I Left My Heart North of San Francisco (Part 1)

Vacations seem to be a feast or famine kind of deal in our household. Generally we try to snatch one big trip (east coast) every other year and pad the interval with something smaller and local. This year, however, due to some fortuitous changes in my work duties, the flood gates have been opened. April took us to Tennessee and Georgia (which I never blogged about… hmmm), July found us in Mammoth and Convict Lake, and now, lazy August whisked us away to Nor Cal and beautiful Petaluma! I don’t expect to have a run like this again for a long while, so I am committed to appreciate it!

The trip to Petaluma has a rather complex backstory, and it kind of reinforces a lot of what I’ve long believed about Stacy. I’ll start at the beginning. Stacy has a dear Japanese friend, Hiroko Tanaka, whose daughter K was in L’s class at school for two years. The two girls became very good friends and so did their moms. When the Tanakas left the Los Angeles area a little over a year ago we threw them a going away party at our house. Since the party was for them, Hiroko and her husband Nobutaka were encouraged to invite anyone they wanted, even if we did not know them. Hiroko invited another family, the Balches, that she was very close with that we did not know at the time. At the party Stacy got to spend some time with the mom, Christine Balch. And this is where that strange Stacy magic comes in. I don’t know how she does it, but in 5 minutes Stacy can disarm and charm anyone. In no time at all a total stranger will be a bosom buddy, confiding deep and complicated issues and trials. I’ve often followed Stacy through a checkout line and been shocked and amazed at how instantly people open up to her. I get sour looks, but Stacy gets life stories and email addresses. Go figure. And my take is that Chris has a similar warm, friendly and disarming personality. So Stacy and Chris hit it off quickly. Within a week she was visiting Chris at her place up on PV, and not long after got an invite to come up and stay with her at her place in Petaluma, about 30 minutes north of San Fran. Hiroko, now in Detroit, on hearing of it, was shocked. Chris never invites people if she doesn’t really like them and seriously want them to come, she said. If you can do it, she advised, you really should. The place in Petaluma is beautiful. Nevertheless, we were hesitant to take advantage of that, and there wasn’t really much opportunity with my work at the time anyway, so the invite remained open, but shelved. A couple of months ago, however, Hiroko and her daughter K scheduled an August trip to California to see all their friends, and the subject came up again. This time the timing constraints were all different and it all just fell together naturally, so Stacy and I and our two kids, along with Hiroko and K, made plans to drive up state and spend a week with Chris at "Balch Castle" in Petaluma. I was still a bit apprehensive as we actually set out about two weeks ago. Other than the crowded Tanaka going-away party, I had never met Chris or her husband Tom, and only barely had a chance to talk to them at the party, and I’m kind of an anti-Stacy: I’m not one to immediately engage with people I don’t already know fairly well. But Stacy and Hiroko assured me all was good and that I would have a great time.

N's travel outfit does not promise hours of comfort.

We set out on a Sunday afternoon following a morning at church. We picked up Hiroko and K in Torrance and piled all their worldly goods into the minivan filled with ours and headed north. Traffic was surprisingly heavy going up the 5 on a Sunday afternoon, but we were not terribly pressed for time, which was fortunate, because we seemed to stop every 15 miles for a potty break for someone. (Why is it kids’ bladders can never agree on a common schedule? I should investigate what I could term the Theory of Entropy and Bladder Synchronization!) We conveniently timed our dinner for Split Pea Andersen’s in Santa Nella, which succeeded in making us all sufficiently sleepy for the final two hour drive before us.

Color coordinated for Potty Stop #317

Pea Soup Time!!!

Balch Castle back in 1897

We arrived in Petaluma a little after 10:00pm, logging over nine hours on the road. Wow! What a place! Christine, the Queen of Balch Castle, who is an early-to-bed and early-to-rise type, had pulled her equivalent of an all-nighter when she greeted us at the door and quickly gave us the condensed intro-tour. Balch Castle was built in the mid-1800’s and is a multi-story cacophony of towers and stairwells and stained glass windows. Exquisite woodwork detail and what must be 12-foot ceilings, opulent hardwood floors and butler pantries all combine to make a set out of a Great Gatsby movie. A thousand nooks and crannies and little alcoves promised hours of exploration and hiding out. But tonight was not the night for that! We marched up the grand and regal main staircase with its huge, offset Tiffany windows and elaborately gothic carved banisters; L and K squealed to be assigned a room together. Hiroko won the prized turret room; Stacy and I shared a second tower room on the front of the house with virtually floor to ceiling windows curving around it, which, in the morning, would look out on the dense trees and gardens that are the front lawn. N bunked with us, but Miss Christine made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. There were two extra beds in our room and she said he could sleep in whichever one he wanted. When he couldn’t decide she told him he could sleep in one bed one night and the other the next and just alternate back and forth. N just about peed his pants with the thrill of such an opportunity. He showed me that at least some of Stacy's suave genes trickled down when he went over to Miss Christine, took her by the hand and looked up sincerely into her eyes: "I feel like royalty," he said, "because you are letting me stay in your castle."

