Feral Kids Academy

My family and I are a week into our month-long vacation at our lake property on Tenmile Lake in Lakeside, Oregon. I purchased this property in 2014 and then shortly after moved to the Oregon Coast and then started moving there part-time (through the week), building a sustainable hermitage where I intended to live the rest of my life in full isolation and obscurity.

Plans, of course, changed dramatically for me when I married and now have several children and a wife and a dog and (it appears) a new cat on the way. We are also going through the process of adopting (possibly five) more children in the future.

But, I wanted to give an update of our first week on the lake from the pictures and videos I’ve taken. I intend to post several of these over the course of the month and then do a recap post in September. I hope you enjoy the photos and videos.

Tubing in the Afternoon

We spend time tubing and knee boarding in the afternoons, especially during the week when we have the lake to ourselves. There is nothing quite like the refreshing cool water and the wind in your face. This is Skye (12 years old) and Elly (4 years old). Elly has been tubing and on the water since she was two years old. The kids really love time behind the boat and they are getting better and braver every day!

We will be posting in the coming weeks pics and videos of our time at the lake. Most of it will entail camp life: tubing, skiing, boating, fishing, relaxing by the camp fire, hiking, exploring around in the woods, the different fascinating creatures we encounter along the way, and a lot of pictures of us all having a great deal of fun. We may even experiment with drones and other devices for recording our adventures!

Camp Life August 2025

Here are various pictures of camp life the first day we were out on the lake for our first overnight. It was relaxing and fun to watch the kids put up their sister’s tent, roasting marshmallows for the first time (Elly), and just hanging out together. Jeremiah is an expert fire builder. He doesn’t even use paper anymore and has learned how to create a rip-roaring fire in just a few minutes. We will be having fire starting challenges this month and I imagine he is going to win. We will film it so you guys can see what’s happening and who wins.

We had our bundle of kittens with us on this first trip. They are six kittens the girls are fostering (their first litter). We had them in a small crate for awhile, but then on the second day we were able to turn them loose in the tent above and let them roam around. It went much better and they were much happier to get to stretch their legs. There will, I’m sure, be much more written on this site about the kittens. Elly is getting to keep one she named Blackberry!

Here is a short video of the girls tubing. It is ridiculous that Google Photos does not allow embedding of its videos! Uploading them to YouTube separately is a pain. Maybe I can share them on Facebook and them embed form there? I will play with it in the future.

Until our next lake post!