Meanwhile, I am sorry I will no longer be blogging for Neighborhood Kids. Over the time I’ve been doing it, I have enjoyed passing along recommendations, reflecting on the parenting life, and passing on travel tips that I can’t help being excited about. I have no idea what my readership is, but thank you to all of you who have read my posts over the years.

Good luck and good times with your own families.

Well, it’s true, you have to hike or take a long boat ride (or the Express boat, a two and a half hour ride, or you can fly in on a float plane in 25 minutes, I learned). Whichever way you get there, and I do recommend the longer boat ride at least one way, it’s worth it. I’m in love with Stehekin.

Kind of funny to me because I grew up on Lummi Island, remote enough when you’re 12 and you can’t drive, and you’re surrounded by water, and the only entertainment is the fun you cook up yourself. I fled as soon as I could (and then rebounded back to the Northwest as so many of us do).

But maybe that’s why Stehekin felt kind of like home.

Stehekin is a not a town, per se, but a valley with one road about a dozen miles long and few spurs and a population of 85. It’s also one of the gateways to the North Cascades National Park. The only cars there are those brought in by barge. Visitors can bring bikes, rent bikes, walk,  or take the shuttle bus up and down the valley for a small fee. The pedestrian-only access forces you to slow down. Your cell phone doesn’t have coverage so you might as well turn it off, and you won’t be able to check email. As cliche as it sounds, you do feel like you’re taking a step back in time.

Instead of checking email,  you’ll visit the most excellent North Cascades Visitor Center at Stehekin Landing, where the boats come in, which feels like town central but in reality is only a small part of Stehekin. You’ll ride your bike to the Stehekin Pastry Company for breakfast, lunch, or snacks in between, just a couple miles up from the Landing. You might even run into one of your neighbors from home — we did.

You’ll stop by the old Stehekin school and marvel that it was closed as recently as 1988 (to make way for the new, larger school just down the road) because it feels so 1910-ish.You’ll hike the short trail to Rainbow Falls and be as impressed as you are with Snoqualmie Falls, if you’ve been there.

You’ll ride your bike up-valley and notice the blue quality of the Stehekin River, and you’ll be charmed by Stehekin Valley Ranch, where you can rent cabins.  You might make reservations to have dinner even if you’re not staying there. We did, and it was excellent — a family-style dinner served in a dining room with a sawdust floor, broad beams, and a fireplace that holds tall coffeepots of cowboy coffee.

You might buy veggies from the organic garden near the bakery because the general store carries only soda pop, a few cans of soup, and lots of T-shirts (and hauling food for several days from Chelan is kind of a pain).

If you stay at the lodge at Stehekin Landing, you’ll notice that every day brings a flurry of daytrippers between 11am and 2pm, when the boats arrive and then take off. The visitors hit the Landing, rent bikes, ride around, and then are gone as quickly as they arrived. It’s the main action of the day and kind of fun. And then Stehekin is suddenly quiet, and you’ll remember you came to get away from it all.

Stehekin is a fascinating blend of national park service employees, backpackers hiking in from the other side, tourists from down-lake, and locals eking out a living in a remote location that cuts them off from just about everything and suits them just fine.

Summer is beautiful — we  hit the sunny weather just right — but you can visit year-round, albeit on a more limited boat schedule. I’m guessing the fall colors are spectacular.

Note: the park offers camping, but if you’re looking for a family of four or more, I would talk to rangers in advance. We camped and found the sites to be abysmally small for a family-sized tent.

On the one hand, I am very sorry to see the site go. I love being able to recommend it to new families (and old families) as a resource for what’s going on in town. I also love blogging for it (although, yes, I have been a flaky blogger this summer).

On the other hand, I also know the amount of work it takes to sustain a site for nothing, and the energy drain it can be, both in time and money. A Seattle friend of mine maintains a family travel website for Pacific Northwest families, and she went through this exact angst a couple months ago. I think enough of us talked her into keeping it going that she’s giving it a second whirl, but it might not last.

So, while I am sad to see Neighborhood Kids go, I can understand why it’s going.