K with Miss Christine's
grapes

The next morning, much later than was polite, we drifted awake to a mansion filled with an incredible smell. Drawn like zombies to the kitchen, Christine had prepared us a huge breakfast with eggs and toast and fresh cut fruit. There were a half-dozen varieties of fruit to choose from and what didn’t come from her own yard, Christine said she got from friends and neighbors around town. It was all perfectly tart/sweet and juicy. The source of the intriguing aroma that had summoned us was a plate of breakfast sausages that we set upon greedily. They were phenomenal! Tender and moist and richly flavored, they were a transformation of the lowly sausage to something ethereal. Christine smirked at our wonder and revealed her secret: she boils them in a can of beer, letting it all bubble off, and then browns them in the glaze that remains. Unbelievable! Hiroko had warned us that something in the air in Northern California just made everything taste better. So far nothing to contradict that theory!

Monday was designated a down-day. Our most ambitious plans were swimming in the big backyard pool, and a meander down a few blocks of D-street to Petaluma’s old town center. We comfortably achieved those goals, but were careful not to tax ourselves with any extras!

Smelling the poppies on D-Street

Downtown Petaluma is überquaint, with lots of small shops and trendy restaurants; but the thing that most intrigued L, N and K was Powell’s Sweet Shoppe, with more kilocalories per square foot than anywhere else on the planet. Of all the bazillion candy options available, the one that the kids most ardently gravitated to was the one I'm most surprised Nancy Pelosi allowed sold anywhere near her district: Candy cigarettes! Feeling a small measure of counter-cultural protest rising in my blood, I was easily persuaded to allow the kids to buy them. I hope my bold act of civil disobedience would be appreciated on Haight Street.

In my opinion only K pulls off the youthful disinterest.
L is a poser and N just looks like FDR.

Artsy downtown

Walnut Park dare-devilry!

Crest on a park outbuilding.  It's called
 "Walnut Park" and everyone knows
squirrels love walnuts, so it all fits, see?

What Generation Gap?

N's semi-proposal to Grandma Flo last week was a fluke. Or so I thought. Now I'm not so sure. Tonight at dinner N was talking about what he would do if he were granted three wishes.

"What would you do if you could do anything at all in the world?" we asked him.

"First, I would go on vacation!" he said.  "And then when I got back I'd go on vacation again!"

"And then what would you do?"

"Then I'd go to Grandma Flo's house."

Would That Make Her My Daughter-in-Law?

I never know what to expect when N confronts me with a puzzled look on his face. Here's a recent example.

N:  Daddy, what does "engaged" mean?

Me:  It means you have promised to marry someone.

N:  Oh, so if I said I was going to marry Grandma Flo, it means I'm engaged to her?

Me:  Ummmm...  It means you've asked her to marry you and she has said "yes."

N:  Oh, in that case, Dad, I'm not engaged to Grandma Flo.

Me:  Thank you for clarifying.

A Finished Portrait - Finally!

Between work and kids and lots of travelling, my painting through-put has taken I hit.  I used to crank out a new one three or four times a year.  Now, however, it is August and I have just finished my first project of the year.  It is a gift for Anne-Marie Vance, the mom of one of Stacy's best friends - a portrait of her grandson.  I hope she likes it.

Got four more portraits in the hopper in various states of completion, and a fifth one I'm on the hook for if the purchaser ever claims it.  That should take me well into 2017!

