10/30/07 (Sunday): We had a fantastic Christmas. Hope yours was special, too.

We headed out I-5 on the Friday before Christmas in the neat little Toyota Prius we rented. We decided to rent a car for the trip because we figured that even with the expense of the rental, we'd save money because the truck only gets 12-15 mpg. We averaged 45 mpg in the Prius, and it was a neat little car. We saw snow on the hilltops at Tejon Pass, about 20 miles from Piru. Fortunately, there was none on the road.

On Saturday, Mark and the boys took us to Muir Woods for a hike in the redwoods. Incredible! The trees are very old and very large.







The trail followed a gorgeous little creek. We hated to turn back, but we wanted to hit the beach before we headed back, so we turned back before we hit the end of the trail (much to Austin's displeasure).










He cheered up considerably when we reached Stinson Beach. It's a really big, beautiful Pacific beach. It was quite chilly, but Austin waded right in.







These young people were riding horses on the beach. It looked like so much fun!








The next day, Mark and Heather and the boys took us to San Francisco's Chinatown. It's bigger than Los Angeles' Chinatown, but I thought it was a little more tourist-y. This building was pretty authentic, though. It's an apartment house.

We went into this tea shop. It was fascinating. We got to taste several different kinds of tea, and the proper method of brewing tea was demonstrated. The tea was amazingly good, and each of the boys got to choose some tea to take home. I think this was their favorite part of the trip to Chinatown.







After Chinatown, we drove to San Francisco's Discovery Museum. The boys had a blast. The exhibits are fun and educational at the same time. Hudson got this bubble almost over his whole body!











Wiley and I skipped out on seeing the last of the Discovery Museum in order to hike this little stretch of trail along San Francisco Bay. That's Alcatraz Island in the background.

This is the Golden Gate Bridge, of course. We didn't drive over it this time, but it was interesting to see it from this perspective. There's a lighthouse at the base of the bridge (on the left side of this picture), but we didn't get close enough to really see it.








Christmas came at last, and it was a great day. The boys took most of the morning to open their presents. Then Mark and Heather prepared a wonderful meal of prime rib and Yorkshire pudding and all the trimmings. I'm not sure whether Wiley liked that or the Dungenness crab we had for Christmas Eve better. What a great day!


The day after Christmas, we drove up to my sister's house in Magalia, CA. It's north of Sacramento, about 3 hours from the Oregon border. They built a lovely home a couple of years ago on a magnificent piece of property high on a hill overlooking a forest of ponderosa pine. We walked down to the creek at the bottom of their property. Absolutely gorgeous. We felt like we were in a premier mountain lodge.






The next day we toured the area. Magalia is at about 2,000-3,000 feet. The mountains are greener and have more trees than the ones in Southern California where we are. The town is on the Feather River, where one of the biggest gold nuggets was found during the gold rush. We went to a gold rush museum and learned a lot about that interesting period in California history.

Wiley was hoping to see snow (and I was hoping I wouldn't have to drive the rental car in snow), but Wiley's wish won out. We woke up to about 2-1/2 inches of the cold, white stuff. Fortunately, Jim was able to take us out via a route that avoided the worst hills, and by the time we got off the mountain they live on, there was no more snow. We had a great time, Jan and Jim--thanks for your hospitality!



We made it back safely last Friday, returned the rental car Saturday, and worked for a couple of hours today. We took a great drive into Soledad Canyon this afternoon, but that's another blog. Have a safe and happy New Year's, everyone!

12/17/07 (Monday): Is everyone ready for Christmas? We're nicely settled in and enjoying the holiday season.

Check out the cute ornament that Mag got us--it looks just like our 5th wheel, even the slide!




The little towns of Piru, Fillmore and Santa Paula (collectively called "Heritage Valley") are all decked out for the holidays. The small town atmosphere here feels so comfortable and festive--we're really enjoying it!

We tried to get reservations on the Christmas train, a historic train that runs 20 miles each way between Santa Paula and Santa Clarita, but they were all booked up. We'll probably do the Chinese New Year's train instead.

We found out last week that United Water (the company that hired us) has contracted out the management of the campground to a company called Recreation Resources Management. They will be hiring more workampers and investing lots of resources in improving the campground. United Water has indicated that they will honor our contract or we can apply to work for RRM, which pays all its workampers. We signed up for interviews on Wednesday. Wish us luck! We'll be okay either way.

Last week we drove to North Hollywood (see the sign on the hill in the background of the picture?)








and caught the Metro (subway) into the Chinatown part of downtown Los Angeles. What fun! The subway ends at Union Station, which was beautifully renovated. It first opened in 1939 and is sometimes called the last great train station. Many movies have been filmed here. In addition to Metro, Amtrak runs trains out of this station, so it's a real transportation hub.

I've been to Chinatowns in several big cities, but the one in Los Angeles has to be one of the prettiest (and least tourist-y) of any I've ever been to. We wandered through many shops that had lots of inexpensive stuff for sale. It appeared that most of the shops had people living in the upstairs.

We had a great lunch for $4.75 (really!). Wiley had a whole fish (sole) that had been fried until it was crispy. It came with rice and vegetables. I had a tofu dish in a yummy brown sauce with rice and vegetables. Wiley drooled over the huge dungeness crabs in the tank at the restaurant. He really wants to catch some for himself! There were all kinds of food on the menu that we didn't recognize. It seemed very authentic--most of the patrons were Chinese! A great experience!!

