Reaching Pinnacles

Last week was Spring break for the kids and it had been a good, long while since I got them outside...I mean really outside. Our spring camping trips have traditionally not gone well. During the first one, we got snow, last year we got rained out. This year, I decided to pick a place that's just too hot in the summer to wait for summer vacation to roll around. I had some other ideas, but they were more remote and a longer drive. Instead, we opted for Pinnacles National Park...newly upgraded from Pinnacles National Monument.

I'd been there before, but it's been a long time. I'd never camped there, but there was plenty of availability. No great hiking right out of the campground, but it just meant we drove to trailheads once or twice a day.

We had a nice campsite, featuring a big, broken tree. Turns out the kids could get inside it from the back and found all kinds of hand and footholds to climb to the top. Between that and sliding down the dirt hill behind it, the might've been able to stay in the campground the entire time. We also had some fun campground visitors...

Nothing too surprising. We have quail and bunnies on our street at home, after all, but that's somewhat rare. We saw these critters all the time, along with a deer and a wild turkey or two that wandered through our site.

Some friends from school joined us for the first day and we took a short hike to some caves, which were partially closed in favor of bats. The kids still loved it. 

And we headed to the reservoir where we found some tadpoles and the kids passed some time throwing rocks in the water.

It was nearly impossible to keep track of Mam who was off climbing rocks before I knew it. I'm not even sure how I got her back down to continue our hike. That girl is so incredibly fearless about her abilities that she makes me a little nervous. There were no problems of course. We had a lovely hike back and returned just in time to fix dinner.

Day Two featured a hike up Condor Gulch. It was pretty warm, but there were occasional breezes. Smunch whined a lot. He doesn't seem to make the connection that the more of this stuff he does, the easier it will be. Mam, on the other hand, was off ahead of us and wasn't ready to stop when both Smunch and one of the other kids became pretty whiney and we'd already reached our proposed destination, the "Overlook", which was fairly underwhelming as overlooks go. Didn't seem like we overlooked much, although the rocks loomed above us.

Smunch was not pleased with the idea of continuing any further. Mam was not the least bit thrilled with the prospect of turning around and going back. Oh, the joys of multiple children. And I have just two!

Critical mass seemed to suggest we go back. And we'd been so delayed (by a temper tantrum unrelated to my children) leaving for the hike that it was already lunchtime. I had some snacks with me, but it wasn't going to cut it for lunch. I promised Mam that perhaps we could revisit the trail the next day.

Our friends left after lunch and we were on our own. We decided to trek out to the other set of caves and see what was there. The kids were great, the weather was lovely. The caves were...empty. It made for a great late afternoon hike.

It was a long-ish hike. We had a late dinner, but we were all tired enough to get in our tent and pass out at the same time. We didn't get up too early either. We had a relatively leisurely breakfast...at least the kids did. I'd already started packing for home. It was hard to get everyone on the same page with the packing. Mam was a real pain and no threatening of taking her desired hike away helped. 

In a move of undoubtedly bad parenting, we ended up going hiking anyway. Mam was in tears, I kind of wanted another hike myself and Smunch didn't really want to go, but I somehow convinced him it would be for the greater good. 

We hiked up Condor Gulch again. The trail is significantly more challenging beyond the overlook, but completely worth it. I learned a little something about Smunch. When he gets hungry, FEED HIM. He was so whiney by the time that we got to the top of the ridge that I wasn't sure what to do with him. I gave him a breakfast bar and he turned into an entirely different child. I told him we'd be turning around at 12:30, but by then, he was so far ahead of us that there was no way to turn around. 

And that was a little bit of serendipity too because it turned out that not only was there a lot of fun climbing up rocks at the top, but there was a California condor sitting up there too. There were so many turkey vultures that I might not have noticed, but someone mentioned that this bird had a yellow tag on one wing. Pretty good clue that it wasn't a plain ol' vulture. Nice trip highlight!

Now that it was easily closer to 1 o'clock, we hightailed it back down the trail, trying to get home in time for Smunch's baseball practice. There was a quick trip to the bathrooms by the parking lot, where Smunch discovered the park's newest bathroom attendant.

