Trees of Mystery

Today we drove 20 minutes back down to Klamath to meet Mom & Grandma on their way north at the Trees of Mystery. We hiked up a trail through the redwoods.

At the top of the trail, we caught a skycar the rest of the way up the mountain.

The view at the top was amazing!

So was the cell phone reception; I'm hiding in the back cause I just got a phone call from Dad. I don't get to talk to him very often, so I took the call!

Next we have our photos with Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. Haley threatened to disown me if I posted some of these on Facebook. I'm sure you'll be able to figure out which ones! (Disclaimer: Mom started it!!!) 

Camping Beds for the Win!

So even though our beds have been disassembled and put into storage, we need not sleep on the floor. No, no, because I am the proud possessor of awesome rope beds!!!

Back to Crescent City

Today we drove back to Crescent City to finish cleaning out our apartment. Before we left, we got a photo of the whole gang, including Grandma Ruby!

I finally stopped on the drive up to take photos of my favorite house:

There's a whale swimming in the Klamath River, so of course we stopped to take some photos. Here we are in front of one of the golden bears that guard the bridge: 

Here's a video of the whale:

 And this is the view from the bridge. So beautiful!

Then we had to stop and take a couple of photos of the redwoods :)

Not to mention some photos at the vista point overlooking Crescent City.

Then we stopped at Crescent Beach for a little bit before heading home. There were a lot of people on the beach today! 

Visiting the Grandparents

Well, we managed to squeeze in a visit to the southern grandparents before leaving the country. Since Grandma Ruby was visiting Mom, that means we got to spend some time with 3 out of 4 grandparents -- not bad given how far spread out our family is. We had a fun time; Megan came over to visit with her Grandma and Grandpa, and came over to bake with Great Grandma. Haley was really excited to hang out with her.

Grandma and Grandpa took us out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant, probably our last taste of Mexican food for quite a while. Good thing it was so tasty!

Then we had our usual right-before-we-leave-family-photo :)

Plus one of the grandparents, just for fun :)

I've always liked the view of the hills on the drive back :)

Haley decided to take my photo as we drove :)

We needed another duvet cover for Haley, so we stopped at Ikea on our way north. It was our first visit to Ikea, and we were impressed with our primo parking spot:

They had all kinds of false rooms set up so you could see how their products would look in real life.

And, of course, we *had* to take a photo after we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge!

Soon afterwards, it started to look a bit more like home:

Genius

So we're about to have Mom & Grandma Ruby spend the night, which means Haley's bathroom (the main bathroom) needs to be cleaned. I let her know that she needs to clean it, and it was moans and groans and major epic tragedy... But then I had a Genius Idea! We're pretty green in our household; so we try to use non-toxic, environmentally products. We've switched to using 50/50 vinegar/water plus a few drops of Orange 100 (magical stuff!!!) as our main cleaning spray. It's non-toxic, so I don't have to worry about Haley, and the vinegar is a natural anti-bacterial grease cutter. I was about to hand her the almost empty can of Comet, when I realized: basically, Comet is a little powdered soap and a mild abrasive. I could substitute baking soda for Comet no problem! So I handed Haley a cup of baking soda... Now she's in there listening to music and scrubbing her bathroom -- and enjoying it... "How's that working for you?" "It's fizzy!!!" Yup -- Genius.

Tale of Woe

So we loaded most of our stuff for the event into our car the night before. We finished packing the next morning, and got ready to caravan up with our friends. But the car wouldn't start. We'd left the doors open too long the night before and drained the battery. Ok, bummer but no big deal; I have a jump kit -- a big battery with jumper cables on it. It lives in a secret compartment under my trunk, so I just had to move a few things and open the compartment. EXCEPT, it turns out that the hatchback is an electronic lock, and can't be opened if the battery is dead. So I had to open the back doors and unload the whole back of the car through them, climb into the back, and open my secret compartment so I could jump my car, and then (once I had power) open the hatchback and load everything back in. Awesome! But wait, it gets better. Somehow, I managed to do *THE SAME THING* while packing up to leave the event and go home. Except this time, when I tried to use the jump kit it was all discharged from the last jump and wouldn't work. Luckily, one of my friends had jumper cables. Except I couldn't get my car to start. It kept giving me scary warning messages about my parking gear not functioning. After a while we figured out that it has to be hooked up to the negative battery terminal on his car, not to a ground. I'm not quite sure what the effects of improperly jumping a hybrid are, but I suspect they aren't good. So my car finally started, but it was extremely unhappy, and displayed a prominent warning light. The "have your car towed to a dealership" kind of warning light. So I hooked my completely illicit trailer back up to my poor, suffering car, and drove the 80 semi-mountainous miles back to my house. With that warning light glaring at me the whole time. Happily, it went out when I was driving around town later that night -- I figure either the problem went away or the light burnt out... *grin* I guess as long as it lasts another month...

Fireworks in Crescent City

We've lived in Crescent City for five years now, but had never made it to the annual 4th of July festivities. We've always been at West/An Tir War, which is way super awesome although we'd heard that the 4th of July was kind of a big deal in Crescent City. For the first time in forever, the event ended on the 4th of July so we got to come home and do fireworks. We had a barbecue with some friends and then drove over to beachfront park to watch the fireworks. *HOLY MOLY*! I guess people drive up to Oregon to buy the illegal fireworks, though a lot of them looked like they must be from Texas or something! First we watched the city's official fireworks show, which lasted for half an hour. Then all these lunatics (who apparently have a lot of disposable income) set off *their* fireworks. I couldn't believe the police didn't come, but I guess they don't enforce the fireworks laws here. They were setting off the big ones, the kind the city shoots out of a mortar for their fireworks show. Very impressive when viewed from 100 feet away rather than a couple of miles! Luckily the wind was blowing away from us... They were still setting them off at 10:30 when we left!

Packing for War

We went to our annual West/An Tir War the 4th of July weekend. We had a blast :) I got to use my fantastic tent and rope beds for one last event before we store it for a couple of years. At this point, my SCA camping gear is a marvel of precision and beauty. No really! I keep the tent and beds in my little yellow trailer, so never have to worry about packing or unpacking them -- I just make *very* sure my tent is dry before I pack it. The rest of our camping stuff lives in plastic tubs (the kind designed to hold sweaters under your bed). We store them in the garage, load them in the car when it's time for a camping event, and then slide them under the rope beds when we set up camp. Now when it's time for an event the only thing I have to worry about is my garb and food. The rest stays packed and ready :)