Butterflies

While we were in San Diego, I noticed that the passion flower vine covering Aunt Karen's fence was home to a considerable crop of caterpillars. We even found a couple of chrysalises (chrysali?) among the leaves. Being the biological sort, I decided to do a little online research to try and figure out what these critters were.

It turns out that there is one butterfly, the Gulf Fritillary butterfly, that lays its eggs only on passion flower vines. And its caterpillars looked suspiciously similar to those we found. I also learned that their range extends to the San Francisco Bay Area and you know what that means.

I asked politely if I could relieve Karen of her fattest caterpillar and a chrysalis. We left with a baggie of passion flower leaves and a jar containing one fat caterpillar and a healthy-looking chrysalis.I never did take a picture of the caterpillar. By the time we'd completed our drive home, our caterpillar was already hanging in a little "J", ready to turn into a chrysalis itself.

Happily, the first butterfly emerged from its chrysalis during Aunt Karen's visit. We spotted it while it was still coming out and watched as its wings dried, enjoyed it taking its first fluttery flight around the "butterfly house" and finally let it go. It sped away so fast that I didn't even get a picture with its wings open.Fortunately, it's pretty on the underside too.

The second butterly emerged a little over a week later and this time I was sure to get a picture before it flew away in the exact same direction as the first...doubtlessly looking for some passion flowers to land on...

San Diego Comes to Visit

Maybe we were just in San Diego, but that doesn't mean that Aunt Karen didn't bring the boys up here just a couple of weeks later for a visit. It works out pretty well to do things this way. She can spend lots of time with our parents while we feel like we got to see them quite a bit over the summer.

We didn't do a whole lot. Gram was sick most of the time, so the kids hung out together, getting on each other's nerves intermittently, but never willing to go to their separate corners. We took one last outing to Happy Hollow on our family membership, which expired at the end of July. It's probably just as well. My kids seem to be outgrowing it to a large extent. Its sort of sad to see. I didn't take them there nearly often enough when they were smaller.

Smunch was particularly impressive on this little excursion. When neither Mam nor SPENCER! was interested in doing things that Lucas could do, they ran off to the playground, while Smunch joined Lucas for a ride.Ohmigosh. Could that be any cuter? It's a little shocking just how big Smunch is compared to his newest cousin. Even as a small kid, he's just so BIG!

Smunch also took a ride with SPENCER! once we could convince SPENCER! that Smunch would really like to spend a little time with him too. It looked like they both had fun.It has long been the case that Smunch gets left out when it comes to visiting with SPENCER! Spencer and Mam are much closer in age and have more common interests. Smunch and SPENCER! don't really have much in common other than being boys who are cousins. Their personalities are very dissimilar. SPENCER! is much more like Mam in his level of enthusiasm and fearlessness. So, it's really pretty awesome to see Smunch taking such an interest in Lucas. Wonder if he'll manage to turn him into a baseball fan...

A little Extra Baggs

Way back last November, there was some sort of cosmic cataclysm in which the scrappy San Francisco Giants won the World Series. I've written plenty about that, so I won't rehash it. During that time, I spent many a morning reading the sports page of the San Jose Mercury News and got to know the styles of many of their writers who covered the Giants in 2010. Andrew Baggarly (aka: Baggs) quickly became one of my favorites. And I soon discovered that he also keeps a blog, Extra Baggs which is often even more entertaining than his game stories.

After the Series, Baggs went home to Oregon and started work on a book about the San Francisco Giants, their history and their road to the first World Series Championship title in San Francisco history. Naturally, I had his book, A Band of MiSFits the instant it was available. And I devoured it quickly.

Baggs did a few book signings up at AT&T, but I was never able to make it up there to see him...and it's a long way just to stand in line to have a book signed. But right when we got back from San Diego, I noticed he said he'd be in San Jose signing books, just a few days later. This was not an opportunity I was going to pass up.

So, we went for dinner at nearby Santana Row and headed to Barnes & Noble, where Baggs took questions for awhile, showing off that he's really pretty eloquent in addition to being ridiculously knowledgeable about both baseball and the Giants' cast of characters. I didn't ask any questions myself, but I loved hearing his answers on everything from instant replay to Buster Posey.