Sigh.

In the meantime, we have until August 31. Stay tuned. I can’t wait to tell you about Stehekin. It’s such a cool place.

About a month ago, we noticed when we got up in the morning that the catfood was gone, the water bowl was a mess, and  the food bag was tipped over. On the second  morning, we found Ty's lunchbox by the backdoor with a peanut butter sandwich expertly pulled out through a 3-inch opening and peeled apart. Hmm, awfully sophisticated for cats. And when I saw kibbles in the water bowl, my first thought was, that is the action of a raccoon.

Raccoon? Surely not. Not with a magnetized cat door.

On the third day, when Curt was out of town, I stayed up late with the cats to watch a movie. After it was over, the three of us ambled into the kitchen, where I felt a presence in the air that put me on double alert. Or, rather, I sensed a presence had just left the kitchen. Not a thief, though. Or at least not a human thief. The cats felt it too, and I looked at them, and they looked at me, and we all looked at the cat door and then back at each other. And I was thinking, well, that's just great, I'm in charge here. There's nothing quite so unnerving as feeling in charge -- with cats -- when something creepy just happened. How is it my husband manages to miss all the big moments (the two times I barfed during pregnancy, the day I found a dead possum in the garage, the weekend our cat died, and now the night we're feeling on edge and no solid, male presence)?

But we're tough.  Thank goodness we don't live in Alaska, though, where the predators are so much bigger. I opened the backdoor in time to see a ringed tail waltzing off in the dark toward our fence. The cats flew out the door and huffed around the patio with their tails puffed and their backs arched, ready to take on the wildlife world. Um, yeah, kitties, hate to break to you, but you will not win this one if you engage in a fight.

Well, what to do except bring the cats in and lock the cat door, much to their chagrin. At least we determined who our visitor is.

And so because we don't like the idea of a raccoon going through our cupboards, we've been locking the cat door ever since (we figured out it is ever so easy to open the cat door outward from the outside with something like a little nail, or a raccoon fingernail, as must be the case -- unless the bugger is buying magnets on the black market.)

But we're investing in a raccoon-proof door so we don't have to remember to lock the cat door every night because whenever we forget, that rascal is in the kitchen in a flash. The other night I heard the door banging around, and I went down the stairs to stare through the [locked] cat door window  at the little raccoon face on the other side. She/he stared back for 30 seconds and then took off.

Anyway, If you need to solve your own cat door problems, feel free to give me a shout. I've done the research. Don't ask me to help with dead possums, though. I learned that's my limit.

If you, too, are considering a local journey this summer, whether to save gas $$, to minimize travel time, or simply to stay Cascadia, I highly recommend taking along a copy of Lora Shinn’s Northwest Kid Trips. You can pick it up in the Northwest section of Village Books.

Lora is a Seattle travel/parent writer and author of the travel website, Cascadia Kids, and her travel preferences align well with Bellinghamster sensibilities. The book focuses on Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, and Victoria, with some of the surrounding areas thrown in (Whistler, for example). The mother of two kids under 11, she’s got families in mind, and her book is well laid out and thorough, catering to a variety of family tastes and styles.  You’ll be glad to have the book along.

One of the reasons I can handle staying on the west side this summer is the winter trip we’ve got up our sleeve. At long last (I’ve been yearning to go for years), our family is heading to Hawaii next winter.  Now that Alaska Airlines flies right out of Bellingham, it’s just so easy. Our focus is the Big Island, as well as a bit of time with friends who live on Oahu. As luck would have it, there’s a book out there for us.

Bellingham friend and author Dana Rozier wrote a kids’ book for fans of  Hawaii, which  you can also pick up at Village. Natural Hawai’i: An Inquisitive Kid’s Guide, geared for those 12 and under, features color photos and kid-friendly information about Hawaiian plants, animals, marine life, and volcanoes. If you’re considering a trip to Hawaii (even if you’re not), this book is fun, accessible, and full of great information. Your kids won’t even realize they’re learning.

Dana had a presentation at Village Books planned recently, but the fine weather kept everyone outdoors, so she is rescheduling for October. Locals, keep your eyes open for the announcement.

