A Cheat

I am amazingly uninspired to blog today. We had a good day. We scootered around a closed camp ground -- one of the many exciting things Del Norte has to offer on beautiful fall days. We saw stumps covered in puffballs, climbing banana slugs, and many other wondrous things. Unfortunately, all of the images of wonder are still hanging out on Michael's phone.

So for your enjoyment, I present the other blog I'm writing for daily this month. Because I am a masochist.

Mouth Of The Smith

A few weekends ago, we were at a friend's house on the Smith River and Darcy was heartbroken because we wouldn't let her go down to the water. The river was certainly not at flood stage, but it was still high and dangerous. The next day she was still sad about not being able to "get her feet in water", so I took her to the mouth of the Smith River. She just barely kept her shorts dry while having a great time playing in the water and on the rocks:

If you look to the left, you can see what looks a bit like driftwood on the spit that forms the other riverbank at the mouth. It is not driftwood, it is a very large bunch of lazy seals, sunning themselves on a beautiful day:

We skipped rocks, looked for copepods, one of Darcy's favorite ocean creatures, and Darcy pushed the limits of how deep she could go without getting her clothes wet. Most of the deepest stuff, unfortunately, is on video, not stills:

Darcy In Nature

We are incredibly lucky to live in a place with many outdoor play opportunities. Our weekends have been beautiful for several weeks, so we've been out and about. Here's our girl in a few different environments:

 Two weeks ago, we hiked near Lake Earl and spied ospreys around their nest and other cool stuff. Darcy asked to be able to run a head twice and spent time out of our sight on the trail for (I think) the first time. She was never out of sight for more than a couple minutes, but it's an exciting step for her to be capable of being "alone" in wild spaces.

We spent a sunny day in the interior parts of our territory recently. This is the Rough and Ready River and it's neighboring botanical area. There were amazing wildflowers, but I haven't uploaded those photos yet. The Rough and Ready is dry most of the summer, but was practically raging this day. Even though it was warm enough for the beloved halter-top dress, we could see snow on the mountains nearby.

 You may recall a beautiful picture of our girl lying in the sand dunes a couple months ago. If you don't recall it, you can revisit it. The way in was full of mud. On the way out, we tried a different path, only to find it covered with (luckily warm) water. I assumed Darcy would insist on a carry-out on this one, but no! She just waded right in and did it herself:

A New Year Begins

We have been very fortunate in the past year, despite some blips here and there, and we ended the year with the great fortune to spend the night with good friends in an absolutely beautiful spot. Our friends who own the beautiful Requa Inn brought us all together in a wonderful house further up Requa Hill. It is rented out to guests as a sort-of extension of the Inn. The views are unbelievable. We saw only a glimpse of the splendor last night, as we drove to Klamath while the sun was setting, giving us only a little light to see the view as we unloaded the car.

All of the children involved tend to be early risers, but they had had so much fun and stayed up so late before falling asleep on a strata of blankets laid on the floor of the (empty) master bedroom walk-in closet, that they slept in a bit later than usual. Our child was the first to rise and stay risen, climbing into our bed just before 6:30. We had turned out our light around 1:30, so this felt too early. As it turns out, it was worth it. We got to witness the full glory of the sunrise, viewed in one direction up the Klamath River and eventually, in the other direction where the Klamath meets the Pacific. Here's a poor copy of the real deal -- the colors in the reflection on the window are closer to reality:

 I'll provide a better photo of the mouth, not quite seen here next to the house, with the white line of surf crashing on the spit, another time. Now I need to wake up my sleeping beauty who fell asleep sitting up on the couch because she was Just Too Tired. Michael is busy felling trees with two of his fellow rangers. Hopefully, the all end the day completely intact, with loads of firewood for everyone.

Happy New Year to you all. I hope the beginning of your year was as magical as ours. I have a hard time beating this location as a place to wake up and start a new year -- I'm not sure how we'll face the end of 2012.

In Which Darcy Is Kind To Squirrels

Several weeks ago, we went camping outside Brookings, OR, at a state park campground. It was a pretty cushy camping trip because every campsite had an electrical hookup. We took our aerobeds. There was this great snag at our site that Darcy enjoyed playing in. So did a squirrel as we were setting up camp.

