We're Living in The Wild, Wild West

So, there was a train robbery a few miles from our house on Saturday. We treated it as more or less a joke at first because, really, who expects train robberies in this day and age? It seemed less funny a few hours later when we had a phone message from one of the Park's law enforcement rangers saying that we should make sure our doors were locked because there were still some suspects unaccounted for. It seemed MUCH less funny the next day when a teenager involved in the robbery was found dead in the desert.

I have more photos coming soon, I promise. Photoshop was being mean to me earlier today or there would already be a picture of our rabbit-wrangling girl on her trusty steed.

Vacation, Part II

Today's exciting news (yesterday's was our upcoming freedom from AT&T) is that we had rain! Lots of rain! There were light showers last night and early this morning, but then the skies opened up shortly after Darcy started her nap and we had a real, sustained downpour. Very exciting.

This is campsite number two, a Park Service campground in Devil's Postpile National Monument. The ground is mostly ground-up pumice, which made for very dirty feet for all of us, and very dirty everything for Darcy given her fondness for dirt and rocks. And charcoal, which is what adorns her face in this picture. She was slumped in this chair playing with small pieces of pumice that were mostly under her back. It amused her for at least fifteen minutes, which meant fifteen minutes of the day that she wasn't in full motion.

Along with tunnels, Darcy learned to love bridges on this trip. Both campgrounds had nearby bridges that we made multiple visits to. This one has a special place in Michael's heart. It is the stopping point for one of his favorite views in all of the Sierra. (See below; I wouldn't tease like that.)

The View From the Bridge. Need I say more?

Devil's Postpile is a stunning volcanic feature made up of hundreds (or thousands?) of columns of basalt that formed when lava cooled very slowly. We didn't go up on top, but glacial action long after the columns formed sheared them off to look like a very fancy tile floor. You can see more pictures of the Monument here.

Darcy, of course, enjoyed the Postpile immensely because it's all rocks. Big rocks. In Darcy's world, rocks are either big (or sometimes heavy rather than big) or tiny. If she can hold it in one hand, she will almost always answer "Tiny!" if you ask if her rock is big or small.

More pictures will follow shortly. There is still a waterfall to see, so stay tuned!

Vacation, Part I

So, we moved! With some delay and a great deal of frustration due to moving company nightmares, we now live in Cima! We're still working on unpacking the last boxes and getting a telephone number (we will be free of AT&T apparently and that is some of the best news ever), but we will send out a new address soon. Almost immediately after moving, we set off on our planned vacation...

Darcy took to camping very well. Our first three nights were in a campground just outside Kings Canyon National Park. Darcy enjoyed her giraffe chair and the fact that the bench made a perfect table, built just for her. She's also fond of pancakes, no matter where she eats them.

The campground is on Forest Service land and was heavily logged about a hundred years ago. Sequoias being virtually indestructible, the stumps are still there. We had a few surrounding our campsite and this massive one was part of a short walking trail adjacent to the campground. During the logging frenzy, there was a need for a holding pond, so they built nearby Hume Lake. We spent one afternoon swimming there. Again, because sequoia wood lasts indefinitely, there were a few giant logs still hanging out in the water, a couple big enough that three or four people were log-rolling on them at the same time.

Darcy likes to touch noses. It's part of a song. We indulge her and she thinks it's hilarious. Our other major indulgence on this trip was music. We made a CD of her Very Most Favorite Songs Ever, the most favorite of which was on there twice. We listened to it a lot. It made the longer driving days more bearable for everyone.

Another of Darcy's favorite things are tunnels. Going under a highway overpass? Tunnel. The space underneath a table? Tunnel. A sequoia that's been lying down for over a century? Tunnel tree! Of course, that's what it's called by most people, but Darcy's just started putting two words together, so it's extra fun to hear her say it. She dragged Michael back and forth through this tree many, many times. This is part of Grant's Grove, the cluster of sequoias that includes the General Grant tree, "America's Christmas Tree".

Mornings were cold! The campground was at about 6000 feet above sea level, so the nights really cooled off. Hats and sweaters with cute sheep-buttons were definite necessities. Here, Darcy helps direct our camp tear-down on our last morning at Kings Canyon.

Our vacation interlude involved a long day of driving with a few stops in Yosemite National Park. Do you sense a theme in our destinations? Yosemite Valley was too hot to spend a lot of time, but Tuolumne Meadows are very high and so were a much more pleasant temperature. We stopped for a walk and a little feet-splashing in the stream. It was a beautiful afternoon.

From there, we finished the drive to Mammoth Lakes, with a short driving detour through the June Lake Loop, which was beautiful. We were supposed to camp one night in June Lake so we'd be close to the first-come/first-served campgrounds Michael had his eye on near Devil's Postpile. But, given the very long day of driving, we had canceled that plan and stayed in a hotel for the night, getting showered/bathed and refreshed for the next camping days.

Within a few days, I'll post more pictures from the second and third parts of our trip. Right now, I'm watching three chipmunk-like critters digging little holes in the drainage from our swamp cooler. They're lying as flat as three-dimensional critters can get to cool off their bellies. Or so I assume. It really isn't that hot here; not like Baker. Mornings and evenings are lovely, and the one night we've left the swamp cooler on overnight, it was too cold inside the next morning.

Hope This Isn't A Jinx!