A Journey of Mammoth Proportions, Part 2

We emerged from our morning excursion to Devil’s Postpile tired, dirty and hungry. It was a little after lunchtime, and since we still had a little time to kill before we could check in to our cabin down at Convict Lake, we decided to grab some lunch at a local pizza parlor. Did I mention we were tired and dirty? I probably neglected to emphasize just how tired and dirty. And, well, smelly. A day’s camping with no showers, followed by a day on the trail does not render one as fresh and breezy as you might like. Or rather, as other patrons in a fine dining establishment might like. We ordered our pizza and sat down and spent the wait-time counting the number of people who approached a neighboring table, stopped, wrinkled their noses, and went to find some other place to sit. But while we may have been off-putting to others in the restaurant, to our frenzied appetites, the pizza, when it arrived (how quickly the waiter scurried off!), was honey-drenched manna. We pounded the pie then graciously evacuated the building, taking our green fog cloud and whirling mass of flies with us.

The Convict Lake Resort is only about 10 minutes south of Mammoth Lakes. When we got to the “resort” (really just a dozen or two rustic cabins scattered about), Stacy and the kids stayed in the car while I went and checked in. When I came out a few moments later with our key I got the exaggerated pantomime “don’t make any sudden moves” wave from Stacy, who with the kids were sitting in the minivan with all the doors wide open. At first I had thought that the open doors meant that even they needed to get a fresh breeze circulating, but soon realized through Stacy’s theatrical mute pointing that they were watching a deer munching some grass rather placidly a few feet away at the edge of the parking lot. I froze not to startle the timid creature. A few seconds later another car peeled into the parking lot and whipped into a space adjacent the deer in a cloud of dust. The owner got out, slammed the door and marched on into the resort office. The deer half-heartedly raised its head, gave a couple of sideways chews, then sank back into feeding position, clearly stunned into near-immobility by the event. The next fifteen minutes were spent taking innumerable flashy photos of the deer from every angle, with every possible permutation of child, parent, and wildlife in the foreground.

The view from our cabin.

We found our cabin on the southwest edge of the resort and were stoked to find that the picture window of our mini-living room look straight out across a meadow to the imposing cliffs of Laurel Mountain. Pretty cool! We unpacked our 1200 square foot house from our 100 square foot minivan into our 500 square foot cabin and began the hard work of afternoon napping. Eventually the other demands of life asserted themselves and we were force to undergo an al-fresco spaghetti dinner under the watchful mountain eye. A postprandial stroll down to the eponymous Convict Lake completed the evening, where we got to watch enough trout snapping at low flying bugs to make the water look lightly carbonated.

I pretty much had the agenda for the next day nailed down. We would sleep in, get up and have a leisurely breakfast, then get back to the difficult challenge of sleeping in until noon. A light repast would fit us perfectly for an afternoon of competitive napping. After that I expect we'd be rather tied. (We always seem to need a lot of down time after a particularly grueling round of competitive napping.) So we'd rest up before straining ourselves with a nice dinner up in Mammoth. The sheer effort of the day would no doubt mean we'd be ready for an early turn-in, during which we would sleep the sweet, nourishing sleep reserved for those who have accomplished much.

Stacy, it seems, had other ideas.

Stacy was up at the fiendish crack of dawn and once she had established me on pancake duties, trotted down to the resort office and scheduled horseback riding trips for her and the kids. (She knows better than to subject a poor innocent horse to the likes of me.) At the ghastly hour of 10:30 she was rounding us up and heading us out under threat of giving us rawhides.

I accompanied the family to the stables and as we went we played a game we often play, our version of "I Spy" which awards quarters to anyone who spots something interesting or novel. We had long since given out quarters for all the boring birds and ubiquitous deer that dominate the landscape (I'd have been impoverished by squirrels and deer if we hadn't adopted the no-repeats policy), so no one was making very much money. Suddenly N turned and pointed, yelling "Aslan! Aslan!" Sure enough, there on the side of the mountain, sitting serenely and regally, surveying his wide domain with evident satisfaction, sat the king of beasts. Or at least a prominent rock formation of especially leonine proportions. N was twenty-five cents richer, much to the protests of his sister who tried in vain to add organic clauses and other such living-tissue requirements to the game rules.

Excitement?  Not so much.

We got to the stable and found the horses looking as horses always do: bored. Stacy has some uncanny sixth horse sense by which she can tell the innermost thoughts, emotions and quandaries of a horse from a thousand feet. To me they all look the same: bored. (Though I have to admit that I did detect, when they saw me approaching, a brief flash of panic in their otherwise monotonous, empty eyes. Don't worry, Silver. This Lone Ranger won't be a-striding your saddle any time soon.) Another couple from San Diego had also signed up for the ride, so soon the five caballeros were saddled up and ready to ride into the morning sunset.

  

L upon Fork and N astride Socks

Bon-N-Za

She looks like she may have done this before...

