We spent the last days before school began playing as hard as we could. Piper unexpectedly jumped into the lake several times, Kyla got to go boating for a day, and Wes just loved life. We caught up with a few friends, spent a night at the cabin, and I already miss summer very, very much.

Wetter weather had been following us home, and it really caught up to us at Fort Stevens. Here, Dwayne flies Wesley like a kite.

The shipwreck is disappearing quickly and is obviously less visible than when we were here last. The weather was miserable enough that only Kyla was masochist to join me on a longer bike ride through the rain. We kept hoping it would let up, but we ended up having a cozy evening in the trailer, turning on the DVD player for the first time. Luckily, I get to have a little influence on my children’s movie watching, and they enjoyed their second Bollywood film. I wrote about 3 Idiots earlier, and my kids love it now, too!

We’re getting near the end. Can you tell?

At the beginning of summer, all the kids shared on goal: going to Cannon Beach. I couldn’t get RV reservation on our way down, so had to work it in our way home. The weather was growing cool, but we still got an afternoon at the beach. I read and they wrestled in the sand, so we were all happy.

Puffins are the mascots of this charming little town.

While the beaches in Oregon are great, I really go to CB for the bakeries and art museums. This is not my usual style, but I love this work. There are very few pieces I want to own, but I love to look.

This stop was serendipitous. My only note was Day 17: TBD, 11 hr drive from Olema to Cannon Beach.

But as we neared the Oregon border, I remembered how much I enjoyed a short weekend at the Shakespeare Festival decades ago with my Aunt Janet, and so I pulled out the phone and quickly found us an RV site outside of town.

It was our first park that had a pool open! It was reservable for an hour, one family at a time. They kindly opened it for us when we arrived that evening before they closed up for the night.

We enjoyed the campground very much, and after a morning swim, we headed off to explore Ashland for an hour or two before spending the rest of the day at Crator Lake.

We never made it to Crator Lake.

Oh, we loved Ashland! Of course, being the year it is, there were no plays being produced, but we still found plenty to do, all centered on Lithia Park.

Before we even parked, Dwayne was itching to see where a certain staircase led–his instincts are unfailing, because it featured an antique Italian fountain from Ashland’s European sister city. If you know Dwayne at all, you can tell by his body language that he is madly making plans 1) to improve this setting, 2) to create this same thing at home, and 3) to visit Italy again soon.

A creek ran the length of the park, and one of my favorite things to do is see the kids do their favorite thing–poke around and be delighted with nature and each other.

This had been a great enough day already, and hungry kids were beginning to drag when we found ourselves stumbling from park into town, where we found creekside dining along a walkable alley that can only be described as European. Dwayne and I could not have designed a better date location, and we plied the kids with mocktails and cribbage while we acknowledged our good fortune to find such a spot on such a day. Fully drugged on European dining, we made it a very long and pleasurable lunch, but American-style, filled the last nooks and crannies with dessert.

Yet another place we will need to return someday!

Olema is about an hour north of San Fransisco, and our predetermined meeting place with Dwayne’s oldest brother’s family. I had the sense it was right on the beach, but the terrain is such that the most direct route is akin to a Family Circus cartoon.

But Dan and Deborah had their eight passenger minivan (Mama loves minivans!), and our adventures began with a sunset beach visit. The kids and I had not gotten “we-didn’t-mean-to-get-that-drenched-in-the-waves” wet for days by this time, so we took full advantage of the darkness to scare ourselves silly and get our pants embarrassingly soaked.

Esther, not getting herself or camera soaked, surprised us with some beautiful shots.

We didn’t try too hard to accomplish much. We see them so rarely that just being together was enough. We did go down to the beach one afternoon to play and study tidepools, where the kids collected shells and got lost in their own world.

I love that Dwayne got to hang with his brother…and build more cairns.

Olema turned out to be significant, as Sunday night was big, unexpected, lightening storm that sparked forest fires in northern CA. We woke up in the wee-est of hours, Dwayne immediately remembering the awning, and I texting our tent-dwelling family. The storm encompassed all my senses, and I would have found curled up next to Dwayne in the motorhome to be the coziest spot if I hadn’t been so worried about all our tenting neighbors, especially Dan, Deborah, and Esther. The rains continued the next morning in earnest as we all packed up. It was a rushed ending to a gloriously slow-paced weekend with beloved family and tasty gelato.

[I had hoped that Kyla would contribute here, but this is not here preferred platform, so this blog can be filed under “hearsay”.]

Uncle Dan and cousin Esther (age 20!) meet up with us in Tahoe on our last day. They brought a spare backpack, sleeping bag, and everything else she would need for a 24 hour backpacking trip. We went on our way to Olema, and Dan, Esther, and Kyla headed to the Sierras for an 11-mile hike.

We’re not going to call this “helping”, Piper. Cute, yes; helpful, no.

We could spend a lot more time here! 