In the end, we bought an additional book for Smunch to have signed. And I thanked Mr. Baggarly for teaching my son to read with his great stories about the Giants. It wasn't faint praise either. I'm not at all sure Smunch would have developed his love for reading without the sports section of the Mercury.I was pleased to see, after we were done getting our books signed, that the line for Baggs' autograph stretched far through the store. It's good to know there are so many fans of the written word among all those Giants fans!

Root, root, root for the visiting team...

For the last few years, we've been sure to buy a couple of tickets to a Padres game while we're down in San Diego. Daddy has always taken Smunch to Petco Park for the game while I stayed with Mam, Aunt Karen and SPENCER! This year was special. First of all, I got to go, while Mam stayed with Aunt Karen. Second, however, I got to go wearing this:because for the first time in the history of our visits to San Diego, the Giants were in town. We caught the last game of their four-game series with the Padres.

I admit it felt a little weird to be wearing the orange and black in a foreign stadium...although I'll add that I think Petco is a beautiful stadium. Maybe not as picturesque as AT&T from the outside, but just awesome in the corridors (which are open to the air and draped in vines) and in the park itself...but I was far, FAR from alone. Not only were Smunch and Daddy there, but I'm pretty sure there were at least 10,000 other people dressed similarly. It was a little hard to tell just who the home team was!Matt Cain pitched a great game and the score was tied at 3-3 at the end of the ninth inning. I texted Aunt Karen to let her know we'd be a bit late for dinner. Predictably, Smunch didn't mind the extra baseball time.Finally, in the 11th, the Giants' newest catcher, Chris Stewart, squared up for the perfect suicide squeeze bunt, scoring the runner from third and ensuring that we got to see this guy...Yep, that's Brian "The Beard" Wilson. And in typical fashion, he made the last inning torturous. But it was over. The Giants won and the three of us...and our new 10,000 closest friends, went home happy.

Daddy and Smunch went to visit the USS Midway museum for the third time the next day while Aunt Karen and I hung out waiting for Lucas to nap and finally made it to the poolin time for Daddy and Gavinto join us. And that? That was it. A yummy breakfast, some fond farewells and off we went...home again, just in time for Aunt Karen, SPENCER! and LUCAS! to come visit us!

The Water Down South

I guess it was really just a few of weeks between our camping trip in far northern California and our trip to visit Aunt Karen's family in far southern California. The kids were both in sports camp for two of those weeks. July 4th was in there. We took our first trip to the Shoreline Ampitheatre to see the San Francisco Symphony and fireworks. That went well. It was a lot of fun. Don't know that we'll keep doing that in the future, but we might! Then Mam had a few days of "farm camp". I dropped her off a a bus nearby and they took her out to the camp. I was thrilled at how smoothly that went...but not surprised. Mam is hardly a shrinking violet, even when she knows no one else there.

And before I knew it, obviously, it was time to leave for San Diego. This was to be a mellow trip. No big theme parks, primarily the pool and the beach. Oh, and baseball, of course. We can't forget baseball! There was SPENCER! And for the first time in the Ryder family history of visits to San Diego, there was also LUCAS!We started our stay with another new pastime...checking into our hotel. With the Westbrook family expanding, having our own digs has been a nice addition, even if it really cuts into our evening chats. This year, our hotel also featured some educational value, as a swarm of bees had moved into one of the trees by the pool. You could see it from our room. I'm sure some guests were intimidated. But you know me. How cool is THIS??They were there for the duration of our stay. Maybe they've got family in San Diego too.

