Cabin Trip

This previous weekend, Lauren and I got to go on the Maruyama Friends Club cabin trip. Each department/campus gets their own cabin trip, but Lauren got to go with my coworkers because she's married to me. Unfortunately, that did not mean that we were able to share a bed or even a room. There was no 'purpling' allowed. Girls were upstairs and guys were downstairs. There were only four beds total, so people pretty much camped out wherever they could find a spot.

Clifford sleeping on the 'couch'

The cabin is owned by a couple families that are affiliated with the school and they let us use it. It's only about a 40 minute drive away from the Maruyama campus, but when you're there it feels like you're in the wilderness a little bit. 

The scenery was gorgeous, even in the winter time. I loved how the woods go right up to the beaches, which were really rocky and difficult to climb down to. 

We had a lot of fun on those rocks. The best part was when we set up Lauren's camera with a ten second delay so that we could get in a picture together. We would take turns pushing the button and racing across the deadly terrain to try to get in the picture in time.

She almost made it that time!



We did it!!! Yay!




I think my favorite part of the trip was the food, which won't surprise anybody who knows me. Lauren and I stocked up on snacks to eat while we were there, but we didn't need them at all. The school was incredibly generous and fed us really well on steak and chicken fajitas and pancakes, eggs, ham, and tons of other good stuff. They also brought snacks and a huge cooler full of different sodas and other drinks. 


We spent a lot of time just hanging out and playing different kinds of games. My favorites were Munchkin and Settlers of Catan. One of the other teachers brought his Xbox so I also got to play a few hours of Halo, which I really miss.


Some of the teachers who had been there before told us that there was a lighthouse only ten minutes away down the forest trail along the beach. We decided to try to find it and we were warned that the trail forked. Of course, nobody seemed to be able to remember which direction to take, so we just kind of winged it. Naturally, we picked the wrong way; probably because Lauren let me choose. 

A little stone wave break we found after we got lost.

Getting lost ended up being lucky though. After about twenty minutes of hiking, when we were starting to suspect that we had gone the wrong way, we found these cool stone steps leading up to a temple. We have no idea what that sign in the picture says but I interpreted it to mean 'Foreigners welcome to climb the dangerous stone steps at their own risk'. So we did and wow, we're out of shape! Those steps are torture! 





Here are some pictures of the temple we found at the top. Apparently, it was built to worship the sea. It is sad to see, but there are still very many people here who worship the creation instead of the creator.

We took a different way back to the cabin because we wanted to explore a little bit. You'll never guess what we found; the lighthouse! It was about a hundred feet past the intersection where we took a wrong turn! So we took some pictures and then went back to the cabin.

All in all, it was a great time. We're both looking forward to going back as soon as possible.