I spent a long weekend in the mountains with my parents at our family cabin. The cabin is about 30 minutes, not more, outside of Walla Walla. In fact, it's a mile into Oregon on a gravel road. There's no cell phone coverage and ours is the only cabin on the lane with electricity.
<a title="Family Cabin by karolinka.sofia, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/29050866@N06/7839541998/"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8307/7839541998_16a9745c77_z.jpg" alt="Family Cabin" width="640" height="427" /></a>
My great-grandfather built the main cabin and a much smaller sleeping cabin in the 1920's out of wood that was left over from a project at the family creamery. They picked the land for the cabin based on the fact that my great-grandmother had spent her teenage summers on Mill Creek with her aunt on an adjacent piece of land.  When they built the cabin there was no bridge and one had to ford the creek in his car.

These days there' s a bridge. I guess we're getting soft.

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<a title="Family Cabin by karolinka.sofia, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/29050866@N06/7839553720/"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8423/7839553720_1ec10be1f8_z.jpg" alt="Family Cabin" width="640" height="427" /></a>
It hasn't always been so, my great-grandmother told stories of sitting on the cabin side of the creek as a teenager with her cousins and laughing when men from town would get suck on a large rock that one couldn't see from the car but that would bottom the car out in the creek. Locals knew about this rock and knew where to drive to avoid it.

<em>Everyone else</em>? Well, they got stuck and then were forced to get out of their cars and into the creek in order to push it off the rocks while my great-grandmother and her friends giggled. Teenagers never change, do they? Even in her 90s when she'd tell this story there was still a hint of the impish-trickster and teenage amusement in her voice and a sparkle in her eyes in recounting these events.

A sparkle that I often see in my own dAd as well. He spent a couple of afternoons sitting, napping and reading in a lounge chair claiming that he was actually doing "research" for: S.E.A.R.C.H. You know: The Sasquatch Educational Anthropological Research  Camp Headquarters. It's apparently <em>very</em> important to sit still in a comfy chair while waiting for Sasquatch.
<a title="Family Cabin by karolinka.sofia, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/29050866@N06/7839559050/"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7130/7839559050_d663d9a84d_z.jpg" alt="Family Cabin" width="640" height="427" /></a>
Anyhow, today the cabin is more or less as it was when it was built. There are still screen windows, we heat the cabin with wood and the point of  going up to camp is to escape the heat and relax. The only thing is that a nearly 100 years later, the cabin is no longer as young as it used to be. It needs a new foundation and some serious TLC so that it can last another 100 years. It'll be a big project but this way our kids will also be able to tell stories about they hi-jinks they got into at the cabin as well.
<a title="Little Sleeping Cabin by karolinka.sofia, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/29050866@N06/7839565100/"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8305/7839565100_4cb8d9671d_z.jpg" alt="Little Sleeping Cabin" width="640" height="427" /></a>
On our trip, the weather was great. It was warm during the day and at night it cooled down enough to put on a sweatshirt and sit around a campfire. By bed time it was cold. The kind of cold that when you're changing into your pjs you hurry because you've got the shivers. This of course is the perfect weather for curling up under a stack of blankets and dozing off to sleep.
<a title="Inside the sleeping cabin by karolinka.sofia, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/29050866@N06/7839547716/"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7248/7839547716_dc4311f8c6_z.jpg" alt="Inside the sleeping cabin" width="640" height="427" /></a>
It's easy-peasy to sleep in the mountains because it gets really, really dark and the only thing that you can hear is the babbling creek. Oh the coffee grinder in the mornings. This is a very important sound to listen for. This way you know when it's safe to get up. Nobody wants to get out of bed before the coffee is made and you know that when the coffee is brewing a fire is also going in the main cabin. That's the best time to get up.

And for the record, my MoM makes a great cup of coffee and an excellent fire. Thanks!