Redwoods

The last several years we've been heading to our favorite place in the world, Jedediah Smith State Park in Hiouchi, California. 2016 and 2017 we coordinated with some friends who also had kids to come down and camp as well and it's been a blast. This year we arrived on a cool day - maybe 70 degrees f - and set up our campsite. We had the luck of having a giant sideways redwood log running along one side of our campground which was a nice way for our kids to meet other kids, since every kid we saw took a shortcut through the forest on the giant tree highway. The water of the Smith river is glorious and the closest thing to home my body knows. We made sure to be swimming every chance we had. One day, I tortured my feet by walking across the slippery rocks through a shallow section of rapids in order to reach my kids and another kid who were piloting a raft through some rough waters. After dragging the raft back upstream, we went down a nice, medium-speed, medium-deep rapid area that ran as a separate channel along the main river. Whee!~ It was glorious. We bounced off the rocks and spun several times. The kids loved it. After the rapids, the boys dropped me off on the opposite shore and I waddled up the get my flip-flops and shirt when a pair of egrets flew over my head. As I uttered, "wow!", one of the egrets answered me with a duck like -"erk!" sound.

I also had an encounter with some floppy red-tufted ducks who were kicking it on a cool rock along the shore when suddenly, the wind blew my raft into their proximity. They hung tight for the longest time but when I got too close they ambled off the rock and swam away, still looking rather flashy. We walked with our friends through Stout Grove, the famous stand of tall trees that stand, cathedral-like, in quiet formation like an army of  ancient giants. This is pretty much the closest thing I have to a church and I was happy to see the pack of kids running through, around and over the logs with the confidence of knowing the place from years-past. Pictures were taken, shoes were wet and sandy, food was consumed and the kids spent a lot of time playing on their push-scooters with the other kids they met at the campground. I still can smell the smoke of the campfire on our various clothes and belongings. I feel refreshed and now ready myself for returning to my job from my annual summer vacation.