I happened to be chatting with a ranger when Smunch announced there was a rattlesnake by the bathroom, so it caused quite a commotion. Oddly, the park staff doesn't really approve of vipers guarding the bathrooms.

We couldn't stick around to see how they moved this critter, but we took off towards home, stopping just once for an ice cream lunch before arriving dusty, dirty and sweaty back at the house, where I sent Smunch right off to practice...to get himself dusty, dirty and sweaty.

The Giant Rattlesnake of Kings Canyon

Now there's a more attention-grabbing title for a blog post, right?
Our last day of camping and it seemed like we'd exhausted the relatively child-friendly options for hiking in Sequoia...at least the options on our side of this year's nasty piece of road construction. Instead of braving the wait to get through to the south, we drove north and opted for a hike in Kings Canyon National Park instead. It mystifies me as to why Kings Canyon and Sequoia are considered separate national parks, but that brings my national park count up to five for the year, so I'm not complaining.

It was just one big hike for our third day. We packed lunch..which we left in the car, due to poor judgement rather than forgetfulness. And we set out towards the General Grant grove. For one of the very first times, Smunch actually expressed a desire to do something in particular...and it so happened that he really wanted to see the General Grant tree. No matter that we'd seen plenty of giant sequoias already. Some of those had names too. He wanted to see this one. And I was game because I'm just so psyched to get any sort of guidance about what he wants to do.

Although the throngs of tourists and inescapable cigarette smoke were driving me crazy, we had a pretty nice little detour through the trees and then set off toward the trailhead we'd intended to take. No sooner had we hit the trail than we were on our own again. And we soon came across a really distressed ground squirrel chirping up a storm from a branch on the bank next to the trail. It took me more than a minute. How long does it take you?

If you've been following my blog lately, you've seen a couple pictures of the little tiny rattlesnakes I've run across in my Bay Area adventures. This one was nothing like them. It was easily the biggest rattlesnake I've ever seen. Of course, I don't spend a lot of time in the desert, so perhaps I'm easily impressed. But this thing had 13 segments to its rattle. It was easily over five feet long and as thick as one of Mam's scrawny little arms. And it was clearly after something...which I have to guess was this squirrel's nest.

It was a full-on nature documentary playing out in real time. The snake coiled to strike at the squirrel and struck once. It wasn't clear how successful it had been. The squirrel kept on chirping, but moved a little deliberately after that. The snake was not-so-mysteriously distracted by a flying object or two and the squirrel got away as the snake rattled and coiled. I know, of course, that predators have pretty tough lives. And ground squirrels are about a dime a dozen. We almost certainly shouldn't have interfered. And I suspect that once we left, the squirrel nest was fair game regardless.This was easily the highlight of the trip for the kids. They're still talking about the giant rattlesnake they saw on their summer vacation. It's too bad it came so early in this hike because we still had a long way to go and there was nothing nearly so dramatic for the rest of the trip!
We hiked to an overlook of Sequoia Lake.

We stopped at Ella Falls for a snack and tried out some wild thimbleberries...seedy and not altogether worth the effort.

We took a little detour to Viola Falls, which looked like it would've been nice for a swim, had I only worn my swimsuit. The trail was a little busy for skinny dipping and I wasn't entirely up for a real fully-clothed swim.

And then we walked up and up and up and up...

until we were back at the King's Canyon visitor's center, where we ate our hot sandwiches (which had been in a cooler, but it didn't make much difference), got cold drinks...and I bought Smunch a killer rattlesnake T-shirt...and headed back for Sequoia. It was already dinnertime, but having had a super late lunch, we opted to go watch the sunset from Beetle Rock and have a super late dinner as well. Hard to regret that decision. There may have been better places from which to watch the sunset, but I can't imagine a sunset any prettier than this. As sunsets go, it was pretty awesome.

I've seen more impressive photos of sunsets, but I don't know that I've experienced many to rival this one. And despite wrapping up with s'mores sometime around 11 o'clock (and likely filling the role of the noisy campground neighbors for our new, very quiet neighbors nextdoor), I don't think I could have come up with a more perfect end to a great camping trip.

Quick Fix

It doesn't take a genius to see I haven't posted in more than six months now. There are myriad reasons for that. Maybe I'll get to those, but there's a lot to catch up on, so maybe not. Besides, the pictures are fun and life has been not-so-fun, so let's get on with the fun stuff...

