Limekiln camping trip 2008

I wrote this while I was on vacation, in a very relaxed, wonderful place. SO glad I did that. I've been promising a report on our vacation and since have been struggling with a horrible ache in the back of my head. I don't know if it's the stress of coming back to stinky laundry mountains (someone please tell me how I can teach my kids NOT to put wet, dirty clothing or towels in the dirty clothes bag while camping!) and getting back to school things sorted out and planning the food for a big baby shower. Or it could be the heat or the lack of air quality here....I dunno, but my head sure hurts!

As far as camping goes, we have had just about as perfect a trip as we've ever had. The only thing that would have completed the trip would have been if our oldest daughter, Hannah, had been able to come with us. She has not been at her current job long enough to take a week off....bummer.

The last minute decision (4 days before leaving) to go to California instead of Colorado (rain rain rain) turned out to be a great choice! We are at Limekiln State Park campground in northern California, the southernmost part of Big Sur. (there were no forest fires in this area but it did close during the fires) This is an area where huge mountains come down into the ocean and the rocks at the bottom make for crashing waves and beautiful scope for the imagination (as Anne says). Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) is a ribbon of highway cut into the edges of the mountains. It is an awesome drive with the mountains on one side and crashing ocean on the other.

At the place where two of these mountains come into the ocean, there is a wide crevice with a beach of coarse sand and huge rocks. PCH goes right over the beach on a bridge and if you are just driving the highway, you will miss this place if you aren't paying attention. As the crevice narrows and meanders back between mountains, the atmosphere darkens, the air cools by 20 degrees and you find yourself in a green leafy, moss covered tree roots and rocks, soft mulchy floored redwood forest. There are twelve campsites at the beach area and about 30 other sites that border the lovely fresh water creek that rushes through the redwoods from a tall waterfall a quarter of a mile in and makes it's way under three wooden bridges, then past the ocean campsites, across the beach and merges into the ocean. And it's as lovely as it sounds.

Our campsite is right on the creek in a spot where direct sunlight only teases us, the camp robbers (stellar jays) spy on us and conspire to swoop in the moment we leave to scavenge for food, and the crystal clear creek water gives a constant background lullyby. We sit here and read or play games or stare at the water and get soooo sleepy....very relaxing. But we get so cold in the middle of the day, that we wrap blankets around our shoulder and are almost out of propane canisters from heating so much water for tea. We try to move our camp chairs to tiny spots of sunlight that moves quickly through the camp around noon. Finally we head to the beach to warm up. The ranger here told us the temperatures at the beach are actually a full twenty degrees warmer than in the forest, about a two minute walk away. We shed our jackets down to sleeveless shirts and kick off our shoes and socks and soak up some warmth and stick our feet in the cold waves. There is a big bolder on the beach that will fit our whole family to sit and read or watch the ocean swells break into waves and splash up on the rocks. (we have to move when the tide comes in)

The pictures from our hike to the waterfall.

Wordless Wednesday: It's a memory, now back to life

Click to enlarge.



We're back to work and school next week. Being home from vacation makes you a little melancholy when it was a good one.

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Just for fun...

Okay, this is too cute not to steal from Linda at Second Cup of Coffee. You have to watch it long enough to see the dancing! It makes me want to go out and buy some Paul Simon CD's. He's got such weird, great lyrics!

I promise, vacation posts ARE coming Mom!

Vacation slides....waterfall hike

These are pictures from our hike to the waterfall IN the Limekiln State Park campground. The pictures can't do it justice because you cannot feel the cool air or the soft, plush ground, you cannot smell the moss and dampness and you cannot hear the sound of the stream flowing along each step of the way. It was amazingly beautiful.

If you want to see one of the pictures larger or just by itself, click on it.

Home now

After 13 hours of driving today, we are home, details to follow....

Vacating

Gone fishin.........back later in the week.

July 2008 Poetic License

The Poetic License carnival will be up at Robin's blog, Pensieve Friday morning. She challenged us this month with a poetic form named after her blog. This is the form:

What is a Pensieve? A titled, five-line poem; each line correlates to one of the five senses--sight, sound, scent, taste, touch--and describes the subject (title). The goal is for the reader to take on the poem as his own, being able to "experience" your subject through your words, by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling what you described.

So here is my poem for the month. I had a really meaningful time writing it!

The Word of God

Ancient Words in leather binding, crisp, thin pages trimmed in gold....like royalty
Crinkling and whooshing as pages flip by
Brushing my face with the scent of leather and the old pages
I feast on Words sweeter than the honeycomb, satisfying a craving deep within
Working the satin place marker between peaceful fingers, I ponder this Treasure lying across my lap

The best laid plans...