In the meantime, happy summer travel.

Whistler Village is indeed the scene I expected (although I couldn’t quite picture it): a family-friendly,  Euro-style getaway with great pedestrian-only streets and bricked squares for easy wandering.  We decided it’s Leavenworth meets Disneyland with a dash of Switzerland and a smidge of Amsterdam (we actually caught a whiff). It’s fun — even Dad, who prefers the backcountry, enjoyed himself.

Leah, for her part, decided she needs to go back  with friends — all she could think about was how fun it would be to ski and shop with buddies (you’ll encounter a shop for every high-level outdoor brand there is, along with all other kinds of  shopping).

Mountain biking is the thing this time of year. You can take out a second mortgage to put your family and their bikes on the chairlifts for some screamin’ rides down the ski runs, OR you can bike for free on the many trails that start right from the village (much more our style). The trails are beautiful (within minutes you forget you’re anywhere near the village), and they feature single track options, from easy to difficult, that radiate off the main graveled and paved paths.  Truly, there’s something for everyone.

The highlight? We saw three bears on the Sea to Sky Highway, two on the way north, and one on the way home. We’ve already decided we’re going back.

Despite the rain and cool temperatures, the atmosphere was as lively and celebratory as last year’s sunshiny event, and our boys nabbed a third place finish, thrilling them all. One of the team’s dads coached Ty, the team’s runner and first leg, on how fast to go out and why it would be good to place in the top 15, but Ty powered his way to fourth place by the hand-off, surprising even himself. (Last year, I coached him on why it was important not to go out fast, and he listened all too well, finishing about two-thirds back. Clearly, I need to stay out of it.)

Now the adult version of the race is just days away, and instead of participating along with half the Northwest, we will be leaving town to take advantage of the three-day weekend.

It seems I much prefer cheering to competing. Well, and this: none of the events speak to me, and consequently, I just don’t care. Horrors. I usually keep these thoughts to myself because it’s like saying, well, it’s like saying you don’t like the Pickford (to be clear, I love the Pickford). It goes against all things Bellingham.

I did try the race a couple times. Years ago, I did the run, and though I was in good shape at the time, and I thought it would be okay (my knees were fine), I couldn’t get out of bed the next morning. I have never felt so damaged. It took me a week to feel normal, threatening the following weekend’s ultimate Frisbee tournament. Never again did I risk ruining the ultimate tournament that falls the weekend after Ski to Sea.

Another year, I did the mountain bike leg, which was fun and involved no recovery, but now it’s more technical and I don’t even count as a fair weather mountain biker. I can’t downhill ski, the x-country ski mass start intimidates me, I have no business being in a canoe (plus I still remember the year someone drowned on the river during training), and I certainly have no business being on the bay. That leaves the road bike. But then I would have to train. Wow, when did I get so lazy?

There you have it. I’m a Bellingham wimp who doesn’t care. I think I must be the only ‘Hamster in this category. Oh, and perhaps my husband. He’s a great x-country ski racer who can do any team justice, and he had a blast in the canoe one year (while I envisioned log jams and rushing water), but he’d rather go climbing if he had a choice. I guess you could say we have different priorities.

But you can catch me at the Junior Ski to Sea race as I cheer on my boy (who will be listening to other parents’ advice). We live the Ski to Sea spirit through him. Thankfully someone in our family cares.

Who knew we feel  stressed out by celebrating ourselves and wondering whether we’re setting bad precedents by putting too much into thoughtful cards or worrying about whether our husbands are doing a good job of teaching our children how to celebrate their mother? The teaching-our-kids aspect is also a concern of mine that I didn’t give voice to in my post. And this: why does Father’s Day feel so much easier? In our house, we  send Dad out climbing for the day and cook him a good meal and call it done. He’s happy, we’re happy. But I digress…

My weekend ended up feeling oddly my own, funnily enough, because I had to shop for a dress for an upcoming wedding, and there was no other time to do it than Saturday and Sunday. Suffice to say, I will never shop for a dress — or any other clothing — on the Saturday before Mother’s Day ever again. Did you know all the stores have Mother’s Day sales? I didn’t. Did you know the mall is full of women shopping for themselves the day before Mother’s Day? Me neither.