We spent our first day with the Westbrooks, at their house and at the pool. I didn't even bring my camera, but it was a nice day. I fixed them dinner. We all relaxed. The kids went to bed easily...a marked improvement over our first night. The next day, we headed for the beach in Encinitas. I think my kids could spend their lives a the beach without ever noticing the passage of time.Mam was in the water before I could even turn around from setting our stuff down. And she might have spent half an hour out of the water during the entire four hours we were there. Spencer largely joined her, even though he didn't quite have her stamina.Smunch, on the other hand, busied himself with tooling around on the beach. He went in the water a little, but is generally a whole lot more timid than his little sister and lets her have the water to herself...well, to herself and a bazillion other people.I look pretty mellow, don't I? I mostly hung out with Aunt Karen and LUCAS!while Daddy went out in the waves with Mam. It just wasn't that warm. I was mostly snuggled in a blanket in our shelter. In the end, I went for a short swim before we left. It seemed a pity to let everyone else have all the fun. At least the water was warm! The kids spent our last few minutes there, burying each other in sand, ensuring another trip to the water...and a trip to the showers.We don't usually go to Encinitas to go to the beach, but we chose to go there this time because it was in the direction of Carlsbad and Carlsbad is the home of pick-your-own strawberries.I think it took six of us about 10 minutes to pick $16 worth of berries. Worth every penny for that night's strawberry shortcake!

Farewell to Prairie Creek

This was the longest camping trip our little family has ever taken. And for the first time, it really felt long enough. Unlike Lassen, there aren't loads of different things to do up in the Redwoods. There's pretty much hiking and...uh...hiking, sleeping, eating. Not that that isn't wonderful. We spent a lot of time driving around Lassen. We spent very little time driving this year. And that was great.

Friday, we drove back to Trillium Falls with the tripod and I took the pictures in the previous post. Then, we made good on our promise to Mam and drove out to the beach. The road along the coast is dirt and full of potholes. I couldn't quite imagine driving all the way to Fern Canyon. We stopped at Gold Bluffs Beach...about 4 miles short of the Fern Canyon parking lot...and I'd had quite enough of the road by then.We were some of the only people on the beach who weren't surf fishing. The fishermen (and women) seemed to be pretty successful. Mam collected bits of dead crabs from the beach, while Daddy and I sat and chatted. Fortunately, the sand is dark out there. It wasn't a super warm day, but we were warm enough sitting out there on our blankets, eating the lunch I'd packed before leaving.Mam was a lot happier to be at the beach than Smunch was. Already starved for information about his San Francisco Giants, Smunch got in a little baseball on the sand instead.As far as hiking went, it was a light morning, so after we left the beach and returned to the campground, we headed back out for one last set of trails before packing up to head home. This time, we chose the Rhododendron Trail. It sounded nice and it didn't disappoint.This hike was on the steep side compared to many of the others we'd taken. We chose to go down the "strenuous" South Fork trail rather than hiking up it. That was a good thing too. By the time we got to the top point on the Rhododendron trail, the kids were pooped.But the steep trail meant we were down and back to the van in no time.

Still no elk in the meadow near camp. So after dinner, I opted to go for a little drive, back to the spot where we'd seen elk a couple of days earlier, to see if I could find some bucks worthy of photographing. Nada. None on the drive there, none in the meadow there either. None on the way back...at least not until I exited the freeway on the way back to the park.

It looked like a couple of cars had crashed into each other at the bottom of the off ramp, but that wasn't the case. They'd just stopped quickly to take in the sights.There were five of these guys, grazing in the grass at the side of the ramp and later blocking the entire thing to traffic.

I took the kids back to see the elk when I got back, but the bucks were gone. Fortunately, there were a few out in Elk Meadow, so they still got to see some.

As soon as we got back to the campsite, Daddy and I set to packing everything we could, with our sights set on an early getaway the next morning. We hoped to stop near Eureka for breakfast at the Samoa Cookhouse, which had come highly recommended.

Everything worked out perfectly. We packed up the food and the tents and headed off.An hour to a yummy breakfast of French toast and eggs and then home.

Oh, how badly this trip was needed. And, as usual, as soon as we got home, I was back to leafing through the camping book, wondering where we might be able to go in August!

