Back Outside

We started off our summer with a camping trip, so why not end it in the great outdoors as well? We last went camping in Yosemite in 2008. That time, it was sort of a fluke. I happened to check for camping reservations in May or so and there was ONE campsite available in the park, so we took it. That sort of thing doesn't happen very often. Yes. I checked.

So, this time around, we again stayed in Wawona, but rented a little cabin for 3 nights instead of camping. All in all, it doesn't save that much work except for setting up camp and taking it down. The bathrooms are more convenient and you don't need quarters for the showers. Still, I'd be camping if I'd had the choice.But the cabin had everything we needed, including two bedrooms so we wouldn't have to try and get the kids to sleep in the same room. Bedtime was a nightmare in San Diego. It not only had satellite TV (on which to watch the Giants lose repeatedly), but wireless internet too. Thankfully, we weren't there that much!

We stopped overnight in Fresno to visit Grandpa Ryder on our way to the park. From there it's a pretty short drive into Yosemite and we made our first stop at the Mariposa Grove because that was something we skipped three years ago and it was right there at the entrance.It made for a nice, albeit long-by-kidlet-standards, hike among the sequoias. We saw some deer and this chimpunk who kindly posed on a branch for me.The kids weren't overawed by the trees, but I think they were at least a little impressed. There were flowers and butterflies. Those kept Mam agape intermittently.Not really long enough to stop the whining though. In her defense, the shoes she'd worn were too small and the walk is hardly flat. I don't imagine her feet felt too good.We were able to check into our cabin an hour early and were advised on the local waterfall and swimming holes. After we got the mommymobile unpacked, we headed for a recommended spot in the river. You've never seen a kid happier to be in the water than Mam was.Too cold? Not a chance! It turned out you could jump right into the river from the rocks above.That is, you could jump in if you were very careful to note that it was only about four feet deep! Daddy learned quickly.

Interestingly, it wasn't fearless Mam who launched herself off the rocks next, it was my timid little Smunch.Despite Smunch's glowing reports about how much fun it was, Mam wasn't so sure.It took watching Daddy, Smunch and me jumping off several times for her to warm up to the idea. Then, of course, it was all the rage and she jumped over and over, later instructing other children on the ins and outs of jumping from the rock.We went back to the cabin to change into dry clothes and then set out on a pre-dinner hike around the nearby meadow. This seemed like a great idea. The light was beautiful, I figured we'd see a deer or two and it was an easy, flat trail.The one part I'd failed to account for was that it's a meadow and meadows often mean standing water, especially in a year like this one where there was a lot of rain. And evening brings mosquitoes. Mosquitoes like me. A lot. Turns out they find the rest of the family pretty tasty as well. At least there were some pretty flowers.And the light was indeed lovely.I'm sure we walked faster as we went along. I may have forgotten the DEET, but at least I brought the hydrocortisone!

Summer Veggies

It's been such a sad, sad summer in my garden. It's been so cool that these were the first two tomatoes to ripen and there've been only about five more. None of the bigger tomatoes are red yet...although one of them is a yellow/green tomato anyway. The basil's all ready to go, but no tomatoes to eat it with! The string beans have been fun though. Mam helped me plant a variety of colors, so we've got purple, yellow and green beans. They're good too...although the purple beans actually turn green when you cook them. You can see a couple of funny little squashes. I thought I was buying yellow crook-necked squash, but clearly I blew it. These are little, green spaceship-shaped squashes instead.

Fortunately, I got the netting over the pear tree in time to save our crop from squirrels this year. There are tons of ripening pears out there. And our apple tree will have a crop for the first time this year too...of three different apple varieties. I'm looking forward to seeing how that turns out...although I may have let our little tree become a tad overambitious this year!

Wrapping Up

Gosh, summer seems to last forever around here and yet be painfully short at the same time. I don't remember summers being like this when I was a kid. They seemed to stretch out forever. I was usually ready to go back to school. And I wasn't signed up for several camps with built in entertainment either. Somehow, I managed to entertain myself without turning on the TV all the time. I wonder how that happened.

So, the last couple of weeks of summer finally arrived with August. I was excited to take Smunch to baseball camp at the San Jose Giants' Municipal Stadium. He'd declared that he liked neither of the baseball camps he'd been to in previous summers, so I thought this one might be good for a change...and it would be a blast for him to get to play on the big field with stands and a PA system. Meanwhile, I sent Mam to cooking school for half a day each day. It didn't really give me a lot of time and it turned into even less time when Smunch got sick after just one day of baseball camp.

He made it to the first day and the last day and missed everything in between. What a bummer! Still, he was looking like a pro on the last day, when they got to play games and be announced over the PA system.He really enjoyed the camp. Hard to tell if that's because he missed two days or because it was a better experience for him. They gave us an evaluation of his skills. It fairly glowed with praise and said he stood out in his group. Maybe that was the big difference. In other camps he didn't stand out. But it turns out that many of the boys in San Jose had only played for a season or two. Smunch just finished his fifth. No matter. He had a good time. That's all that counts for me!

And although I took no pictures of Mam in her cute little cooking apron, she had a blast baking every morning. She even started asking to help in the kitchen all the time. Once in a while, I can even come up with something for her to do and that's pretty darned cute. Worth every penny, that camp.

The same week saw the end of swimming lessons for the summer. I feel like I can finally say with some confidence that the kids can swim. They may not look pretty doing it, but given a fall into a pool, they're not just going to give up and drown.And I was perversely pleased that the brother/sister pair they had lessons with was far more misbehaved and obnoxious than they were. After this summer, they've been taught all the strokes, they just need some polishing. O.K., so they still look like they're drowning if they're attempting to swim butterfly, but still... Smunch's freestyle was looking great and Mam's backstroke is coming along nicely The evening after Mam's last day of camp (Friday, where Smunch was done on Thursday), we took our last summer trip to AT&T Park. Smunch was not thrilled with the choice of games we'd made.The biggest fan in the world does not like to see his team lose and he figured that a game against the Phillies was a likely loss.

Mam, on the other hand, was thrilled that we decided to take her to a game this season.And although she enjoyed a hot dog and some cotton candy, she mostly reminded me why we don't take her to games. She's a real pain. Crawling on the ground, asking to go home, being bored out of her mind.

Of course, by the time the sixth inning rolled around, Smunch was asking to go home too. This almost never happens, but Jonathan Sanchez was pitching and doing a poor job of it. They were losing 8-2. We made him stick around a little longer. And what a great idea that was! The only redeeming value to the game, in the end, was getting to see a bench-clearing scrum initiated by Sanchez hitting Shane Victorino with a pitch and Victorino making like he was going to charge the mound.This lasted quite some time and was the most amusing part of an eventual 9-2 loss.

One more family vacation and then summer is just about over. Thank goodness. The fighting and boredom are both unbearable. Then again, so is homework...

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!