When we went hiking the first afternoon, we walked under a lot of oaks with loads of acorns on the ground. The following morning, Darcy woke up quite early and I took her for a walk. Which she didn't want to do until I suggested we collect acorns to tempt the squirrel back to our tree. We took a bowl, she walked all the way back to the trail, we filled it up. On the way back, she kept talking about how she was going to fill up the squirrel's basket. And so she did:

There are a couple cups of acorns in that little nook, along with the leaves she kept putting in my pocket as we walked around camp and hiked the trail. She tried hard to be patient and watch from a distance to see if the squirrel would come get the nuts, but she just couldn't stay away:

Darcy And The Sea

We are in the midst of a great holiday weekend. We started with a parade in neighboring Brookings, OR, and associated festivities tied to the Azalea Festival on Saturday. We all had a good time and then Michael went to softball practice. Today, it was warm right from the get-go, so Darcy and I walked to a playground while Michael slept in. Then we packed up a picnic and headed inland where it got as warm as 77 with glorious sun. We hiked a short loop trail to see the Darlingtonia (pitcher plants) in all their wild glory and then hit another botanical trail along the Rough and Ready River. There's a picnic table at the end of the trail overlooking the river and that's where we ate. Then we drove home, with a detour towards Happy Camp. Darcy fell asleep and one minute later, we were in snow! Lots of snow! When we got home, Michael went off to another softball practice and Darcy and I went to the beach. Where she ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ... you get the idea. For an hour.

The ocean was incredibly calm, almost flat, so it was a much less anxious visit to the beach than it often is. Darcy chased the seagulls and the waves, and I chased her.

As you can see, especially in the first picture, she had a lot of fun. I did, too, in part because of the lack of waves. I picked up pretty rocks with a plan to make them into a craft project for our family reunion in July. There are such gorgeous stones on our beaches, but I feel like I need a reason to collect them.

And just in case you didn't notice, we were in the ocean, the redwoods, the serpentine fens (where the pitcher plants live), and the snowy mountains of the Siskiyou National Forest, all in about seven hours.

Just How Big Are These Trees?

Darcy loves the redwoods. She also loves and misses the Joshua trees, so frequently tells me that Crescent City has redwood trees, but Cima house had Joshua trees. And it's all true -- both places have some very special trees. She likes to pretend to be a redwood by standing on her tip toes and reaching her hands really high over her head. She doesn't quite reach their heights. All the pictures in this post were taken on the same day in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park (hope I got that right; all this jurisdictional stuff has me confused). As soon as we got out of the car, Darcy ran over to hug this redwood.

We had lunch on this bench. I know that it looks like a small bench. It isn't. We all three sat on it with our lunches spread out, too. It's a goodly-sized bench.

Even as you get further away, a big redwood is still really, really big. Notice that it's instant darkness behind it as you get into more redwoods. On a sunny day, in the middle of the day, if we're driving through old-growth redwoods, our car will automatically turn on the full headlights. Because it's confused and thinks it is suddenly night. Not much light gets through the canopy.

It's hard to get a whole tree into the picture, but this is the rest of the tree from the other pictures. I did my best. Unless I had crossed into the (STAY OUT!!) elk meadow, I couldn't get any further back.

Even when they're lying down, redwoods are still big. This one's a little taller than Michael, which wouldn't be that impressive at the base of the trunk, but this cut is probably twenty or thirty feet from the roots. We were admiring mushrooms. I needed the flash. On that bright, sunny afternoon you see in the previous pictures.

In other news, the rain has returned to Crescent City after two weeks of sunshine. The clear skies brought very cold temperatures and we learned that our pellet stove doesn't really do much when it's in the thirties unless we keep it on all day long. And our central heat doesn't like to come downstairs, apparently. So we can have the stove on and be warm in the living room and almost-warm in the kitchen. Or we can have the central heat on and be warm upstairs. Not both.

And in book news, I am still on my quest, but I got stuck on Swallows and Amazons (or is it Amazons and Swallows?). I thought this was one I was going to really enjoy. I first heard about it in a NY Times poll asking people for the Harry Potter of their childhood. People raved about this series of books and I couldn't find it in my library at the time. I found a used copy on our drive here from Cima, but I haven't gotten past the second chapter yet. I don't really know why. I think I've read a couple more since I last updated my quest, but I'll have to look at my master list to see what they were. I've got Bleak House on deck because someone gave me the BBC production to watch on DVD and I don't want to see it before I read it.

