'MO - June 2008 - (Page 17)

community The beautiful surroundings of Triangle Recreation Camp. undergo a carbon audit on all trips run and offer our travelers the opportunity to offset the impact of these trips.” They have the goal of being completely carbon neutral by the end of their third year and hope to maximize their tour’s beneﬁt to local communities while minimizing environmental impact through keeping groups small, utilizing local tour leaders and employing local suppliers. OUT Adventures has three basic types of sojourns: Activity trips such as biking and hiking, Family trips for LGBT families with children over the age of seven and Comfort trips for the slightly more boulevardier among us. They may add a fourth type in the near future, volunteer trips where travelers work on site to extend their assistance whether it be caring for the sick or building a home for someone in need. Both Outgoing Adventures and OUT Adventures say they’ll be donating a portion of their proceeds to the LGBT community. Spring and summer are also the best times to get out of the city and do some camping in the amazing Paciﬁc NW countryside. The Triangle Recreation Camp at Bender Creek opened in early May and is located about an hour and a half from Seattle, on an 80-acre nature conservatory. It is an exclusively gay and lesbian social club for those over 21, and since 1975 has been a protected environment for its members and their pets. Visitors must be either a limited member (an overnight guest) or a regular member. While the limited members can enjoy basic tent camping on the moseattle.com beautiful riverfront portion of the property, it is the regular members who make the camp so fantastically unique. Camp president, Bob N. says their slogan is “Get Away to the Gay Outdoors” and sometimes members have particularly gay ideas about “roughing it.” Full members establish semi-permanent sites and things can get practically bacchanalian. From disco balls dangling from the trees to tiki bars, saunas and theme parties, camps can take on a camp identity found nowhere else. A group of campers once hauled a grand piano across a creek bed for a cocktail party. Another group hosted a Flintstones theme party with hundreds of men wrapped in loincloths and fur dancing beneath the trees. They’ve got even bigger events on fundraising weekends (July 4th and Labor Day). It might be Mardi Gras in the summer, an underwear foam party, or you could even be crowned “queen of the mountains” at the talent show. This is a riff on the kind of camping most people did as a kid spun into something like Gilligan’s Island meets Brokeback Mountain—only everyone is queer and quite pleased to be so. Since the camp is member owned and operated, the TRC can get truly wild in the wilderness. There are about 17 of these semi-permanent camps and more than 2500 members from all over the Northwest. Those wishing to join a camp can connect with groups on the TRC website (www.camptrc.org) as well as ﬁnd ride shares to save on gas. They don’t take reservations and an average weekend can have a few hundred campers at a time so PHOTO CREDIT: K ATIE MORGAN it pays to get there early. Should the TRC ﬁll up however; there are several nearby camps within walking distance to the parties. Bored of the usual scene and looking for something “deeper?” Check out the Bottom Dwellers Scuba Club. Their members organize trips to many warm water locations including the Far East, Mexico and the Caribbean. While people might think that you need to go to sunnier climes for great diving, member Randy Olbrich told ’mo that the Puget Sound is actually host to some amazing animals, as is Hood Canal and up and down the coast. “Our waters have an amazing diversity of nudibranchs (a type of mollusk). They come in various colors like bright blue, yellow, stripes even polka dots. We’re also home to the largest octopus in the world. Some of them are more than ten feet in length when stretched out.” There are also a lot of wreck dives and a sunken 737 plane up in Canada that make for exciting underwater explorations. People who are interested in scuba diving do need to get certiﬁed which takes one class and four supervised dives. The entire process can be done in as little as a weekend and costs only about $350. The Bottom Dwellers don’t give classes or rent equipment, but they can point you toward gay friendly dive schools (Olbrich recommended Seattle Scuba). “The club is a great way to meet people. It has a real sense of community because nobody has an agenda, everyone is just excited about the same things,” Olbrich says. “I’m much healthier since joining. The club helps me stay in shape because I’m so active. There’s a whole other world down there. When I come back up, it’s like I’ve been on vacation.” Like most groups, the Bottom Dwellers have a monthly potluck. More information about joining can be found on their website www.bottomdwellers.org. There has been an enduring myth that it is very hard to connect to the LGBT community in Seattle and with the weather being overcast almost two-thirds of the year, it can be easy for spirits to go from fabulous to ﬂagging. However, getting out and getting involved with clubs and companies like these can be a great way to explore the world, learn about each other and even get in touch with ourselves. So, get out there, under there, even up there, shake off the fusty must of winter and enjoy one of the best LGBT lifestyles in history. Top: Diamondback Nudibranch, Bottom: Opalescent Nudibranch on Yellow Sponge 17 issue #16 | june 2008 http://www.camptrc.org http://www.bottomdwellers.org http://moseattle.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of 'MO - June 2008

'MO Seattle - June 2008 Contents Letter From The Editor Voices Instant Activist Pet Project: Do You Dream About Your Pet? ’mo-BIZ: Anne Levison, Co-owner of the Seattle Storm Legally Speaking: Real Estate Buying Basics The Things We Do: Getting “Out”doors this Summer Seattle Pride Events Calendar ’mo Magazine Interview with Sandra Bernhard Anatomy of a Myth Form & Function: Turn Up the Heat on Your Triceps Gay City: National HIV Testing Day San Francisco: If Gay Had a Headquarters Book Review: Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited by Andrew Holleran Augusten Burroughs Coming to Showtime Network Sex and the City Romances the Big Screen SceneOut: People@Places Capitol Hill Guide

'MO - June 2008

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