Christmas, 2014

It was not a huge family Christmas, but it was a Christmas with a three-year-old. P's parting words to us, Christmas night, were "I love my presents, I love Christmas, I love my family." Top that!

Decorating Christmas cookies

Special attention to the letter P (not shown...
making the gingerbread house)

Traditional Christmas Eve meat/seafood fondue (the cheese
fondue course was lunch, earlier; the chocolate course on
Christmas night)

Helping Grandma unwrap a Christmas eve present

Christmas morning...P examines the chemistry
set from Poppy (paternal grandpa), as Mama
looks on, demonstrating use of safety glasses;
what does a chemistry set for three-year-olds do,
you ask...have you ever seen raisins rise and
fall in a solution of carbonated water?

With her first American Girl doll (christened
Sarah) and matching Snow White night-gowns

Daddy with specially-selected vintage tie

A Frozen night-gown

Mama looks on to the unwrapping of a culinary present

Grandpa unwraps something (probably a gadget
for the camper)

As the morning winds down, with Sarah, in
matching night-gowns

Interim Update: Missoula, January, 2015

It's the Ides of January, and here we are in Missoula, MT, fog and 16 degrees F at 10 in the morning . At least it's pretty outside, if you like whore-frost everywhere and white-out.... (That's a joke, son).

After a three-day drive from Menlo Park, mostly on I-5 and then the Columbia Gorge, and then up to I-90 via its tributaries, spending nights--savage camping, of course--at Grants Pass (OR) and Kennewick, OR (WA?), we are here, pursuing Vicki's dream of snowmobiling the American West; again. Most of the scenery on the drive was stunning, as usual, particularly Shasta, the mountains of southern Oregon, Mt. Hood, the Gorge, and the montane regions of the inland northwest: our country, or used to be. Anyhow, we survived the drive, with its increasing cold, and our first sub-freezing night in the Bigfoot. Vicki's ingenuities and gadgets got us through with (apparently) no frozen pipes, tanks, bottles, nor frost-bite, and with abundant propane and electricity. (The hypothermia will come later.) The Ram didn't get great mileage--it was uphill a lot of the way. And we're dealing with a bit more condensation inside the camper than anticipated. Vicki has suggested I help solve the condensation problem by not breathing.

Anyhow, we are here, and our next steps will be reviving our eleven year old snowmobile, in storage since 2008, and our trailer, which we'd sold to a friend who is lending it back for the season. As all that progresses, I'll try to fill a variety of blog-gaps from the last month or so.

I watched the national championship game at a bar in Grants
Pass, OR, surrounded by Ducks fans; it is difficult to contain
oneself in such circumstances--particularly here where Ohio
State's Ezekiel Elliot is celebrating his 3rd TD against the 
favored Ducks to make OSU's lead insuperable; it was an 
interesting season for me, since both my alma maters made the 
final four; and my beloved Buckeyes were clearly the 
Cinderella story of the year; FSU was evidently not up to its 
previous year's national championship, and I am pleased that 
its quarterback is moving on to the pros, where he'll 
undoubtedly make RGIII and Johnny Goofball look good; 
oh, and I have nothing but respect for the Ducks fans with 
whom I shared the evening in Grants Pass: good sports, all...

Hiking in Pinnacles National Park

Feeling the need to get away and do some real camping and hiking, we headed south toward Gilroy, garlic capital of the known universe (and more repulsive than ever (aromatically)), and then further, through Hollister, to Pinnacles National Park, only about 100 miles from Menlo. Pinnacles is the nation's newest NP, authorized in 2013, although it began as a national monument in 1908. Among those supporting its founding then were President TR, Gifford Pinchot, and David Starr Jordan. Pinnacles is not all that spectacular--it's nice, but not spectacular at all, if you ask me--and one suspects the history and pedigree have much to do with its new, much-upgraded status as a NP. Anyhow, after holding our noses and stimulating Gilroy's economy, we spent a pleasant evening at Pinnacles NP campground, visiting with a Dutch couple doing in the Americas what we did in Europe, and then we went out hiking the next day.