I hate clothes shopping at the best of times, but shopping for unfamiliar fashion is a major stress point for me (I never wear dresses, and those in my closet are leftover from about 1995), especially when the dress styles are bad (they are!) and you’re supposed to look good at a semi-formal wedding without easy access to Nordstrom. I think I shopped every store in the mall that has dresses, as well as several consignment shops and dress shops downtown. My daughter declared me picky when I returned home on Saturday, wiped out, worried, and dressless. I say the fashion is tacky — great for 14-year-old girls, perhaps, but weird for 40-something-year-old women.

On Sunday, Mother’s Day, after Saturday’s bust, Leah went back to the mall with me (and to more consignment shops) and helped me find the one proverbial Little Black Dress that I actually liked and that fit, hidden among a sea of bad flower prints. Suddenly I felt less panicked, knowing my fashion-conscious daughter was helping me wade through the masses — “ugly” she would say, “really bad,” “who would wear that!?” — until we found several dresses for me to try on.

She has stamina, that girl, and there is something to be said for having a fashion savvy daughter if you lean toward fleece and Chacos as I do. You’ll thank her even as she’s asking to drain your bank account for herself (Leah didn’t, but she loves nothing better than to shop it up).  And she  waited in the dressing room area to approve or disapprove each dress. And she was always right. We glanced at shoes on the way out of Macy’s, decided which ones might work, and I went back and got them on Monday.

All in all, despite the ebb and flow of my own hysteria throughout the weekend (truly, this cannot be overstated), it was a sweet and unexpected way to spend time with my daughter.

You can bet I will be consulting her for makeup advice this Saturday, yet another area of fashion in which I do not excel.

It doesn’t help that Mother’s Day falls during the busiest month of the school year. March would be so much better. Or September, when the kids have gone back to school, and the house rings with silence.

Here’s the thing: my mom, who lives nearby, is out of town for Mother’s Day, which brings a measure of simplicity to the day. Slap myself with a wet noodle! How did I get to this place where doing something nice for my mother has become a burden? (It hasn’t, really, it’s just the prescription that feels burdensome.) My mother would not want me to feel this way. I know that. But I can’t help it. Maybe that’s the curse of being a mom — always feeling in charge and responsible. Or maybe that’s just me and my ultra organized calendar-brain that lives in fear in of forgetting someone somewhere or unwittingly missing a practice of some kind or, worse, getting a call from someone saying, “Where are you?” “Where am I supposed to be?” was something I said to a caller somewhat recently, my brain a complete blank.

The idea, of course, is that I am also to be the honored one, and that’s supposed to be nice, relaxing — to be honored and thanked by my loving children (feel the Hallmark coming through?) — and we’re supposed to spend some happy family time together (and we do), and yes, most years, somewhere in there, I’d like to spend time with my own mother, but honestly the whole affair just feels like one more thing on my to-do list. A calendar holiday. I can’t believe I just said that.

It’s a beautiful idea, and it was when it first started centuries ago. But now it feels like another over-marketed holiday and a way to spend money, although the marketing isn’t new. Apparently, the American version of it went commercial almost immediately (leave it to us Yanks).

Don’t get me wrong. I love the sentiment behind the day and I love the hanging basket that seems to be a tradition in our household (the basket I will buy for myself the following weekend if it falls through for Mother’s Day). Not that I expect it or anything, but when my family asks if I’d like something, well, yeah, sure. They can save me the drive to Joe’s Gardens. One less thing on my to-do list.

If we think we’re busy now, the first English Settlers discontinued Mother’s Day when they first arrived in the new land because they flat out didn’t have time to celebrate. Personally I think that’s less about time and more about their attitude. Uh. Note to self.

But I can sort of relate. Right now, I’m all for celebrating Mother’s Day Off — from everything, including being a mom, as well as from that looping list in my overstuffed female brain.

Anyone with me?