Nearby Pleasures

Crescent City and surrounds have lots to offer, but we do go further afield at times. One of my favorite places to look for wildflowers in the spring and early summer is a trail along the Rough and Ready River near Cave Junction, Oregon. We stop there occasionally on our way to Grants Pass, Medford, and other parts of Oregon on I-5.

Here are a few pictures of this year's blooms:

The other plant-of-interest at the Rough and Ready are a handful of Ponderosa pines. We learned last year during our first trip to Bend that Ponderosa pines smell nothing like what you'd (or I'd) expect a pine to smell like. They smell something like the intersection of vanilla, dried orange peel, cinnamon, and something else. If you ever find yourself near a sun-warmed Ponderosa, act like Darcy and stick your nose in a crack in the bark to sniff deeply:

Early Stumbles

Well, this is sad. It might be because Michael and our friend got home from doing Michael's radio show and I'm very distracted by conversation and the tv show they're watching, but I am striking out on a good blog topic for today.

So, let me share some of the highlights of our planned drive across the country. There will be links, but no pictures. We'll start out in Lake Tahoe to see the kokanee salmon spawning. Michael and I got to see them seven years ago on our honeymoon and Darcy's excited to see them.

From there, we'll drive across Nevada, stopping to see Great Basin National Park for a few hours. We know some folks who have worked there in the past and we want to hit a bunch of parks on the way. It is kinda middle of nowhere, but that's ok. We'll stay the next night in Moab, which we think might be like Bend ("the place to be"), and spend the next morning in Arches National Park.

As you might be able to tell, I'm trying to find one major activity for each day and then minor stops for stretch breaks as well. From Moab, we'll drive to Denver to visit with our friend Gretel for an evening. We've both driven across Kansas on Interstate 70 before and, no offense meant to Kansas, but we're not keen to do it again. So from Denver, we'll head back up to I-80 and go across Nebraska instead. Kearney, NE, was a cross-roads for most of the major trails west and promises a couple interesting museums. The following morning, we'll skip south to hit Homestead National Monument, with the plowshare-shaped visitors center.

Then comes ST LOUIS!! We'll spend two nights in St Louis! We'll go to Friday Archaeology. We'll take Darcy to the zoo, to MoBot, and possibly to the City Museum.

After St Louis, there are still a couple of great stops of interest. Recalling Darcy's very first obsession, we will be stopping at the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park. For those of you who don't know the Wright Brothers history as well as we do, while the first flight was in Kitty Hawk, their airplane was perfected outside of Dayton, OH. We have the Martin-Sheen-narrated film to prove it.

And then, just like that, we'll be arriving in Pennsylvania for house-hunting, start of work, and the transition to a new school. (Whew! With half an hour left in this day, I have a post! I'm going to try my best to get a picture a day while we're travelling, so you WILL get images of all these places.)

In Which A Previously Unpublished Post Sees Light

Regular readers of this blog know that Darcy can get a little obsessive about one particular thing for months at a time. Right now, we are in the midst of ocean obsession. This has been going on for a very long time now. I think it's been close to a year and it shows no sign of stopping, even as she lets smaller obsessions come and go. Birds are one of the minor interests these days, and she spends time reading bird books, using iBird to look birds up and listen to their calls, and musing about the birds we see out and about. Like everything else she turns her mind to, she is building an amazing wealth of knowledge about birds. But, in keeping with the major obsession of the moment, ocean and shore birds have an edge over all others.

So earlier this summer, I spent a week driving her to and from Trinidad so she could go to Marine Lab Day Camp at Humboldt State University's marine lab. I started to write  a very long post about that week and never published it. It was supposed to lead up to the last day of camp, when Michael and I got to the lab to pick her up and discovered that she had lost a tooth during lunch! There had been no wiggling, no looseness...she bit into her sandwich and out it came. I had tried to take a picture of it without success and that's when I put this post on hold, thinking I would fix that. And there it sat, unpublished. But now I'm dusting it off and adding some more pictures of the marine camp.