On the trail again

Thus

Much of the rock is a sort of conglomerate, an upthrust smack
in the middle of the San Andreas Fault

You don't want to be standing under the overhang when the Big One comes

Out of the canyon and approaching a clump of pinnacles

Thus

Interesting tree near where we had lunch

Climbing is permitted in the Park; this kind probably not encouraged, however

Pinnacly ridge

Ditto

A formation we dubbed "the castle"

Vicki in an arch; the CCC did much of the trail building and
improvement here; not pictured: some of the gorgeous stone
buildings they built, now used for Park staff residences

Interesting striation

View from the ridge crest

Intrusion?

View from the ridge crest; apart from the view, another reason for hiking up 
to the crest was to get cell reception (the visitor center and campground are 
in a deep hole) and to learn more about the storm moving in the next day 
(later known as the Pineapple Express); assessing the forecasts, looking at 
the terrain and evidence of previous flooding and at all the fallen giant oaks 
in the campground, we decided to save the rest of  Pinnacles NP for another, 
drier day, and drove back to Menlo  to weather the storm there

Outings With P

Our weeks in Middle California have been spent largely in work on the camper--ever more gadgets, appliances, alterations--and in a variety of outings with grand-daughter, P. Here are scenes from a few of them...

At P's school on Art Night

Self-portrait de style Africain

Anxiously awaiting arrival of the CalTrain Holiday Train 

Right on time...

And we're right in the front row...so to speak

As the show goes on, characters emerge to interact with the
kiddies

Santa bestows Christmas blessings

A California thing, apparently

Sudsy snow in Menlo Park

Happy little girl

At the American Girl store

With Santa at Stanford mall

In the Depths of the Forest...

We took grand-daughter P on a camping trip over the long Thanksgiving weekend to the Little Basin State Park in the mountains north of Santa Cruz. (The week before we had driven from the north coast via Redding and Vallejo to Menlo Park, parking at Rebecca and Jeremy's). Little Basin was the only state campground nearby that had vacancies...it's a few miles south of Big Basin, California's oldest state park and home to some of the state's most majestic redwoods. Little Basin's redwoods were majestic enough, and the campsites are scattered in the woods around the central meadow/basin. The place was originally a retreat/conference center for H-P employees (remember H-P?). The basin is a hole in the mountains surrounding it, and the campsites are by and large quite dark, owing to the thick and immense trees. In late November, there's barely enough light to go around anyway. So there we were, with P, four days and three nights, in the depths of the forest (Siegfried, Act II), also without much phone signal nor wifi. Fortunately, P provides all the entertainment anyone (well, any grand-parent) could want.

Plenty of light up high, not so much on the
ground

Typical site, adjacent to three different redwood fairy rings

Big stump and ring adjacent to our site

Thus

It's California, where we practice crumb-clean
camping

But you can have campfires...and roasted hot dogs and
s'mores...(is this what they mean by paleo?)

The main playground; Little Basin really has a lot of features
and facilities, especially for groups (we shared it with half a
dozen other families and with a couple score of Bay area Muslim
men on a religious retreat); its one shortcoming is sanitary
facilities, of which it has two small blocks (apparently H-P
employees were thought to be above mortal needs; or, since
they were probably nearly all guys, it was expected they'd go
behind the bushes); but I digress; above, Vicki heads for the
swings, and P begins her customary granular inventory...

Grandma just does not understand about playgrounds and sand...

Somewhat later

And somewhat later still, tea party time in the camper; with
pie crust cookies from home (we did have pumpkin pie, our
one concession to tradition)

In a small rig, everyone has to find his or her
own space....

Snug in her bag

Another day, hiking on the Tan Bark Ridge trail

Dusk--3:30 PM or so--brought deer out onto the basin; P got
quite adept at spotting them

Looking up from the center of one of the big fairy rings

Saturday, the (torrential) rains began--it's monsoon season

in California, where, after three years of record drought, the

rain is welcome; and on Sunday we drove back to Menlo Park