Things happened after Halloween last year. For instance, Aunt Karen and her family (Spencer! and Lucas!) came to visit for Thanksgiving. Then I took our traditional Christmas Card photos.

Apparently, this tradition is somewhat fun, even if it involves getting dressed up and then being photographed for half an hour or so.

We got up at some ungodly crazy hour to see a lunar eclipse that went down behind the clouds before the moon began to peak out again.

There were truffles made for teachers...

and cookies made for neighbors.

The day itself didn't disappoint, apparently.

There was a monumental haircut.

Who would have known I would like the short hair so much better? The long hair was awfully pretty...for the 30 seconds after it was brushed, anyway.

There was a momentous trip to the tide pools on a beautiful day in January...

where we got to see our first octopus, scurrying for the water in its native habitat.

Later that month, the braces?

They came off. They're still off. Now if only I could remember to remind him about that darned retainer thingy!

Smunch once again tried out for his baseball league's "club team", the Mavericks.

For the first time, he didn't make it. He's now playing on a travel team called The Blues. He really enjoys it. I'm sure he'd enjoy it more if they had enough boys to actually field a team for tournaments! He's played in a single tournament so far and the team lost every game...just like the Mavericks did last year.

Mam, once again showed her skills in basketball, playing YBL with a team of girls very similar to the one she played with each of the previous two years. They called themselves "The Party Rockers" (Ick!!!) and won every game (or at least the vast majority of them.)

It's impossible to take good pictures of action in a gymnasium, it turns out.

In mid-February, Smunch turned 10. He had a laser tag party and I did my best impression of a laser-tag cake.

Since his party was before his actual birthday, we also indulged in our tradition of Sprinkles cupcakes on his actual birthday.

Later that month, Aunt Karen came for a visit with Spencer! and Lucas! We took the kids to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where they had a grand ol' time.

Then, in early March, Mam turned 8..with more cupcakes.

And she become a Fuchsia Firework.

She also learned the ins and outs (well, a few of them) of fastpitch softball pitching.

I'm still managing her team, and working on my posture.

Some time after her actual birthday, she had her first sleepover birthday party...with funny hats (oh yeah, it was on March 17th!)

She insisted she wanted to have make-your-own sundaes instead of a fancy cake. So, I was denied another crazy-making cake extravaganza and treated to the easy purchase of ice cream, fudge sauce, caramel sauce, strawberry sauce, whipped cream, sprinkles and, of course, maraschino cherries.

The girls had a blast. Fortunately (for me), only two girls spent the night. They were treated to homemade buttermilk pancakes the next morning.

Meanwhile, Smunch became an Angel.

About time.

Easter came...

and went in a blur of plastic candy-filled eggs, cinnamon rolls and scrambled eggs.

The day after Easter, I took the kids to Uvas Canyon County Park for a two-day camping trip. I was joined by another mom...and her FOUR kids. The creek was fun.

The rain was less fun.

But the waterfalls were lovely if you were up for a hike in the rain.

We left a night early, filled the garage with dripping camping gear and had our spaghetti and s'mores camp dinner right in the living room...complete with "campfire".

There has been, and continues to be much baseball playing.

And much softball playing. Two games a week for each of them this year, with a practice for good measure.

This picture was taken during tryouts for the league's Nova team. It's a summer travel team. She was awesome and did all kinds of things I didn't know she could do, including hitting every ball pitched to her from a pitching machine. I was told later, after Mam didn't make the team, that the team selection strongly favors third graders.(Mam is still in second grade.) More than 20 girls tried out for the team. Only 12 girls made it. I imagine most of them are third graders. Since the tryouts, one of the girls on the Nova team has broken her wrist and Mam has been asked to play with them. She is over the moon. My summer calendar weeps at the prospect of five softball tournaments before the end of June.

And there we are. Mam just made the Nova team earlier this week. There are three more baseball games and two more softball games in the regular season. There are camps and trips planned for the summer...including a weeklong trip just for Mommy...to Wyoming.

And to prove that I really am nuts, here's a nice little photo I took while I was out hiking last weekend...

Please pray for my sanity.