So, let's reassess our expectations of what might actually be found here, shall we?
A witty caption. Or not, if my brain has been overly taxed.
Now that we've got that out of the way, let's move on...
Funny conversation at the dinner table tonight (Backstory: they just watched 'Tangled' a few days ago.):
Wahwoo: I want my hair to reach.... the yellow house across the canyon!
We all ooh and ahh. Wow! That's long!
Little Man is silent. Then, with a flourish of his hand: But, the coyotes will eat it!
And now, a picture from camping on Palomar Mountain for Father's Day weekend...
Before The Hike
We went on a "Treasure" hike, where two of the parents organized a hike and threw plastic jewels and snakes and lizards along the trail for the kids to find. You can imagine the bedlam. Meanwhile, our kids, the hangers back in wild activities like these, were intrigued, but not intrigued enough to actually run along. Fortunately, the organizers of the hike thought of this, and I'm convinced they had someone stationed halfway back charged with replenishing the "treasure." And the kids (with their parents' gentle reminders) were very good about just taking one or two and leaving the rest for the stragglers (babies, toddlers, and my two kids, LOL). So that was fun.
But then we got to the end of the organized part of the hike and everybody turned around. Ross and I were eager to keep going. It was a beautiful day and you never know what you're going to find next!
So after a few calls to Drake, he and I started along again. Gracie was having none of it. She was all about the herd mentality. "Everyone else is turning around!" Well, we want to keep going. "NO! HIKING IS BORING!" And... complete meltdown. Um, what the? This kid is The Hiker. In Hawaii, she was *all* about the hiking. She LOVES hiking. Maybe it was because everyone else was heading back, and she didn't want to possibly miss out on any fun that MIGHT happen? Sheesh... So she and Ross had a little "chilling" out time and then she begrudgingly followed along.
But of course, she is a true hiker and soon regained her cheerfulness. Especially after we came to The Magical Place - a beautiful little oak grove with massive oak trees perfect for climbing and The Totoro Listening Spot - a huge verticle rock that we all leaned against to hear the totoros speak to us. It was quite a nice moment. Then we hiked across a beautiful grassy meadow with green and red grasses and spied a little blue dragonfly. That's where Gracie learned that dragonflies are a good sign for freshwater. So off she went, in search of water. Sure enough, a little farther down the trail, we came across a little stream that we hopped across. And then we saw a valley (French Valley) that it fed into. There, we discovered a lovely little grotto with a babbling brook, a little waterfall and a small swimming hole. Gracie had a good time floating a leaf down the stream to see what would happen to it. Drake freaked out when he was trying to walk upstream and got part of his foot wet.
On the way back, Drake had the wonderful idea to lay down in the grass. As we peered up through the oak branches, we spotted mistletoe. We listened to the wind. As we walked back, the kids spotted acorns, which they collected, with the idea to have their own totoro trees. But boy, were they dragging by the time we got back. Afterwards, I asked Gracie what her favorite parts were. I was curious to see if the treasure part outweighed the rest of the hike. But no, her favorite parts were The Magical Place and "discovering" water. Now *that's* my little hiker! :-)
What turned out to be a truly memorable hike...
The trip was tons of fun - minus the horrible mosquito and horsefly bites on poor Wahwoo. One landed on Little Man's hand, and nature lover that he is, he says to me, all excited (or "decided" as he says) "Mommy! Look!" He would have reacted the same if a butterfly had landed on him, so awed was he. Before I could swat it off, it had done what horseflies are apt to do. "AAAUUUGGGHH!" Poor thing, you could just see the look of betrayal on his face. How could a "cweature" do this to him??
And because I'm feeling super-ambitious... A VIDEO!
AND! We get to camping NEXT month too! Yay! The kids are thrilled.