I played the role of National Geographic photographer and documented the lineup and the pack nags' slow trudge down the trail with quite literally bridled enthusiasm, after which I made a similarly enthusiastic retreat back to the cabin to try to recover some of my original day's agenda.

I got back to our cabin and went into the kitchenette to pour myself a glass of iced tea in prep for the two hours of relaxation I would have to get through before Stacy and the kids got back. As I was finishing my pour, busy contemplating the ways I could conserve energy for the task at hand, I chanced to look up and out the window. There, about a hundred feet from our cabin, was one of those exceedingly timid and easily spooked mule deer, having its gastronomical way with our shrubbery. I snatched up my camera and tiptoed stealthily out the front door and around the side of the cabin trying to look like David Attenborough on the trail of a wildebeest. I managed to get a shot or two off unobserved from the cover of the corner of the building, and that, building my confidence, prompted me to venture closer. A few more without my prize dashing off, and I slipped closer still. Soon I was having to defog the deer-breath from my camera lens and I was starting to question my convictions about these easily traumatized, hypersensitive creatures. I got bored before the deer got spooked and retreated back into cabin to resume my planned mapping of my inner eyelids.

Eventually Stacy and the kids got back with breathless tales of high horseback adventure. No one, it seemed, had gotten thrown, bitten, or kicked, and as far as I could tell no one had contracted horse-lice, so it appeared to be a good trip all around. They had taken a trail down to the lake, packed to a shady forest glen at the lake's far end, had a brief picnic snack, and then packed back out. L and N tried to extort a quarter from me for a bald eagle they had seen on the trip, but Stacy ratted them out, telling me it was the San Diego woman who spotted it first, so no dice!

The horses rest, but not the horseplay.

The real Eagle Scouts

Doh!  A deer!

That afternoon Stacy once again ransacked my agenda by insisting on me getting up off the bed that so easily ensnared me. We threw on ball caps and windbreakers and headed down for a hike around the lake. As we walked through the cabin paths on our way to the lake we came across a party of a half-dozen people all making the same afflicted mime gestures to one another that Stacy had modeled in the parking lot the day before. We looked to where their attention was fixed and saw a family of mule deer contentedly going about their business. They were just at the edge of the path we were about to traverse, so we stopped so as not to frighten them off, though I was beginning to have doubts that the phrase "Dash away, dash away, dash away all" had any meaning for this particular branch of the deer species. We stood watching them as they stood watching us, and as the other party stood watching both of us. We waited, the deer waited, the tourists with cameras waited. Five minutes in and the stalemate unbroken, we decided to slide along stealthily hoping to bypass the deer and leave them for their other admirers. As we stepped a step forward, however, one deer in particular looked up, eyed us, and responded by taking a step forward. We took another step forward. It was echoed. Every movement brought a reciprocal. Pawn to G7. Rook to B5. A tense hush fell over the tourist party as they watched our halting interspecies dance. The next thing we knew the deer decided it was done playing and blithely wandered up to Stacy and stood gazing into her eyes. At this point Stacy entered "get your germs away from my children" mode and slowly escorted the kids around and to our trail, giving Bambi as wide a berth as she could. Once downstream, we proceeded on to the lake, looking back occasionally to see the doe-eyed, um, doe, staring blandly after us, and listening to the cacophony of clicks and coos and desperate coaxing enticements that erupted from the other folks as they pleaded with the deer for their own special visitation.

Stacy is endearing.

There is a beautiful and mostly-level trail that goes all the way around Convict Lake, a jaunt of a little over three miles. A good portion of the trail followed the same route the kids had taken earlier on horseback, so they were able to point out with excited squeals every spot where they got flicked by the horsetail in front of them and other such excitements. (It also gave one all the more reason to watch one's footing on the trail.) When we reached the wooded area at the halfway point of the trail on the far side of the lake the kids gave me the full-detail play-by-play of their dismount and snack time, a story with took probably longer in the retelling than in the time they were allowed to enjoy it. "This is where I scratched my arm on a bush. This is where N dropped his Nutter Butter. Here's where Mommy told me not to kiss the horses," -- sentimental reminiscences of distant events so many hours ago. I expect that, in his wizened years, if Gilligan were ever to bring his grandchildren to his desert island, he would ramble on a lot like that.