My personal highlight was leaving Dwayne and the kids at the beach while I went on an exploratory bike ride.  When the trail ended, I turned back and explored the different day-use beaches I had passed before.  My reward was finding the Tallac Historic Site, which was one really, really rich family that eventually subdivided to two other really, really rich families, creating three summer estates on Lake Tahoe in the lifestyle expected of the early 1900’s San Francisco’s high society.  Of course, the most interesting buildings were closed to tours, but there were some lovely gardens, and just-take-a-peek outbuildings for the governess, tutor, butler, chauffer, kitchens, dairy, larder, and guest cottages for the many, many friends wealthy people with land-fetishes often have.

Back at the beach, Dwayne and Piper rented a kayak to explore the waterfront a bit, and the kids had a delightful time in the blue, blue water. 

We met back up for our scheduled Rum-Runner tour, an hour-and-a-half water cruise over to the aptly-named Emerald Bay.  For my younger slugs, this was the perfect way to live their own high-society life, as they sipped root beer and lounged in the back of the cruise boat.

My favorite part of the cruise was the glimpse of Vikingsholm we got. In any year not ending in “20”, we would be able to do a feet-on-the-ground tour of this castle. However, a float-by was the best we could do this summer.

But better than the castle? The tea house. “Located on the only island in Lake Tahoe, The Fanette Island tea house was built in the 1920s by Lora Knight, the clearly super-rich lady who owned Vikingsholm — a 38-room castle along the Emerald Bay shore. The stone shell of the building still remains today and is fairly easy to reach for any willing to swim out to the island.“ Originally, this folly had a roof, stained glass windows, a large oak table, and four chairs. Today, it has a come-hitherness that made us all wish we could jump off the boat and swim over to explore further.

I predict we will be back one day, and spend far more than just two nights. Lovely Lake Tahoe!

Since we had left Almanor early, we had an extra day in the Tahoe area.  I wanted to find a ghost town or an Old West backdrop or something historical, so we drove over to Virginia City for the day.

Dwayne will tell you the hair-raising ordeal of the climb to Mount Rose Summit.  A quick search after the fact states that “[t]he 8,911 ft-high pass is traversed by State Route 431, which is the highest point of the highway and the highest mountain pass open year-round in the Sierra Nevada.” I would add an editorial that we saw almost no other RVs on the way, and we figured out why. 

But after trying to kill Old Odd (hopefully we’ll come up with a better name for the Odyssey tomorrow), and possibly ourselves, we eventually found ourselves in the hot-hot-hot middle of nowhere, where someone nearly 200 years ago thought it would be a good idea to stick a shovel in the ground, since staying hydrated wasn’t a reasonable pastime, and found silver.  Virginia City was born, and even COVID hasn’t killed off all the old blood-stained saloons.

The name of this museum sums up VC. After learning about old-time card cheating methods and the best way to build mines that don’t collapse too often, we took off to catch the Wild West Outlaws shoot-‘em-up at the local outdoor theater.  I couldn’t wait to get my picture taken with the good sheriff and the fast-drawing bank robber, but the kids were having none of it. 

After ice-cream o’clock, we toured the McCay mansion.  Of course, the best and most expensive houses of that time still fall short of the conveniences of today’s modern abodes (even RVs!), but oh! how I love the stories, the hand-painted fabric wall paper, the Italian imported hand-carved mantel, the too-narrow stairs up to the small master and mistress bedrooms. Always fun to look, but I’m not sure if anything could entice our family to live in this ugly climate. On to Lake Tahoe for the next few days!

Since we had already paid for the Almanor site, we didn’t have to leave until we wanted, which is after Wes wore himself out in the lake before trucking down the road.

Despite having lived in 2020 for 8 months now, I was pretty sure we could find ourselves an out-of-the-way campsite as we meandered on to Lake Tahoe. Once I had enough cell reception, I started doing my research and calling and calling, usually just to get “We did not accept walk-ins.  You must make a reservation online” messages, and then, after finally downloading the website, find the website is down for maintenance.  A few calls got a direct answer and a crisp “We’re full” reply to my inquiry.  We made it all the way to Tahoe City, and then retraced our steps to track down a few federal parks that indicated a first come, first serve policy. Upside, it was a Tuesday; downside, it was about 7pm. 

Finally, finally, we found a national forest campground that had a few spots next to the highway, one of them big enough for our rig. It was our first night dry camping, and we actually loved it!  (Not enough to voluntarily give up hook ups in the future, but way better than a Walmart parking lot…which was nowhere nearby either.)

The kids almost waited until we parked before jumping out and heading down to the river they spied.  They came back almost right away to change into swimsuits and grab goggles. 

Dwayne set up camp and made us tacos, which we all gratefully ate once the kids were cold enough to be enticed away from crawfish chasing and dam building.

We were right on the highway, and with windows open to enjoy the cool temperature, we had a lot of road noise.  But despite that and the lack of hook ups, this is my favorite spot in CA so far!