes open. We brought tents, but it was pretty rainy so we were glad for a place to sleep. In the night there were many trips to the bathroom and a wood rat that was rattling around in the roof making a ton of racket. There was one point where it was so loud we thought it had to be a bear digging in a trash can so I went out with a rock and a flashlight to scare it away, but to my surprise and to my continued lack of sleep it was only a pesky determined wood rat.
In the morning we had breakfast and a woman named Tammy who lives in Stehekin brought us a freshly baked loaf of banana bread which was really good. After breakfast we headed out on a hike to one of the oldest apple orchards in Washington State. It is no longer a commercial orchard and anyone is welcome to pick the apples so we spent about an hour exploring and picking apples and we came away with five boxes that we are going to make into cider this week. The land around the orchard is so gorgeous! All of the trees were golden and red and the old wooden buildings and cars made for some really great pictures!
While we were there we got the chance to visit the old Stehekin School which was a one room cabin that housed grades one through eight for years until they built the new school which is a beautiful facility with a movement room, two small classrooms, and an attic library. The grounds were beautiful surrounded by woods with some great climbing trees, and some swings. The children Spent the second morning with the Stehekin class giving a presentation on Monarch Butterflies. The presentation went really well and afterwards our little class joined the Stehekin children in a game of capture the flag and Jordyn got the closest to actually capturing the Flag. She snuck in while everyone else was distracted, captured the flag but didn’t make it back over to her team’s side before she was captured.
After our time at the Stehekin School we went to lunch at the bakery and had goodies and then headed back to the boat to head home to Holden. A good time was had by all but by the time we got back here we were all tired.