Klamath River Overlook

A couple weekends ago, we had a gorgeous sunny day and we headed south out of Crescent City for a variety of activities. The first was a hike down to the Klamath River overlook. This picture was taken from the overlook looking back up to the parking lot, at the very tippy-top of this hill. It was a steep trail, but not too long and surrounded by lupine. Not in bloom, but with the promise of quite the show when it is.

Here's Michael and Darcy hiking down to the overlook. The ocean was pretty calm and our drive out of Crescent City featured many, many whale spouts.

Darcy and I check out the rocks and surf to the north of the overlook.

The main event: the Klamath River meet the ocean.

Darcy danced around the overlook for a while before we headed back up to our car. Our wildlife spottings here included several woolly bear caterpillars and a snake. Yes, a snake. I never encountered a snake on any hike in the Mojave. Which, as you may know, is full of snakes of all different kinds. But two of our hikes have included snakes. This one was a decent size snake. On our first hike down to a beach to look for tide pools, we encountered two very small snakes. Not just two different snakes, but two different kinds of snakes. Prior to meeting these small beasts, I had been thinking that this is very un-snake-like habitat, being all wet and cold and all. How wrong I was!

Surf's Up!

Darcy's birthday celebrations are over (other than gifts that are still coming) and she had a good time. I'll post some pictures and more information over the next couple days, but right now, here are some pictures from last weekend. It was a busy one, with lots of errands, short hikes, and a trip to the interior of our neighboring Oregon.

The surf was high all last weekend and we had a lot of company taking pictures of it at one of the overlooks. This is taken from one that is just a few hundred yards down the road from where Darcy and I watched whales the week before.

On Sunday, we went further north up the coast (by about a mile and a half). There are beautiful paths along the bluffs. This rock is almost a natural arch, so the waves were coming through the center of the rock as well as smashing against the sides.

The cliff sides were covered in small plants, and I tried to get a close enough look to figure out what they were, but wasn't having luck at first. Then I got over to the edge and realized it was a cute little succulent, which I didn't expect at all. All of the light green/gray in this picture is colony after colony of these:

The plants are different and there's not quite as much variety, but the ecosystem on top of these bluffs remind me a little of the tundra. When you look from a distance, it all looks the same, but when you get right up close, there are dozens of different tiny plants.

We also drove through an old-growth redwood grove to a point with access to the Smith River. Darcy and Michael skipped rocks for quite a while, and then we walked along the river and watched the mists rise and saw perfect raccoon tracks in a mud puddle. It was a very pleasant afternoon.

Pearls Of Wisdom From Darcy Jo

Last night after dinner it had cooled down enough to be pleasant outside, so we went out to play, water the garden, bring in the last of the laundry from the line, and watch the moon rise. Darcy, despite her love of almost all green vegetables, has been resisting trying any of the cherry tomatoes from the garden. I picked two last night and offered her one, which she took, but "just to hold it". I ate the other and told her how sweet it was, kind of like candy. So she popped hers in her mouth, bit down, acted like it was instant death, spit it into my hand, and proclaimed with a wobbly bottom lip:

"That is very different from M&Ms."

She speaks the truth, but I'd prefer she liked the tomato and wasn't so fond of M&Ms.

Darcy running across the meadow on Mt. Charleston.

For those of you who do not know more about the Wright Brothers than you ever wanted to know, the well near their original bicycle shop was contaminated with typhoid in 1896 and Orv got sick and almost died. Wilbur nursed him through it and read books about flying pretty much non-stop. This morning, Darcy asked for a cup to give one of her elephants a drink. She specified that she wanted one without typhoid in it, which I thought was a good decision. Unfortunately, she then put a ball in it to represent typhoid and drank it herself. This led to her being all bundled up in blankets on the couch while I read to her, just like Wilbur did. Right now, she's typhoid-free. I suggest you all try to stay the same.

Darcy and Michael on the log that was Darcy's goal in the first picture.

On Thursday, while it was 107 in the Las Vegas valley (and we "enjoyed" some play time at a park in that heat), it was a cool and lovely 72 at the meadow on Mt. Charleston. It's amazing that a half-hour drive can bring that kind of change, but we were very grateful for it and had a lot of fun playing in the meadow and hiking through the trees. Darcy played a wonderful game in which she would dive off a tall stump into our arms; I'd put up the video, but she got a little reckless as the game progressed and it might make us look like Very Bad Parents.

Darcy and Angela at the other end of that log.