We finished up with a stroll down Wilshire Blvd. We'll be going back to L.A. again soon.












One final cheerful note: Wiley has started physical therapy for the posture problems caused by his Parkinson's Disease at a local clinic. Look how much straighter he is after just 3 visits! I'm so proud of him--he's really working at it!


The next blog will probably be when we get back from our Christmas visit to my son's. Have a great holiday everyone!

12/10/07 (Monday): We've been busy having fun. I hope you vicariously enjoy some of our little adventures of the past week.

First, I have to show you that we're enjoying the Christmas season. Here's our casa all decked out. We have a 4-foot tree, a stuffed reindeer on the door (he sings "Felice Navidad") and twinkle lights on our canopy. Tonight we even had a fire in our fireplace. We cooked some fish over the coals.



Of course, we're pretty well decorated in the daytime, too (deer, hummingbirds and acorn woodpeckers are very colorful).












A few days ago, we visited Ojai. It's a cool little historic town in the mountains just north of us.

This is Ojai Elementary School, and the tower is the Post Office--fancy, huh?












Yesterday was Piru's Christmas parade. We had a great time! There was quite a crowd, and the whole thing was very well done. There were horses, a band, several floats, decorated cars and Santa on a fire engine.






We also visited a woodworker's shop in the Piru Train Station that I'd been wanting to check out. The owner spoke with us for quite a while. He's lived in Piru his whole life and was very familiar with the history of the area. He does beautiful work.
















Our final adventure this week was a hike to the head of Piru Canyon, where Piru Creek flows into Lake Piru. It's about 5 or 6 miles, round trip. We could understand why we don't get a cell phone or TV signal--we're surrounded by some pretty tall mountains!

Great fun--wish you were here!

12/4/07 (Tuesday): Just in case you go back to look at previous blogs, I have deleted the slideshows from the previous two blogs. They were causing everyone (including me) too many problems. It took forever for them to load.

Is anybody tired of hearing about our good times yet? If so, you might as well log off now, because we've had some really good times in the past week!

First, we went to Port Hueneme for a little crabbing, fishing and relaxing. Port Hueneme is almost due east of us, near Oxnard. The name is from a Chumash Indian word meaning "resting place." There's a large naval base here, and the whole area is spic and span and attractive. We caught lots of little rock crabs, but none of them were big enough to keep. I finished some Christmas crocheting projects and also read for a while. The weather has just been gorgeous; warm during the day and very cool at night. By the way, don't go looking for a neat chair like mine, because you won't fine one. Wiley made it for me from bits and pieces he found at the campground in Michigan. Pretty cool, huh?!

I keep forgetting to mention that there's a clear view of the Channel Islands from many of the beaches in this part of California. To quote from the Park Service brochure:

"Close to the California mainland, yet worlds apart, Channel Islands National Park encompasses five remarkable islands (Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel, and Santa Barbara) and their ocean environment, preserving and protecting a wealth of natural and cultural resources. Isolation over thousands of years has created unique animals, plants, and archeological resources found nowhere else on Earth and helped preserve a place where visitors can experience coastal southern California as it once was.

It's a place we want to visist eventually. You can catch a ferry near here. I don't know if they show up in this sunset picture, but there are also offshore oil wells visible from many of the local beaches.

Our next day trip was to the painted caves near Santa Barbara. Of course, in our usual fashion, we made a few stops along the way. The first one was to have breakfast in a little diner in Piru. It's tiny, run by a local Hispanic family whose roots go way back in Piru, and really quite wonderful! It's very clean and the food is great. I had huevos rancheros--yummy! It was a great start to the day.


Then, as we were driving toward Santa Barbara, we decided to turn off on Fish Hatchery Road, which we'd seen many times and wondered about. There was indeed a fish hatchery back there that stocks many local lakes. It was quite interesting to see all the different sizes of fish and read the interpretive signs about how they are raised.


The water in the ponds comes from wells and is filtered and aerated. After it leaves the ponds, it runs into Santa Clara creek. Just the other side of the fences (the ponds are completely enclosed to keep out the wading birds), there were a huge number of birds gathered in the lovely, clean water. I'm sure the poor things were tortured by the fish just out of their reach!



Finally, we headed off for Painted Cave State Historic Site. It's at the top of a very narrow, winding road. There's a small sandstone cave with religious paintings made by the Chumash Indians in the 1600's. They are incredibly bright and colorful. It's hard to believe how old they are, although some of the graffitti that was carved over top of the paintings has dates in the 1880's. We couldn't get very good photos because the cave faces north and the light wasn't good, but if you're interested there are some good shots at this website: Painted Cave

Since we were so close to Santa Barbara, we couldn't resist one more stop. We went to El Presidio de Santa Barbara. It was founded in 1782, and was the last in a chain of four fortresses built by the Spanish along the coast of California. The other fortresses were in San Diego, San Francisco and Monterey. El Presidio sits right smack in the middle of downtown Santa Barbara, and is mostly a reconstruction. It's kind of confusing because there are modern buildings and roads interspersed with the historic portions of the fort. This poster shows the original layout. It was a fun way to end a great day.


So that was our week--hope you're having great adventures of your own!