This was definitely a highlight of our summer. Amazing that our small child got to play in a college lab, feed fish heads to sea anemones, and walk to the ocean for science every day. Crescent City readers take note: Other than figuring out rides (carpool!), this was ridiculously affordable. I think it was $40 for the whole week, five hours a day. Watch for it next summer. So here's the original partial post:


It's been quite a week in our corner of the world. Quite a looooong week. 

Monday was my birthday (and a very good one, too, thanks to the many wonderful people in my life who sent greetings, birthday wishes, and gifts). I got up at six so I could finish moving us our of our friends' house. We had been living there while they were away for ten days so that Michael could put new flooring in our bathroom, entry, and kitchen, and install a new-to-us wall oven. Darcy and I left at 7:30 to drive an hour and twenty minutes to Trinidad for the summer day camp at HSU's Marine Research Lab. This is the view from thirty steps away from the lab:

Not so bad, huh? While Darcy was at camp, I spent five hours drinking coffee at a nice cafe, window shopping in Arcata, chatting with friends and family on the phone, and generally just being relaxed. It was lovely. 

I got back to the lab a bit early to pick Darcy up and they weren't yet back from their daily field trip, so I walked around Trinidad's hilly streets for a while admiring the views and gardens. I was across the harbor when I saw kids starting to descend from Trinidad Head and spied Darcy (in the orange top with a hat near the utility pole):

She had a great first day at camp and we hopped in the car for the drive home. And once home, we changed into soccer-appropriate clothes and went to her first soccer practice:

Home again for a very quick, simple, but completely delicious dinner of bread, apples, avocados, and a variety of lovely cheeses, followed by molten chocolate cakes made by Michael! End of Day 1.

(Here, the original post ends.)

Every-Day Posting Comes Early This Year

Yes, that's right! Instead of taking part in National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) this year, I'm going to attempt to blog every day in October. It's my way of saying good-bye to this wonderful place we've lived for the past three years and documenting our transition to Pennsylvania. While we're still in Crescent City, I'll focus on the parts of our life here that we'll miss. A lot. And so, for the first October post, some pictures of the short visit of John and Stef (Auntie Best). We tried to show them EVERYTHING we loved in 36 hours. Not really possible, but we did a lot.

Darcy led them through the sun-dappled beauty of the redwoods in Stout Grove. It was a beautiful day. The redwoods did their best to be spectacular and they're good at that on even a bad day.

We didn't get to properly swim in the Smith River, but we did take the side path from the Stout Grove trail to the river and put our feet in. There was some rock-skipping and tadpole catching, and we picked and ate blackberries on the way there.

Then we hit Big Dune. It requires a walk through some of the worst mosquitoes ever to get there, but once you make it, it's wonderful. This is an inland dune, surrounded on all sides by forest. Most of the grass you see in the picture is an invasive foreigner. All this adds up to behavior that we would not condone on many other, more fragile dunes. John and Michael had long jump contests. We all sledded/rolled/fell down the sand.

Michael was the winner of the long jump contest (he has had more practice, in fairness to John) and was feeling very triumphant. Note that the redwoods, the river, and the dunes were all visited in one single day. Del Norte has a lot to offer.

The next morning, in response to Darcy's desperate pleas, her very kind aunt and uncle consented to try to see the tide pools despite the poor timing of the low tide. We didn't see much, but at least we got to show off yet another of our region's beauties:

Right before we left for the dunes, Darcy took off most of the skin on her big toe. She reluctantly allowed us to bandage it, all the while insisting that it was nothing -- no injury, no pain, no blood. But walking over the rocky beach this next morning was clearly bothering her and so, taking an uncle's right to spoil as his own, John carried her up the hill from the beach. We headed home, they packed their bags, and Michael arrived home to drive them to the airport in Medford.

As I type, John and Best are en route to Bhutan, a nation hidden high in the Himalayas. Bhutan is one of very few countries that measures national happiness instead of national gross domestic product. Knowing John and Stef, the gross national happiness of Bhutan will be increased slightly for the next 10 days. 

It has been a privilege to share this corner of the world with friends and family. Even though we wander the national parks, it is hard to imagine that we will live in another place that can surpass the natural beauty of this place, whether you call it the far North Coast of California, the Wild Rivers Coast, or the State of Jefferson.

First Day Of School 2012!