With any luck, the house pictured here will soon be our new house! We're waiting for the bidding to close and the official word, but we believe that we will be moving here in the near future. Why, you ask, do we want to move seven months after getting here? Moving isn't fun, it's true, but neither is life in Baker. It looks like a town, it really does, but it doesn't feel much like one. We're not losing much by being away from town and we're gaining a lot: peace and quiet; beautiful views, pleasant places to walk; 3000 feet in elevation (and therefore, much, much lower temperatures); affordable rent; neighbors with cows as pets; greater proximity to all parts of the park; shorter commute for Michael; and the list goes on!

We'll let you all know as soon as we hear definitive word and set a moving date!

In other news, Darcy Jo is trying to learn everything all at once. Her vocabulary grows at leaps and bounds, and she now points to letters she recognizes on all sorts of things (like her cup at lunch yesterday; it took me a while to figure out why she kept saying "emm" because I couldn't see the writing). She can pick out maybe a third of the alphabet and grins like a maniac when we confirm that it really is the letter she said it was. Likewise, she is extremely proud that she has (how? I have no idea!) learned the concept of "two". It started with her saying "two" if she was holding two of the same object, but now extends to just having two things, alike or different, and fingers! If you hold up two fingers and ask how many there are, she'll tell you -- and she did it the very first time we tried it.

Her other new trick is crawling! Finally! We took her to a mall when we were visiting in Simi Valley last week and it was crawling (forgive the pun) with kids. There were a lot of tunnels, which Darcy loves, but they weren't tall enough for her to stand in, so she couldn't take advantage of them. It's a little heartbreaking to watch her in those situations because it's clear that if she had had a crawling phase, she would now have a much better grasp of climbing on, under, and over things. She has to just watch the other kids a lot. She loves that, but I want her to be able to DO, not just watch.

She's been doing what she calls crawling every once in a while for a month or two. It's sort of like swimming on the carpet, as her belly is still flat on the floor. But after spending quite a lot of time watching so many other kids crawling around and seeing that she was missing out, this week, she crawls! True, hands-and-knees, belly-off-the-floor crawling! She mostly just uses this to crawl to something that will help her stand up if she's plopped down on her tush, but we also set up the couch cushions as an obstacle course and she's almost able to crawl up and over a stack of two. It will only take another visit or two to a play area for her to get up to speed.

Darcy Wears Boxers!

I know that I've recently promised some photographic and possibly video evidence of Darcy's love for (maybe even obsession with) water, but those are on the other computer, so you'll have to wait a little bit longer. Instead, for your viewing pleasure, I offer these treats:

Michael was folding laundry in the living room and Darcy absconded with his Christmas-themed boxers and asked me to put them on her. So I did. The clothespin was an essential part of the ensemble. She spent about ten minutes dancing around in the boxers before deciding that they were just annoying.


It took much less time for her to decide that finger paint on her hands was annoying. She did smear this paint around a little bit more, but then refused to touch any color of paint again. I tried to teach her a one-finger method, but she was having none of it. We'll wait a couple weeks and try again.

In other news, her 18 month checkup was on Friday and went well. She is growing well and let the doctor check her out a little more thoroughly than last time. She balked at the hearing test, so the nurse couldn't get the ear piece in far enough to test via vibrations, but said that she'd accept Darcy's "beep beep" as evidence that she heard, well...the beep.

Darcy Discovers The Bandana

Flowers, Everywhere We Look, Flowers

Ok, so there has been some prodding recently for some new photos and an update. We've been silent because we spend all our free time (well, I do, Michael sometimes thinks it's more of the stuff he does at work) looking at flowers. And hosting guests and doing some traveling, I should add, but flowers really have taken over our lives (and our hard drive).

So here are some lovely flowers. (Clicking on a picture gets you a larger image.)



Michael received an email a few weeks back saying that Devil's Playground was in a once in a lifetime state of bloom. We were lucky enough to get out there a few days later -- it was breathtaking! Dune evening primroses as far as the eye could see in all directions, with lots of prickly poppies, sunflower-family yellow flowers, hairy sand verbena, desert needles, and so many other flowers mixed in. The primroses, however, were the stars of this show, flowering in enormous mounds and double rings (top photo).


After a lot of driving (we might have bitten off a little more than we should have) we stopped for a picnic lunch at some well-known (to us) rocks. Darcy is all smiles because she's eating her very first PB and J. She also loves rocks, so was happy even before she discovered the glorious presence of jelly.

The flower season moves from lower to higher elevations here, and different flowers show up in the varied ecosystems that make up the Preserve. The following pictures are of the yucca and cactus family blooms, which are spectacular.

Joshua Trees in bloom

Up close and personal with a banana yucca

Beavertail cactus on Zyzzyx road

Claret cup cactus among the Joshua trees

Darcy will do anything for some more flower sightings...her first solo* rock climb.

And she's rewarded! With cliff roses, Palmer's penstemon, and rattlesnake weed (in that order). The rattlesnake weed fooled us -- it looks huge in the pictures in the guidebooks; we were expecting something ten times that size at least!




All that flower hunting and rock climbing and walking does wear a girl out, though. Even the coolest shades in the world can't keep this one awake...

*Solo as in, Daddy's hand is just out of the picture by an inch. Don't call child protective services just yet!