Elk and Trillium Falls

Day 2 of our camping trip brought some elk, but not in Elk Meadow. We drove down the highway to see these ladies. And really, we were headed for the trailhead to Trillium Falls. The elk were just a bonus. Humboldt County is not Yosemite by any stretch. There aren't a lot of magnificent waterfalls, but this one is pretty darned lovely.It was just a short hike to the waterfall, but we spent a bit of time there while I took pictures. I didn't bring a tripod, so we returned the next day to take these shots.There was a nice loop to follow, which included some gigantic skunk cabbage.It also included a lot of ferns, moss and redwoods.We opted to go back to the campsite for lunch and the kids played in the creek for a while, wading around in their water shoes and throwing rocks, naturally.I took a short nap while Daddy went to play catch with the kidlets. Then we headed back out for another hike through the "Cathedral Trees" and the "Big Tree".There was still whining going on, but Daddy managed it with the kind of grace I only wish I had. Not only did he manage to distract the kids from whining, but he also engaged their little minds with brain-teaser-type puzzles that they not only enjoyed, but they begged for more. My little overwhelmed brain just doesn't quite have the bandwidth for this kind of child stimulation, apparently!

Another great day of hiking and camping. One day left before making the long trek home....(Mam was insanely proud of herself for carrying the evening's supply of firewood all the way back to the campsite!)

Outta Here

I was impatient about booking a camping trip this year. In the end, that meant our reservations were for the week right after the end of school. We were supposed to leave Monday, right after the weekend baseball tournament. Fortunately, sorta, I got a phone call a couple of weeks earlier, informing me that our campsite at Sequoia National Park was still under SNOW.

The message indicated that they should be able to relocate us to a different campground, but in reality, they'd displaced about 1,000 campers and the chances were slim. So...I whipped out my trusty camping book and found a completely different campground in a completely different direction, which was available for the same number of nights, although not until Tuesday. Fine. Another day to pack and get our butts out the door.

We didn't leave particularly early on Tuesday, so we didn't arrive at Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park until about 5:30 that evening. There was a large, rather magnificent herd of elk near the entrance. Awesome, I thought, we'd get to see plenty of them in the next few days. We'd have to, right? We were camping at Elk Meadow campground after all. But, yeah. Not so much!At least the foxgloves were pretty.

Daddy and the kids quickly got the campsite set up while I fixed spaghetti, garlic bread and green beans for dinner. S'mores for dessert (of course) and then a bedtime. Mam awoke the next morning, excited about our first campsite visitor:She kept track of this guy all the way through breakfast. Of course, he was far from the only banana slug we saw.

For our first day at the park, we decided to visit Fern Canyon. You can drive down the highway and up the unpaved road along the coast to get there, but we opted (out of sheer foolishness, probably) to hike there from the campground. It was a lovely hike through the redwoods, but it was also about 12 miles round trip...with two small children.Not surprisingly, there was a lot of whining, particularly from Mam. Daddy insisted she try some beef jerky, since she'd done a poor job of eating breakfast. That didn't go over well.

About five miles into our hike, we finally reached the signpost for Fern Canyon and stairs down toward the creek.Of course, we got to the bottom of the stairs and there was no sign of a trail. Fortunately, there was a ranger. Daddy had asked back at the visitors center if we'd need to walk through water. They said, no, just maybe some mud. They were wrong.

The trail criss-crossed the creek several times, requiring Daddy and me to take off our shoes and wade through the water. It would've been a whole lot easier if we'd brought our water shoes. Daddy carried the kids across the creek more than once too.

We barely saw anyone on our hike, but Fern Canyon was pretty busy. Obviously, most people opt to drive there and take the short walk to the canyon rather than hiking overland.It was certainly worth the trip. Even the kids seemed happy to be there and appreciated the steep walls covered in ferns. At that point, we were out by the coast and we took a short walk to the parking lot, primarily to use the restrooms, before heading back. Mam was adamant that she wanted to walk out to the beach, but it was windy and chilly. We promised to go another day.The hike back still involved quite a bit of whining and Mam eventually ended up on Daddy's shoulders. But we all made it and I think I was the only one with a blister. So much for my nice comfy hiking boots! At least Smunch was pretty happy and cooperative all day.It was another relatively late arrival at our campsite, so it was straight to making a campfire and dinner yet again. The kids were grateful for the break.