The little woods there leads down to a nice access point to the lake; we went down and puttered on the beach a bit, watching the fishermen dotting the shore and the occasional kayaker gliding past. I tried to teach L and N the fine art form of skipping rocks (with explicit instructions to avoid the kayaker), but it was to little effect. Our time-honored rock skipping techniques were not to be passed down the generations that day. L and N both managed, however, to speedily acquire the skill of rock plunking.

Ummm, no.

Wild currants

We managed to wrap up our beach time without anyone giving anyone else a concussion or even anyone getting their shoes soaked, which is a true rarity and a sure sign the kids are growing faster than I want them to. We proceeded back to the trail and continued our revolution around the lake. It was only the last quarter mile or so that our old friend from the Postpile revisited us and found in N a suitable host.

 

These strange blooms were all over the place.

Picnic table pout.

Later that evening back at base camp, while Stacy and N were in reading, or playing a game or doing something far less interesting, L and I stepped out on our little deck area and turned out the porch lights. It was pitch black except for the wildest array of throbbing, sparkling stars arching over us! It was a warm night so we pulled some chairs together and sat out trying to figure out all the obscure summer constellations. (I gotta admit, while it's undoubtedly beautiful, the summer sky pales in comparison to the winter sky. The winter sky, with Orion and Andromeda and the Pleiades and all the major and minor dogs running around, is so much more boisterous and dynamic!) We were able to find Scorpio and of course the ever-present Dippers. We found a hazy band that we figured had to be the Milky Way, but could have just been some lazy clouds with nowhere to go. A half dozen satellites buzzed by like highly focused insects on a mission. We were gaping upward with our mouths open and our throats bared when we heard the crack of a branch in the blackness of the meadow before us. In the deadness of the night it was a rifle shot. We grabbed each other's arms painfully and froze. We listened intently. Nothing... Just as we decided we could breathe a little and let our heart rates step down a notch, "crack!" There it was again! This time there was a definite rustling of something large moving through the brush toward us. L and I scrambled over each other, frantically fighting to get to the door first. (My paternal protective instinct is much more theoretical than actually applied.) Just as we got to the door we turned to get a final look at our pursuer and saw a ghostly head with two large ears and glowing voodoo eyes materialize before us. We... Um, L screamed and flung ourselves through the door, slamming it behind us and sending whatever game Stacy and N were playing in a thousand directions. "Something's out there!" we... um, L cried. After panting a few seconds and recovering our breath, if not our dignity, we slowly gathered back at the door; listening at the wood, and not hearing any gurgling growls or demonic breathing, we cracked it open and peered out.

"It's just a mule deer," said Stacy as though a deer wouldn't leap upon you and rip out your throat in a heartbeat, given the chance.

"But it attacked us," we protested.

"It's just hungry. People probably feed it a lot," she said. Right on cue, without missing a beat, the deer licked its lips in a big wide sloppy circle. The kids squealed with delight and started to open the door wider. Reading that as an invitation, the deer immediately proceeded on forward and had I not been quick to slam the door violently to, it would surely have been in the cabin among us. The kids started protesting and begging me to open the door, and I had to patiently explain to them that their throats were currently intact only because of my quick wits and decisive action. I nevertheless feel they failed to understand the grisly horrors I surely spared them.

The next morning our stay was over; we rose sluggishly and proceeded to pack up the car. (I made sure to check the outside of the cabin for signs of bloody hoof prints on the step and fang marks on the doorknobs.) We returned our key at the main office then proceeded to rerun our happy journey in reverse, watching the grandeur of the mountains slowly subside into the grisly greys and browns of the dreary deadlands below. As we descended the passes and drove further down the increasingly depressing Highway 395, L and N played a game they always play on that road.

"Look, L! Bad giants!" N would scream pointing out the window.

"Ahhhh!" L would echo. "They're all around us!!!"

"Don't worry, L. Look over there. It's the good giants to the rescue!" N pointed to another direction and L's sudden cheering would indicate that she did indeed see her salvation approaching.

"Daddy," N would explain, "the big metal towers are the bad giants that try to get up the mountain to get us. But the little wooden one always fight for us and protect us! Yay, good giants!"

The evil giants!  They're everywhere!

But here comes the cavalry!

The giants took turns assaulting and defending and thus we were entertained the five hours back to our other, only slightly larger, cabin. After we stumbled into the house and stashed the very few things that truly needed putting away, we tossed the kids in their beds and sank deep into our own. Although a vacation is always nice, it is nevertheless a blessed thing to be back in your own home, especially one the good giants so faithfully keep watch over.

Our home security system.