Well after all of these camping stories about Colorado, we've changed our plans!

We both looked at the weather forecast for SW Colorado and there were those little weather icons. Black clouds and scary lightening bolts with just piddly looking little fragments of suns trying to peek out from behind them. It didn't take long for us to come up with a change of plans. We are already booked into a beautiful northern California coastal campground. I will tell you more specifically about it when we get back.

But we have been there before and it is a beautiful place! And California coastal camping stories are much different than Colorado mountain camping stories. I'm sure you can't wait. ;)

Colorado Rocky Mountain HIGH

Another camping story from the summer of 2005, near Lake City, Colorado. I'm sorry it's so long. But I just have so many words, I don't know where to put them!

One terrible, nightmarish thing about being in Colorado is the roads. Towns in the mountains usually began as mining settlements, so it was imperative to build roads that went up into the mountains to where the mines were. Some of these roads are still not much more than mule trails, skirting the edges of mountains, 10, 11, 12 thousand feet in elevation, sheer, rocky walls on one side of you, sheer rocky drop offs on the other side. Sheer rocky mountain terror to drive on….for me. Charles has no problem with the roads (if he does, he is a good faker). He zips along hairpin curves and narrow roads while pointing and telling us about various landmarks or telling us the name of that “fourteener”. (for the uninitiated, a 14er is a mountain that is over 14,000 feet in elevation.....they love those high ones in Colorado) Pretty cool to look at, but not when you’re in fear of careening off a cliff as your ‘tour guide’ points them out.

I always say, “Does everyone have their seat belts on?”

Someone is always the wise cracker (don’t know where they get that) and spouts off, “Like that would help if you go over a drop off like that! Hahahahaha”

“Very funny, put your seatbelt on NOW!!!!”

I have terrors about these roads and my kids make fun of me….evil, evil children! I have started closing my eyes when it is really bad. I used to try to mentally drive and guide the car, which just makes me nuts and weird and a great big target for sadistic children. The first time I felt that way was on our honeymoon. We were driving to an old abandoned mine and ghost town and were WAY up in the air on a narrow dirt road that was tilted toward the abyss when we came upon a boulder in the road. There was no choice but to back up (not a fun thing on a windy mountain single lane mule trail) or inch back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until you had the car turned around. *Terror* I began crying and begging him to abandon the car and walk back with me, but he insisted on bringing the car with us. **men** So I got out of the car and stood there crying and hiding my eyes while he turned it around. Neither of us was in a very amiable mood for a few hours.

Two summers ago we had the privilege of having a 4 wheel drive truck with us on a trip to Colorado. What was I thinking ? Going with my husband to Colorado with a 4 wheel drive vehicle!? I must have been out of my gourd. Anyway, my kids got to see me in ‘terror mode’ as we drove over the “4 wheel drive only, not kidding, turn back NOW you wimpy little city cars” road over the 12,000 foot mountain pass between Silverton and Lake City. Yipes! My kids still talk about it to anyone who will listen. And still, after two years, they think it’s hilariously funny that their mother, the one who birthed them, nurtured them and gave them their sense of humor (whoopsy on that one), was hysterical, having terrors and crying on this road trip. NOT one of my favorite stories, but it makes people entertained, so why not write it down in the permanent record? Besides, if my kids were to tell the story first, they would add many more unpleasant details!

On our way into Lake City the first time this week, I was driving the girls in for showers while Charles was content to stay and fish, fish, fish at the campground. I did not remember that road…...obviously. Nope, didn’t remember the constant downhill steep grade while going around hairpin curves with NO guardrail! Not that a guardrail if going to really help up on a windy road like that, but it’s just nice to have it there, comforting you as if to say, “Don’t worry, I’ll catch you if you go too far over.” So I put it in first gear and went about 15 miles per hour while making some Texan behind me really miffed. I did pull over ASAP to let him by, but not soon enough to nix the miffedness.

On the second trip into town....me driving, (you see how desperate we were for showers that I would do this again?) I was more confident, but I did make the girls change the music we were listening to. It was Relient K singing “We’re going down down down in flames” (I am not embellishing….it really was the song that was on and it was very unnerving!) They changed it to the next song, which was, “We’re gonna have a breakdown”….on to Superchick and Christian girl power songs. I started feeling empowered and even joked with my girls about how driving roads like these can make you feel this almost uncontrollable urge to drive off the edge, because it's going to happen eventually, so why not get it over-with?

I got them good…no laughing this time…just bugging out eyes looking at me in the rear view mirror.

Oh, it was sweet!

Wordless Wednesday: These rock!

Click to enlarge. My sister likes collecting odd looking rocks. This is her latest display in the garden of her cabin....a rock fist, a bulls eye, and a brain.

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