The Great Southwest

We knew we wanted to hit the Grand Canyon and visit some friends who moved back to Flagstaff last year.  We're playing things by ear right now, no reservations.  So from Kings Canyon, we started researching.  When we headed out from the campground, we had a name of a campground.  As we travelled, the car thermometer kept rising.  At 7pm when we stopped for dinner in Baker, CA, it was 107.  We had already made the decision, at that point, to skip the godforsaken land of California for somewhere that didn't feel like preparation for hell.  At 2am we rolled into the Springhill Suites in Flagstaff.  Can I tell you how freaking awesome a bed and four walls is?  And there's a swimming pool here (never mind all the glacier fed rivers the kids have been swimming in, along with lakes and creeks).  And laundry....cheap laundry!  We shot our budget, but it has restored much happiness to our band of weary travellers.   Oh, and I'm aware that the dictionary takes the singular "l" version of traveler/traveling.  Doesn't that look stupid?  Doesn't it just call for doubling?  Yes, yes it does.  And it used to, some lazy bastards just dropped the second "l" at some point in history, and majority rules.  Buck the trends.  Think outside the box.  Be who you were born to be.  A travelling freak show, that's who I am.

Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks

When the kids initially did their research for where they wanted to go on this part of the trip, G rooted for Sequoia National Park.  I had said no because it's so far south in CA, and I didn't want to get hit with the heat.  But at Pine Meadows (Cottage Grove, OR), our camp host convinced me that we really needed to head to Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks.  He was so excited about it, he had spent a lot of time there as a kid, that I just said we should go for it.  What a beautiful place.  What polluted air.  Despite it being a HUGE forest of HUGE trees, the air quality there is horrible.  My allergies, which have been so mild on this trip, were raging.  I had several nights where sleep was elusive because I was so congested.  So while the temperatures were perfect and the parks were gorgeous, we decided not to extend our visit beyond our originally paid for four nights.  

Pinecones larger than NB's head, holy cow!  At a ranger talk the kids learned that these are sugar pine cones.  The one they have on display at the visitor center over at Sequoia National Park is even bigger.  We stayed at the Azalea campground in Grant Grove, Kings Canyon National Park.  Kings Canyon is the less crowded park, and the Grant Tree is within walking distance of the Grant Grove campgrounds.  It was easy peasy for us to get a first come first served spot, the campground has 110, all non-reservable, spots.  I wish we had spent more time picking our spot, because while it was beautiful, it was on the shuttle route for the park.  We had buses going right by our spot from 9am to 6pm everyday.  Every half hour.  There are some amazingly rocky spots, too, where NB would have enjoyed climbing and such.  Definitely some quieter spots than what we chose.        

Grant Tree is the widest base sequoia measured, at 40 feet in circumference at the base.  After seven weeks together, I needed a break from the crowd and did this walk on my own.  Bill and the kids also went, though we never saw each other until the walk back to the campsite.  It was nice to walk in the forest with all the quiet and laugh at all the goony things tourists do.  My favorite was a guy (20s or 30s?) who climbed into a stump whose insides had decayed.  He stood up inside it (the stump was only maybe 2 feet tall), and he was in up to his chest.  Pretty awesome.          

We travelled to General Sherman on the Sequoia side.  General Sherman is the biggest sequoia by weight and volume of lumber.  Sequoias have a relatively shallow root system, so the most popular forests are fenced off to give the trees the chance to survive their own popularity.  Sequoias don't die of old age, either, they usually get too big to support themselves and fall over.            

Just to give you a sense of scale, this is a "smaller" tree that fell and had a tunnel cut out of it.  Adults can walk through it without trouble, too.  There was a tree tunnel large enough to drive through, but it decayed enough to collapse, and so that tunnel is no more.              

This stump didn't attract a lot of attention, General Sherman is the star of this show, but I was simply amazed by this section of a trunk.  It is absolutely huge.  And because it's a section, and they're not worried about preserving a root system, you can walk right up to it and touch it.  A way better experience than just looking at a big tree, if you ask me.             Overall, it was an amazing adventure for us.  There's still so much we didn't do there, too, that if you visit, plan for a good long time to see all the sights and soak up the forests.  Great place to camp.  I vote for the Kings Canyon side.

More Toilet Tragedies

Right after making the last post, I had to use the campground toilets.  They have the one accessible stall and the other, less inviting stall.  As if a public stall can have some level of appeal.  At any rate, the door scraped into me again.  Love it.  But this time, I noticed that the stall actually scraped the toilet.  That's right, the toilet can hold the door open.  

When you've created a stall like this, your design sucks.  Pure and simple.  There has to be a better way.              

In case you missed it, they even cut the door because they knew it wouldn't work.  Just didn't cut it enough.  The door actually has to be forced over the toilet.  So little thought put into things.  I'd like to think that this is a mark of today's society, that things were better in the past, but that's ignoring the fact that laziness trumps most everything.  I hate public toilets.

Losing Time, Losing My Mind

We have been on the move so much, changing campsites every three or four days, we've just not been able to collect ourselves.  Add to that all the trips we've been taking to see the sights and absorb so much, we've not had much down time or time to chill.  On top of all our travels, we smell like monkeys in a zoo.  So we try to take time to clean out the van and do our laundry when we can.  It's been a bit exhausting of late.

 These tree roots are absolutely amazing.  We took a day and explored our way down the Redwood National and State Park.  It's so hard to get the scale of the trees into a picture, but it was truly impressive to be in such a large forest.  So much to see, so hard to take good pictures.              

               

This one might actually get the scale fairly well.  Bill and G are standing UNDER a fallen tree. Propped by other fallen trees.  Amazing.  Totally recommend hitting this national park.          

Redwood is spread out, so as you drive from one end to the other, you go through coastal towns, like Crescent City.  We stopped at Anchor Way, where we got to look at the ocean.  The weather was so hot at the campsite, and here it was CHILLY.  We all went back to the van to get on some warmer clothes, since we dressed for the heat.         We wanted to see Oregon Caves, the only marble caves in the US.  BUT, the tour fee was high, and K had said that while she was hip to caves this year, it was guided tours she wasn't so fond of.  So with heavy hearts, we bypassed the caves.  On our way back to the campsite, we passed the Cave Junction SmokeJumpers Base Museum, so we turned around and checked it out.  Totally worth it.  We had a great time learning about smokejumpers, hearing some more about the Triple Nickels, and getting first hand history from one of the jumpers who had jumped from Cave Junction.  Cave Junction's base closed in the early '80s, so it was a treat to get to hear from one of the former jumpers.  

J trying on one of the helmets.            

                Our final destination came after mass on Sunday.  We stopped in McD's for a quick lunch, and on our way out, a lady stopped us and asked if we'd been to Stout Grove.  She had seen me carrying the road atlas (we were trying to plan our next destination since we were all planned out by that point), so she wanted to give us some local spots to check out.  Stout Grove is where the Endor forest scenes were shot, along with shots in Jurassic Park and E.T.  You have to go there if you're ever in Crescent City, CA.  Oh my.  Such a beautiful forest.  

We travelled far and wide for this sign.  We went down about five miles on unpaved road that is maybe two cars wide, but only in some places.  We squeezed through gigantic trees, pulled over to let others pass, worried about the soft shoulder and the sheer drop just past it, and just took it slow.  I loved it.  It was a thrilling ride, that I took at 15 mph.        

The kids are pretty much all the same height, especially compared to the trees!  We spent much time imagining that we were on speeder bikes, zooming in and out of trees, looking for the scenes we recognize from the movie.  We had our inner dorks on display, as did everyone in that forest that day!              

The rare picture of me.  But I liked the burl, which is an infection or disease that the tree "eats up" or tries to just cover up.  It's a tree scab.  This one is gigantic, and reminds me of a boogery nose.  So of course I had to get my picture with it!              

NB liked this spore and wanted his picture with it.  We're fascinated by irregular tree growth.                 So out of our three days at Panther Flat campground, we spent three days out and about.  The kids are getting truly road weary, as are Bill and I.  We have to work out how to get in the tour days, but also to get the rest days.  To get in the bookwork, but also the experiential learning.  To just make it past another days, sometimes that's the mission.

Logging Museum

The logging museum near Collier State Park was totally cool.  They have some really amazing equipment, and TONS of history of logging in the state of Oregon.  The kids enjoyed reading all about logging and seeing the truly HUGE equipment.  Honestly, this was such a great part of our trip to Collier State Park.  What a great day it was!            

           

Schooling Update

Schooling on the road is hard.  My kids are getting a kickin' education, but the paper and bookwork is hard to fit in.  Fortunately my youngest three have a math curriculum that has short and quick lessons, so they've finished up with those books and we are working on concepts a few minutes at a time.  The older boys, not so lucky.  G wants to change curriculum for his math, and I'm with him.  The problems always seem to be something like:  Problem 1.  Problem 1a.  Problem 1ai.  And he'll have 63 or so problems.  Plus all the a-c and the i-iii.  Grading that for me, especially trying to figure out the weighting of it all, is such a pain in the ass.  We're fortunate that my sister gave us Teaching Textbooks, so we can move G to Algebra in that curriculum.  BUT, before we go that way, my mom lent us her Algebra 1 DVD course.  I think NS will have more success if I can work one on one with him when we're at houses.  Sigh.  We're just not at places long enough to settle down and set up a schedule.  Plus we're busting to see all there is to see.  And we've seen amazing things and learned a great deal about our country.  And maybe, just maybe, we'll learn a bit more about organization, cooperation, family life, and getting our work done.

Toilets and Other Luxuries

Oh, how I love toilets.  I especially love a toilet that's in a space I can fit into.  Seriously, WHY are the stalls almost exactly the size of the toilet, and the door opens in?  And the toilet paper dispenser overlaps the toilet.  I don't want to kiss a public toilet's wall.  I really don't.  So on our trip down to Black Butte Lake, we stopped at a Burger King, whose toilet doors open OUT.  Genius.  So simple, yet it made my day.  I don't understand why design so simple requires such great minds.  Do other people just not use toilets?  It's never occured to them that people might want to FIT into the stall?  And you can go ahead and call me out as fat, that's fair, but my 10 year old slim and trim daughter has to straddle the toilet to close the door.  So, ye designers of toilets and other spaces, square inches count, but so does comfort.  Help a gal out.