Clearlake Travel Journal Part 1
I present to you Clearlake NOMAD Adventure Episode 1! A big thanks to Michele, Taylor, Martha, and Jeremiah for the photos.
Taylor and I were up and crawling under the bus around 7am, attaching eyelet bolts to the floor of bus chassie for the sake of securing the food, luggage, and materials. I definitely feel like a badass when I'm under that grimy thing, but it sounds way cooler than it is.
We loaded the crew leaving from SF at the Depot and took a few obligatory photos. I was beside myself excited to see the kids climb the stairs of our very own bus on our very first adventure!! I heard myself say something cheesy like "This is the first day of my dream coming true..." bhaha... priceless.
The drive was long, but mostly insanely fun. We took turns adding songs to our playlist, stopped for In-N-Out, and fist pumped to The Imperial March.
At the lake house, we joined with the early arrivals and had a quick introduction meeting. It's hard to believe that some of the kids in different cohorts don't know each other yet! We shared what we are most looking forward to for the week or what we hope to get out of the trip. Most everyone said swimming, fun, eating and mural painting. We marveled at the natural beauty of this property! It's truly stunning.
Since we were all so eager to hop in the lake, we got right to it! We paddled and jumped and swam. We were careful to look out for one another and not push anyone out of their comfort zones.
We had a quick meeting to discuss house rules, chores for the week, our schedule, sleeping arrangements and bedtime before tonight's cooking team started making tacos. Don't worry - the chefs for the night were sure to clean up in the bath before handling the food.
We all found something unique to do while dinner was made - reading, writing and playing games passed the time even though we worked up quite the appetite swimming.
One of house rules here is if you find a dead fish, you bury the dead fish. We found the most epic dead fish which consumed most of our time after dinner. It became a group challenge to get this massive heavy corpse out of the water and into the ground.
They succeeded! Tommy proudly carried the fish to its new burial site.
Roenne, Avi, Alex, and Tommy pulled their weight shoveling a hole for this big guy.
Later, sans fish slime, we started our book club with the book All Good Children a strange mix of dystopian fiction meets graffiti art meets adventure. We'll spend 30 mintes to an hour per day taking turns reading this book aloud.
Finally, we enjoyed dessert by the lake at sunset and then huddled together inside to watch The Goonies before bed. What a wonderful day we shared together! It's always refreshing to spend time with kids outside of our daily routine. Their most helpful, loving, and thoughtful sides shine bright as we depend on one another and have the space to play.
