Our kids love Minecraft, much to my constant annoyance, and they also love surprises. Sooo... we concocted a little (OK - EPIC) surprise for them. I've been spending a couple of hours a week, on average, since December, creating a "quest" in their Minecraft world. They like the idea because it gets me involved in their life, so they carefully stayed away from the area I was working in these whole long months I spent working on it. They had no idea how fabulous this quest was...
I'm proud of myself, so here's a little montage of some of the quest:
The quest led through all kinds of places, a sunken city, a secret squid cult, a dog island with vet and doggie spa, a love triangle, a swampy maze and a human board game. And in most places there seemed to be odd references to a place called Skookumchuck? Or was that Skooky Chunk? Kookum's Chunky? It depended who you talked to...
But eventually they came to a place called A Dream Come True Cottage, where they found a cake on the table (rather similar to our usual cake: nut cake with cream and berries), a hot tub, and... a little guide book to Skookumchuck Narrows.
Then out behind the cottage was a trail to "Skookumchuck Narrows", where boats were available to hurl themselves down the flow. At the end was a little dock on a small island, with final instructions asking the finder to pack various things in their real backpack, turn off Minecraft and get ready to go. Waiting in the kids' real-world backpacks was some information Markus had printed about the real-world Dream Come True Cottage we had rented, and the real-world Skookumchuck Narrows.
Heh.
Bag packing.
We brought the book we're currently reading as a family...
...and sailed over to the Sunshine Coast in the early evening.
The words Skookum and Chuck come from a local trade-language (Chinook). Skookum means 'great', and chuck is pretty much the sea (I always thought it was waves). So the Skookumchuck Narrows is the narrow passage where the tides hurry through from the Jervis Inlet to the Sechelt Inlet and back again. This isn't the time of year for the 9ft waves, but it was pretty skookum anyway.
The hour-long walk out through the mossy forest is beautiful already.
And then the actual narrows is a lovely place to sit and watch the (aquatic) world go by. There was some sealife to photograph, so the kids did:
...barnacles feeding in the tidal wash.
On the way back up the trail we experienced a great crashing hailstorm that sounded like a waterfall hitting a tin ocean. Markus says hail stings your head if you don't have any hair to protect you!
Rhiannon enjoys geocaching, and we found this one outside the historic graveyard in Gibsons.
It's chilly up there, and once the weather took a turn for rainier times, we treated ourselves to a cup of tea, stopped to find a geocache, and went home to our own dear little house and warm woodstove.
Now I get to take a little break from Minecrafting. (Maybe for a couple of years or indefinitely!!) But the work (and my steep learning curve) was so worth it to see the kids' pleasure and excitement. I guess it mattered to them that I met them in their space on their terms. But mostly it was just great to get away, hike around, have some silly fun, and remember our bond as a family.
Thank you, it's so nice to see where you went. I think Papa and I did take that path several years ago.
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