It's a misty first day of school today, but here's our girl, all ready to take on first grade at Klamath River Early College of the Redwoods! She's wearing her newest Converse sneakers, which will partially replace the ones purchased during her spring break just a few short months ago. They're showing a little wear and tear:

The ones on the right used to be a vibrant purple with pink tongues. All the running and hiking and playing and jumping our girl does takes a toll on shoes. It's slightly better now that she'll accept more than one pair in rotation so they don't get worn every single day, but...

Return Of The Book Quest

Ok. So about three years ago, I saw this list of 100 books that people were passing around Facebook to see how many they'd read. I consider myself reasonably well-read and was surprised by how many I had NOT read from the list, so I started to remedy that problem. You can read about the beginning of that quest here. It includes the list.


I have strayed from my quest, but decided to return to it this week. The reason? Our library isn't all that great. I'm trying hard to use it and love it this summer, but loving it is not always easy to do. They often (maybe even usually) don't have the books I'm looking for, so I decided that I should think about looking for different books. Books on the list. You see where this is going?


I finished Atonement, by Ian McEwan, this morning. It took me a little while to get into the story when I started it, but the ending is incredibly powerful, as is a lot of the middle. It is a story from the lead up to and very beginning of World War II in England. The central conflict is a lie that changes the paths of everyone enmeshed in it forever. I definitely recommend it and it illustrates perfectly the benefits of going through this list. I can't imagine picking up Atonement without the list. It has none of the characteristics that make me pick up completely random books and read them with no prior connection or recommendation. I'm usually drawn to a quirky title or book jacket (yes, I know I shouldn't judge, but I do!) and then find something on the leaf description that seals the deal.


I was debating between a few other books on the list, but then saw Neal Stephenson's Anathem on the shelf and felt compelled to reread it. Amazing book, truly. 


I know this post doesn't include the requisite picture of Darcy. We're stay-cationing at the house of friends this week and I don't have the card reader. Otherwise, I'd share a great picture of Darcy with a giant banana slug outside our house. But while searching for the original book-quest post, I came across this post with Darcy still in full curly-hair mode, so take a walk down memory lane and remember the younger, dinosaur-obsessed Darcy Jo.

An Old-Fashioned Fourth of July!

I'm not sure why, but it bugs Michael that Crescent City's independence celebrations are always billed as "old fashioned". Maybe he thinks that bounce houses and portable climbing walls weren't part of early 20th century Independence Days. He's probably right, but they no doubt had their equivalent.


Old fashioned or not, we had a great Fourth of July. Darcy and a couple of her troop mates marched in the Girl Scout contingent -- I was very proud of them all. They may be young, new scouts, but they kept up with the float in front of us over the whole course of the parade!

It was a smallish GS group that marched, but they got lots of cheers and the girls loved seeing their friends in the parade crowd. And what a crowd! Block after block of people five or six deep. The main viewing stretch is about eight or ten blocks, with another five or six blocks with fewer spectators. We were in the first third of the parade, so Darcy got to watch a fair bit of the parade, too. Then it was off to sample the afternoon fun.


Darcy hit the bounce houses before lunch and then waited -- reasonably patiently -- on line for quite a while to get to climb the wall:

She got to climb twice and did a good job! There was more fun in the park before we headed home, stopped by our neighbor's party, and then attempted some rest so we could make it to the fireworks with some remaining energy. We needn't have worried. Darcy still managed to run circles around everyone and every thing. Michael turned around for a minute and turned back to discover her at the other end of the beach watching "the pelican show", seven pelicans repeatedly diving for some kind of dinner. We set up right by the Pastels in the Park, part of the old-fashioned Fourth. They had been walked on a bit by this time of night, but still beautiful. This was my favorite:

The fireworks were wonderful, as always. Crescent City really does them well. It doesn't hurt that there are private fireworks shows (legal and illegal) all around you for an hour leading up the the real thing. Some of the illegal shows rival lesser municipal shows. Not ours, of course, because it goes on forever and includes many different kinds of fireworks. I suspect the whole thing is an environmental nightmare, but it is at least a beautiful one. Hard to get good photos of them, of course, so I'll leave you instead with a picture of our girl dancing around someone's sand castle while waiting for fireworks to begin: