One Day tour of San Francisco

San Francisco, CA

We had just one day to see as much of San Francisco as we could and we didn't actually plan anything in advance. At all. In fact we were already over the Golden Gate bridge before I started to google anything about what to see and since the bridge is a toll bridge, we weren't really wanting to go back over to see anything on the north side, but that worked out perfectly. After a false start in which we actually paid to park near the bridge and then were warned by a police officer against leaving a car obviously full of luggage, we opted to start out with a driving tour that was, I am sure, a little all over the place and random, but it was fun, probably more so for those of us who were riding than for our driver.

Presidio. This was really just part of the recovery from our we're parking/no we're not incident, not sure it counts and it didn't warrant a picture

Chinatown. The oldest Chinatown on the continent? The biggest? Both? Something like that anyway, and the place that fortune cookies were invented. Unlike Chinatown in Vancouver, this was strictly a drive through, and we never once felt threatened by 'pig innards.'

Lombard Street. "The most crooked street in the world." I came to San Francisco knowing I wanted to see the bridge, but Kris had a few other landmarks on his list and this was one of them. Several switchbacks back and forth over a brick paved road. Admittedly cool.

Coit Tower. This old lookout tower was a great place to look down on the city and bay. Kris had to circle the parking area for a little while at first while the kids and I got out, but eventually we chased down some older couples who were leaving and claimed their spot. We didn't pay to go in the tower but there were viewing areas around the parking area.

Painted Ladies. Just a few of the really beautiful house fronts in the city and frankly, they aren't the most impressive, but they are the famous ones, go figure.

Haight Street and Ashbury. Apparently famous as the hangout of the Grateful Dead and for its general hippie-ness, again, Kris knew all this, I had no idea. The whole block smelled like pot, but the psychedelic storefronts are pretty fun.

Cable Car turntable. This would have worked better on foot, as it was we drove as close as we could and looked up the street as we went by. We got better looks at the cable cars later and accidentally.

Check in time at the hotel was 3, and it was only 2ish by the time we had finished all the drive by destinations we could google, so we decided to try our luck checking in early. We arrived at our hotel on the wharf by way of a narrow road with cars parked on either side and which featured 4 way stops at most intersections, that first climbed nearly vertically and then suddenly began to drop at basically the same grade. We couldn't get in our rooms, but we could leave our luggage at the front desk which left us free to leave our car parked somewhere without the concern of losing everything we own in a possible break-in.

So we headed back to the bridge and Crissy Field  by way of the super fancy schmancy houses on Marina street.

Golden Gate Bridge!!!! We parked at battery east parking lot at Crissy Field. Again. From here we could get great pictures of the bridge and it was a short walk to and then up and over it. It was surprisingly (to me) windy as we crossed. We went over and then back and then took a trail partway out to fort point and then out on torpedo wharf where we had a good view of Alcatraz.

After we moved into our rooms we headed out to explore Fisherman's Wharf and get some dinner

First stop was dinner at the Codmother, a fish and chips food truck that was simply amazing, the best fish and chips I have had in a long time. And it only got better as we looked at prices at restaurants along the wharf and realized that we had nearly paid half the rate at the restaurants.

We finished our day walking along the wharf and up to Ghirardelli square, saw a WWII submarine, cable cars, sea lions at pier 39 and the occasional street performer including a man perched on a milk crate on the sidewalk posing as a bush and periodically peeling back the branches he held over his upper body and face and growling at passers-by. We found the growling bush considerably more entertaining than the juggler who had himself an actual stage on the pier.

One day. Whew.

Redwoods!

Crescent City, California

Got up early yesterday and headed into Redwood Park. Which, by the way, is multiple parks. There is Redwoods National Park and then there are the Redwoods State Parks: Humboldt Redwoods State Park, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, all clustered together up here in Northern California. Who knew? Well, probably lots of people, but I didn't. Also, there is no charge to get into any of these parks. I believe the only one we were not in today was Jedediah Smith. Maybe. Definitely we went through Prairie Creek and the national park. Early means we were out of here by about 8:40, so not so early.

We have sort of set a pattern for our days in the National parks: start with a decent hike, eat some lunch, and then drive through some scenic areas with a couple quick sites to see. The hike we picked for Redwoods was the Tall Trees Grove. The park allows only a limited number of vehicles to the trailhead everyday, and to be one of those vehicles we had to get ourselves a permit at a visitors center. There is a visitors center here in Crescent City where we are staying, but we left before it opened and ended up getting our permit at the Prairie Creek visitors center, but it really wasn't too difficult. We did have to listen to the dire warnings of bears and mountain lions being in the area and promise to call if we saw any, even as I am reading not to rely on my phone's GPS because it probably won't work out there, just like my phone itself won't.

The drive to the trailhead involves a narrow dirt road behind a locked gate that the nice lady at the visitor's center gave us "today's" code to. Do they actually change the combination from one day to the next? Maybe. But whatever, it certainly adds to the adventure to have to use a secret code to get through a locked gate to an unpaved road that leads to your destination. The hike itself was 4 miles: 1 1/2 to get to the grove (all down hill), a 1 mile loop through the grove, and then that 1 1/2 miles back to the car. But there are plenty of 'tall trees' all along the rote, not just withing the grove itself. The former tallest tree in the world, the Libby Tree, is in this grove of trees. Its been demoted since it both shrank AND taller trees have been discovered, still it is something like 360 feet high, nothing to be ashamed of. Two things that surprised me were the gorgeous moss draped maple trees at one end of the grove loop and the burnt redwoods. Redwood trees survive fire and so there are lots of obviously burnt trees still growing strong. We ate our lunch in the grove, sitting on a fallen redwood trunk,
legs dangling a good foot above the ground.

After we hiked our way back out, with basically no whiners whatsoever, we commenced our driving tour of the park stopping first at an overlook of the valley we had just hiked through. Then we tricked the kids into hiking an additional mile loop at the Lady Bird Johnson grove where the park was dedicated in 1969. Then back through the Drury Scenic Parkway and along the Coastal Loop Drive near Klamath (partially unpaved and really narrow and possibly in danger of falling into the sea soon....) where we got out to see the WW II radar station cleverly disguised as a farmhouse and barn. Then we headed home to eat and rest in our 70s throwback house on the harbor.

On our Way to Oregon

Port Angeles, Washington to Rockaway Beach, Oregon

Wednesday morning we managed to depart from Port Angeles only slightly later than planned. We needed to get to Rockaway Beach, about halfway down the Oregon Coast by that evening, and we still had things we planned to see in Olympic Nat'l Park.

Our first planned stop was Rialto Beach on the west coast of the Olympic peninsula and about a thirty minute detour off of the highway. Its amazing. From the parking lot we walked to the beach over polished beach pebbles that separate the sandy beach from the wooded hillside, the rocks must be piled pretty deep because you can scoop them up by the handful and never find anything but more rock beneath. The overall color of the rocks is a dark gray but when you look more closely you find greens and reds and even purples and pinks and the occasional brilliant white. And I did look closely. And then I started to pick up my favorites. And pretty soon my pockets were bulging with rocks. When the kids caught on, they started to bring me the best ones they found too and by the time we left I had a sizable collection of beach rocks that Kris says have to go in MY luggage somewhere. So, forested hillside, polished beach rocks, sand, and all of it covered with huge fallen trees.

Next stop, Hoh Rainforest. Another detour off the highway but in the opposite direction from Rialto beach. So, back to the highway, slight movement in a southerly direction, and then east back into Olympic Park. This should have been about like Rialto beach time wise, but no one told us about roadwork in the park that would add over an hour to our trip. But fine. Driving and then parking issues aside, the forest itself was very cool. We ended up just seeing the Hall of Mosses trail right outside the visitors center. Lots of moss draped everything. It was even in the pond. Lots of tall trees. Really tall trees. I read that the trees here, sitka spruces, could grow to be as tall as 280 feet high, which is amazing, and also still about 100 feet shorter than redwoods can grow. Can't wait to see redwoods!

By the time we got out of Olympic Park, we were feeling a tad stressed about our arrival time in Oregon that night, but not so much that we would pass up the chance to see the Goonies' house in Astoria. All you can do is drive to the street just below it and snap a picture from there as it is a privately owned home up a private drive, but that was good enough for us and for several other fans who both preceded and followed us up the short street. After that little thrill we had to stop at Cannon Beach too where they filmed the Goonies' emergence from the caverns. By then it was getting very late, which is too bad because this was a beautiful beach I would have liked to have played at for awhile.

So we got to our house in Rockaway Beach, discovered the sad lack of much of a grocery store in Rockaway, and made do with leftovers from the night before that we had luckily packed with us from Port Angeles and finished our day on the beach watching the sunset and playing frisbee.

Whale Watch and Hurricane Hill

Port Angeles, Washington

Tonight we are preparing for an early departure from Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. We have been here since Sunday afternoon, having spent Saturday night in a less than desirable hotel in Everett Washington. Our occasional one night stays in hotels have so far not been spectacular experiences, discounting the earthquake in Missoula anyway. Sunday morning we checked out of our smoke scented hotel and went to church, probably smelling a tad of smoke ourselves, with our car packed and ready for Port Angeles. After church we entertained the rest of the ward by eating cinnamon rolls off the hood of our car in the parking lot while most of the boys and men took turns either in the back seat of the car (Noah) or using the bathrooms in the church (everyone else) to change out of ties and vests and button down shirts. I wear skirts, sandals and cotton t shirts to church, no need to change I am quite comfy thank you. After a couple hours of driving and one ferry ride we arrived at our home in Port Angeles and set about living here.

Monday morning we had an early appointment to board a whale watching boat from the actual port downtown. This tour had been a point of multiple discussions over the course of the last several weeks. We really wanted to see whales. We really don't want to spend a ton of money, in fact most of the things we do are free or close to free. In the end we decided to to it, and I am so glad because it was amazing. We looked at trips out of Bellingham, Vancouver and finally Port Angeles, this one was the least expensive and reported the highest success rate. And we did see whales. Only humpbacks, but at least six of them. And two actually dove under our boat, another actually breached the water in the distance and we watched one spinning in the water for a long time and another napping actually. Besides whales we saw bald eagles, harbor seals, elephant seals, a huuuge sea lion, porpoises and many, many jelly fish. Plus the boat ride itself was just fantastic.

This morning we had a relatively relaxing morning just taking things slowly and waiting for Kris's sister Erika to arrive from Seattle to spend the day with us. When she got here we threw our sandwiches in the car and headed for Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. We drove straight to the Hurricane Hill hiking trail, where we hilariously missed the trail initially and walked a picnic area loop that brought us right back to our car, but after that we got going on the actual trail and enjoyed it even more than the picnic area loop. Along the trail we watched a mama bird feeding her babies in a hole on the ground in the side of a hill (!), threw snowballs at one another, and just generally enjoyed the amazing views and meadows full of wildflowers everywhere.

When we got home this evening, there was dinner to make, consume, and clean up, trash to take out, and laundry to do. At 8pm Liam was doing some pre algebra, Fionnula practicing Spanish, Ronan working on SAT practice and Noah doing mission papers.  Because right now, school and all other responsibilities have to happen whenever there is opportunity. They each got in a little bit in this morning before we left for the park too, but then there was also breakfast to be prepared, eaten and cleaned up, showers to be coordinated (with only one full bathroom that's a challenge), and lunch to be prepared for later. Basically all the normal sorts of things we would be doing no matter what our current living situation still need to get done and that's because, as I keep reminding the kids and others, we are not on vacation. Vacation is an escape from your regular life and from which you must at some point return. After vacation you get home and have to wash all the laundry that accumulated while you were playing at Disneyland. We are trying to make travel our regular life, and in order for that to happen, we can't let everything slide. Especially the laundry. And the math.

Making Plans on the Fly in Langley, British Columbia

Langley, BC, Canada

We crossed the border into Canada on Saturday night. We found our rental house, followed instructions on how to get in, unpacked and went grocery shopping. Then we came 'home' and prepared spaghetti with meatballs and salad for dinner. There were too many noodles and not nearly enough sauce. Everyone washed laundry, Kris and I took a walk downtown, we read Cheaper by the Dozen and then The Book of Mormon, said prayers, and went to bed in our borrowed bedrooms. The next day we got up and ready for church. The ward was quite friendly and several people introduced themselves and then they asked a couple questions. Where are we visiting from? To this one I still always go with "Colorado," its simple, but becoming less so as we get further from our last days there. What are we doing while we are here? That one was harder because we didn't really come here with very concrete plans beyond the desire to leave the US just once this summer.

Our plans regarding what to see and what to do in a particular place are rough and ever evolving. Sometimes right up to the morning we actually do them. We planned this week after we were already here but still saw some pretty great things. First we came up with this rough plan: Monday, Wednesday, Friday we would go do something, Tuesday and Thursday would be stay home days or school days or veg days, we haven't really decided what to call them, but we need off days if we are going to maintain a traveling lifestyle for any length of time whatsoever.

So then we googled "free stuff to do in Langley, BC." A google search will usually produce several different lists of the top 10 or 25 favorite things according to whoever made the particular list. They also will often list the "not quite" free things too. People who live wherever you are, are also great sources. The ladies at church gave us several ideas, though after I looked up their first suggestion I began to suspect that these apparently sweet women were really out to kill us Yanks. They recommended something called the Grouse Grind. Its a stairway up a mountain. For my Colorado Springs friends, this appears to be The Manitou Incline on steroids. Its longer, it gains more elevation, and it has the added benefit of winding and twisting among large rocks and twisting tree roots. We skipped that one, but we did use some of their less suicidal ideas. And on one of our days off, Kris went out in the yard to wash the car and met neighbors who also gave us ideas.

This is what we ended up with:

View of Vancouver from the sea wall, Stanley Park

Monday we went into Vancouver and spent most of our day at Stanley Park. Basically Vancouver's version of Central Park I guess (I think its even bigger, I could be wrong). We walked along the sea wall, saw the totem poles, posed inside a giant cedar stump, and visited third beach.

Totem Poles, Stanley Park

Hollow Tree, Stanley Park

  

Chinatown

Then we drove to Chinatown. Probably if we had researched this one better, we wouldn't have. We even thought it would be fun to eat in Chinatown, so we found a restaurant on google, spent a good long time walking back and forth over the same roads trying to get google maps to actually locate both us and said restaurant, went in, sat down, perused a menu that at least had English translations, but when nearly every choice included "pork innards" in its description we decided we weren't quite up to this level of authenticity and made a break for it. We bought pizza instead.

Picking Blueberries

 Wednesday we went to Kraus Berry Farms. It is primarily a u-pick farm, but they have added a store and restaurant and bounce park I think. I don't know if it was a bounce park. It said family fun zone and we didn't go. We did pick our own berries though. We all took ziploc bags in, because we don't actually have buckets or baskets with us like everyone else was using. It worked. We got a few weird looks, but its fine. Then we bought waffles piled high with berries and cream and syrup at their restaurant.  

Fort Langley Historic Site

After we delivered our berries back to our house, we went the Fort Langley Historical Site and learned a little about how British Columbia started out as a trading post and Fionn was very grossed out by all the furs so Liam told her not to worry that they only took furs from animals after the animal died of old age because if they shot the animal it would ruin the fur of course. She didn't quite buy it, but still didn't ask me for the truth for a good 48 hours. 

Alouette Lake

 Friday wasn't settled until Thursday afternoon when some neighbors told Kris about Golden Ears Provincial Park. Yes, Golden Ears. I thought they said "Golden Years" and that it had something to do with David Bowie who I was pretty sure wasn't Canadian. Anyway, we drove about 30 minutes to Golden Ears and stopped first at Alouette Lake. Yes I taught Fionn and Liam the song, and yes Fionn has been singing it obsessively ever since. After hanging out at the

Lower Falls Trail, Golen Ears Provencial Park, BC

lake we went in search of a trail and found the Lower Falls Trail at about 2.5 km to be perfect.
After our hike, we headed back home and then to see a movie. As we were watching the new Planet of the Apes movie, we were remarking on how much the forest looked like what we had just hiked though that day. Well, that's because it was the forest we had walked through that day!

So that is how we started out our week with no plans and ended it having had several adventures and even managed to coordinate our hike with our movie. 

PS.... some things do take a tad more advanced planning. For instance, we will not be seeing Alcatraz on our visit to San Francisco because you need to book those tickets a whole lot sooner than we thought to. So we also did look ahead to where we are going to be next week and next month and purchased tickets for whale watching in Port Angeles, WA and the Shakespeare festival in Cedar City, UT.

Where are all the teenagers?

Langley, BC, Canada

This fall we will have only 3 children living and schooling with us still, ages 11 through 16. Now that I have no little kids of my own, it is even more blatantly obvious to me that the numbers of homeschooled children begin to decrease drastically in inverse proportion to age. There are lots of 5 year olds at a gathering of homeschoolers, but less 8 year olds, and even less 11 year olds, and once you get to 16 year olds, your kid is lucky if he isn't the only one. He is lucky if there is anyone there within a couple years of his age who isn't his own sibling. This makes me a little sad. Of course everyone does what they feel is right for their kids and their family, but I suspect that some people maybe would prefer to keep on homeschooling but for one reason or another they just don't feel quite up to tackling homeschooling the big kids. As college and careers loom ever more close, doubts can creep in ever more pervasively and some may wonder if they are up to teaching the serious stuff: Algebra and Biology and how to write a lengthy research paper. Some may start to worry if maybe their kids do need the social life of traditional middle school and high school. And there are always those friends, neighbors and grandparents demanding to know exactly how our kids will ever get into college.

But I love homeschooling with teenagers, and can't imagine a situation where I would consider doing otherwise. The primary reason that we homeschool in the first place has very little to do with the education the kids are getting. I know, crazy. But the real reason for all of this is that we want to be with our kids and we want them to be with one another. That reason does not go away when they turn 12, or 14, or 16. If anything, the older they get  the more important it is to me to keep homeschooling, despite the challenges that may be involved. Teenagers are already going to be busier than your average 6 year old. Mine have church activities and responsibilities, most of them have had jobs, they have a daily seminary class and they have all had college classes. With all that going on, it is more urgent than ever, that we preserve what time we can with them, particularly when I think of how soon these teenagers will be all grown up and leaving our home.

Because homeschooling our teenagers was a priority, we have powered through our doubts and made it happen. As my kids got bigger I realized the importance of shifting my thinking from identifying myself as a homeschool 'teacher.' Because no, I am not a competent Algebra or Biology teacher, or art teacher for that matter. So what we had to do was find ways for the kids to learn the things either we or they thought they needed. For us that meant private music lessons, college classes, and good programs designed for autonomous learning. It could mean tutors or internships or just someone willing and interested in passing along knowledge they have to someone who wants to learn. It was a tremendous help that our schooling philosophy already leaned heavily towards unschooling and the kids having a lot of freedom regarding what they chose to learn. Because it is even harder to make a 16 year old do something they do not want to do than it is a two year old.

When I have panicky moments over my current high schoolers and whether they will be able to get a passable score on the SAT or if they will ever demonstrate an ounce of self motivation about anything beyond creating the perfect bacon sandwich, I remind myself that our number one priority is not to raise rocket scientists or doctors or lawyers or artists or movie stars or professional athletes or any other career professional you can think of, but to make happy and good people. So far homeschool has not failed us in that and we have had the joy of the company of our teenagers, which I would not give up for anything.

Two Weeks on the Road

Langley, BC, Canada

It has only been two weeks since we left my mother's with a trailer full of stuff destined for the apartments of our grown children. We have since delivered said stuff and shed the trailer, we travel now in a Honda Pilot and all our stuff has to fit in there with us. We are really doing it. It has been a fantastic two weeks:

We walked trails in Ogden and Missoula and Langley. (In fact we got ourselves stuck on the trail in Ogden, unable to get back to our hotel. Our morning walk lasted over 2 hours.)

Missoula MT Clark Fork Trail

We spent hours just hanging out at a hotel pool.

We ate fried chicken at Maddox in Brigham city, tacos at the taco bus in Rexburg and burgers at the Burger Bar (Ogden, actually, Roy I think) and The Hickory (Rexburg).

We posed at Wendy Peffercorn's pool.

Lorin Farr pool, Ogden Utah

We hiked R mountain in Rexburg and watched planes fighting a wildfire below us.

We watched a truly fantastic firework show in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

We rode a carousel.

We saw the Ogden temple,  the Brigham City temple, the Rexburg temple and the Vancouver, BC temple.

Vancouver, BC Temple

We swam in the Snake River.

We visited a ghost town in Bannack, Montana.

Bannack, MT Hotel Meade and Assayer's office

We hammered on ringing rocks outside of Butte, Montana.

We were chased down a mountain by a thunderstorm.

We were awakened in the wee hours of the morning by an earthquake.

We visited old friends in Couer d'Alene, ID.

We crashed my sister's family reunion in Washington and had a water balloon fight with cousins some of my kids have never met.

We swam in Lake Chelan.

Lake Chelan, Washington

We slept in a camper for the first time ever.

We saw the brilliantly green Lake Diablo in the North Cascades.

We walked across the bridge above Gorge Creek Falls, where you can actually see through the steel grating below your feet to the creek a million miles below.

We ate fish and chips purchased out of a double decker bus in Bellingham, Washington.

And we crossed our first international border.

US/Canadian border crossing near Lynden, WA

Bannack Ghost Town and Ringing Rocks, Montana

Missoula, Montana

Tonight I am sitting in a possibly slightly sketchy hotel in Missoula, Montana waiting for a pizza delivery guy to show up. It is 9 pm. The last time we officially fed our children was 12 hours ago in Rexburg, Idaho when we dined on everything that was left in the kitchen of our rental house, so: eggs, tortillas, cheese, pancake mix, s'mores, popsicles, and an assortment of cow's milk, almond milk and soy milk. But Noah bought a doughnut at the last truck stop we were at and there was totally fruit, nuts AND popcorn available in the car, though mostly they didn't eat it. Today's adventures were fabulous, but not exactly well choreographed. It is probably about a 4 1/2 hour drive from Rexburg to Missoula and we made it into more like ten hours. But that was because there was a ghost town to visit on the way that was just a little bit out of our way in one direction and then there were ringing rocks to visit a little bit out of the way in another direction. So we had to go. To both.

We learned about Bannack, Montana from a guide book left behind in our Idaho rental house. A ghost town with over 60 intact buildings that we could go inside! We had to go. Probably we should have brought lunch. Sixty buildings take a long time to explore and photograph. Ok, you can only actually go inside around thirty. Maybe forty. Bannack is a state park, we paid an $8 entrance fee for all of us and got a guide book that described most of the buildings and told quite a bit of the history of the town. Even given the total lack of suitable nourishment since 9 am, and the fact that it was now past noon, everyone seemed pretty intent on exploring every closet, vault, outhouse, and creepy cellar they could wedge their way into.

The original plan for today did not include a ghost town though, it was to be a four and a half hour drive with a stop halfway to see the ringing rocks outside of Butte, Montana. Ringing rocks are exactly what the name implies, rocks that actually ring! We had heard that they ring when hit with a hammer or a wrench, we tried both, plus a tire iron and a couple other tools that were in the back of the car, but only the hammers worked. Also, when I saw that the site in Montana was only about twenty miles from Butte (in the completely wrong direction to be going to Missoula), my brain thought "twenty minute detour," but it was not so! The last 5 of those twenty miles was on a *very* rough, very narrow road. In fact, we eventually abandoned our Pilot at a slight pullout and hiked the remaining half mile. So our twenty mile detour probably took closer to an hour than twenty minutes, AND before we even finished our half mile hike, the wind began to seriously pick up and whip the gravel around viciously at us in preparation for the rainstorm that chased us back down the road to our car later. But first we found that pile of rocks and some of us climbed all over them searching for the best tones we could find.

We made it back down that treacherous road, the sun returned, we bravely ignored the desire to drive over and see what on earth that giant tower in the middle of the mountains was (but I did look it up-- the Anaconda Smelter Stack, next time maybe), and here we are, eating pizza straight from the box perched on our hotel beds at 10 pm.