The next morning we slept as late as we could and then poked around the local campground sites a bit. Just south of the camp is a huge Sierra-style meadow, all golden grass and ringed with trees. An easy hike of less than a mile wandered along the edge of the meadow for a good little ways before plunging into the woods for its loop back to the campground. We set the kids on a forced march with much griping and complaining about how tired they were and how boring it was. This puzzled me greatly; camping and hiking have always been the big draws with the kids, synonymous with camping fun and adventure, so I’m not exactly sure what they were anticipating.
The whining relented for a few minutes when we got to what quickly became christened “Lizard Rock” because we came upon a great rock outcropping which sported (like I need to say it) a rather healthy, sun-loving lizard population. N fell to lizard hunting immediately, which gave L unchallenged access to the binoculars, another source of earlier hike contention, whining and fussing.
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| Lizard Hunter on the prowl. |
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| No doubt he can wait it out. |
Having terrified every lizard into a deep dark hole somewhere, we resumed our forest hike and our complaining until we got back to the campground.
A quick lunch of mac & cheese and some down time prepped the crew for the afternoon outing – a 5 mile drive down the road to Grant’s Grove and the big trees!
It’s pretty pointless of me to try to come up with much to say with regard to the sequoias. They’re big. Really, really big. According to N they might even be bigger than our house. The kids were especially intrigued with the “Fallen Monarch,” a toppled sequoia whose heartwood had all decomposed (or been removed somehow), leaving a huge tube exoskeleton. It amused them to no end to be able to walk around inside the guts of a tree. Stacy’s take on the big trees was interesting. She said she found them frustrating and irritating. “You can’t take them in,” she said. “You can never see them all at once, unless you are a mile away and then you lose context.” I guess I shouldn’t feel too bad about coming up short on words to describe the trees; we’re not even equipped to capture them visually.
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| Gamblin Cabin |
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| Cool dovetailing on the Gamblin Cabin |
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| Inside the Fallen Monarch |
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| N, giving his mother fits scaling the rock formations. |
Following our excursion we returned to our campsite to rest. (Craning your neck backwards 90 degrees for a couple of hours at a time takes a lot of energy.) I was futzing around distractedly getting lunch ready -- camping meals are my domain -- when I noticed a voice saying, “I have a soft side, but sometimes it’s hard to show it.” I looked over and found Stacy, true to form, had taken on her traditional role of child sympathizer and confidant. Nick from next door sat next to her, eyes staring up at her in untarnished trust, divulging his inner turmoils. “It’s hardest to show my soft side with my sister,” he confided.
After lunch we made the kids' day by heading down the mountain a mile or two to Hume Lake and a beautiful swimming hole named Sandy Cove. The kids were stoked at the thought of swimming, and given the lack of showers and even flush toilets at the campsite, Mommy and Daddy were pretty much stoked at the idea of a general family decontamination. Stacy wasn’t too appreciative of the road in to Hume, which looked like it might have been conceived by a civil engineer in a flash of inspiration while lunching on a bowl of spaghetti. Some of the curves were so tight that in negotiating them, we very well may have been temporarily thrust into an alternate dimension. Stacy, at least, looked other-worldly as she staggered from the car at the beach lot.
Having killed the perceived need for play along with the extreme need for hygiene (and probably killing a whole host of fish stationed unfortunately downstream in the process), we headed back up the fettuccine freeway to continue our moments of reflection and self-assessment with Nick and Bella. As the evening settled a flank steak graced our fire pit, and amazingly, did not end up at the bottom of it. Then it was marshmallows on sticks (many of which did indeed end up among the blazing embers), combined with Hershey shards, for Graham cracker s’mores.
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| The expanded family: L, Bella, Nick, N and Stacy |
As we tucked into our tent for the evening, the natives were not restless so much as just flat-out silly, and it was a long evening of after-dark giggles before the midnight forest sounds were able to creep over us.
The next morning we slept as late as we could and then poked around the local campground sites a bit. Just south of the camp is a huge Sierra-style meadow, all golden grass and ringed with trees. An easy hike of less than a mile wandered along the edge of the meadow for a good little ways before plunging into the woods for its loop back to the campground. We set the kids on a forced march with much griping and complaining about how tired they were and how boring it was. This puzzled me greatly; camping and hiking have always been the big draws with the kids, synonymous with camping fun and adventure, so I’m not exactly sure what they were anticipating.
The whining relented for a few minutes when we got to what quickly became christened “Lizard Rock” because we came upon a great rock outcropping which sported (like I need to say it) a rather healthy, sun-loving lizard population. N fell to lizard hunting immediately, which gave L unchallenged access to the binoculars, another source of earlier hike contention, whining and fussing.
Having terrified every lizard into a deep dark hole somewhere, we resumed our forest hike and our complaining until we got back to the campground.
It’s pretty pointless of me to try to come up with much to say with regard to the sequoias. They’re big. Really, really big. According to N they might even be bigger than our house. The kids were especially intrigued with the “Fallen Monarch,” a toppled sequoia whose heartwood had all decomposed (or been removed somehow), leaving a huge tube exoskeleton. It amused them to no end to be able to walk around inside the guts of a tree. Stacy’s take on the big trees was interesting. She said she found them frustrating and irritating. “You can’t take them in,” she said. “You can never see them all at once, unless you are a mile away and then you lose context.” I guess I shouldn’t feel too bad about coming up short on words to describe the trees; we’re not even equipped to capture them visually.
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