Category Archives: Home & Family

We recently bought an HP full page scanner and I have been learning
to use it and to post the photos to our family web pages. I am
making selections from the many dozens of large plastic boxes
of family photographs from the late 1800s to the present that line
our basement walls. I spent much of the 3 day weekend sorting and scanning. Some of the changes shown in these pictures over time
are fascinating.

For example, here is my parent’s 1884 San Francisco Victorian house
in 1969, 1976, and now:

1969:	1976:
2006:	2006:	.

In almost 40 years, you can see that the house has been repainted
and restored a bit and of course the trees and yard plants have grown.
The real changes are in the surrounding houses, both of which have been
remodelled and restored extensively as the Victorian style and neighborhood have become more popular.

Last Thursday, as part of our vacation at 10th week of the
Lair of the Golden Bear family camp, we spent a day at Natural Bridges
near
Columbia, California. Columbia is a former California Gold Rush boom
town that lives on as a state-preserved historic park and a National
Historic Landmark. Natural Bridges is about an hour’s drive downhill
from
Pinecrest, the tiny town near the Lair.

The turn off to the Natural Bridges trailhead is just past the long bridge
over the reservoir:

If you go to Natural Bridges, bring a swim suit, water shoes, towel, lunch,
water and an inner tube or some kind of big water float. The deep stream
running through the caverns is very cold; it is more fun if some of you is above
the icy water. Water shoes help when walking on the slippery stones.

Even in summer, the floor of the big cavern is under water but the
stalactites, limestone
formations, and waterfalls of this living cave are spectacular. There
are three areas in the cave: the entry chamber at the base of the trail,
the vaulted middle chamber, and the exit chamber where the stream enters
the cavern. There are crawdads (crayfish – like tiny lobsters) and
little fish in the water.

The abundance of water makes for lots of plants outside the cave,
including poison oak and
prickly blackberry vines. The steep hike downhill from the trail head
goes through a dry grassy border then enters a scrubby forest of
madrone and live oak and manzanita and California buckeye, with poison oak everywhere. At this time of year, hikers must avoid poison oak on
the ground and even vining through the trees. “Leaves Three – Let
Me Be”!

Images by Katy Dickinson (Copyright 2006)

On our vacation last week at the U.C. Berkeley

Lair of the Golden Bear family camp, we spent a day at Cleo’s Baths
above
Pinecrest Lake. Pinecrest is at an elevation of 5,600 feet in the Sierra Mountains. The lake has a dam and is surrounded by rustic family cabins.

Camp Blue of the Lair is only about a mile from the lake (walking
through Camp Gold) but at 8 a.m. last Monday, eight of us drove part way round the lake
so that we could start walking closer to the trail head. We took lunches, snacks, swimsuits, water shoes, towels, hats, and water bottles plus a
CamelBak water backpack and a
Katadyne water filter for refills.

There are a variety of trail markers to Cleo’s Baths: some steel signs, some arrows
painted on rocks but mostly there are graduated piles of small stones to mark the
best trail. Here is my son sitting by the marker at the trail head:

The trail goes along the edge of the lake, then through fields of granite
boulders, alpine meadows, along the stream, and up granite walls edged with manzanita,
pine, and scrub oak. The walk is long and tiring on a hot day but the swim at the
end makes all worthwhile. Here is the view from Cleo’s Baths toward Pinecrest Lake:

Most of the trail has no view other than rocks, water, and plants but the details
are delightful:

Cleo’s Baths itself is a series of deep cold pools and waterfalls. When we hiked there
last year, we only found two of the pools but this year, we found three more above
the main swimming area. Jumping off of a cliff into deep green water or sliding down a
mossy waterfall into a rock basin is a delight. One pool ends in a small cave with a
waterfall at the back; the falls are warm from the water going over hot stones above.
It is hard to leave.

Images by John Plocher and Katy Dickinson (Copyright 2006)

On our vacation last week, we went by
Poot’s House of Cactus
twice – driving into the Sierras and then going home. In the
14 years we have been camping at the U.C. Berkeley

Lair of the Golden Bear in Pinecrest, California, we have always
meant to stop at Poot’s. This year, we finally did. Poot’s is right
on the freeway between little towns and almond groves. It
has the most amazing cactus showroom and garden I have ever seen.
Only a small part of the collection is for sale. We came home with
six new plants (cacti, euphorbia, and succulents) and lots of photos.
Driving home with a truck full of kids, sleeping bags, dirty laundry, and cactus was interesting. Here is Poot’s
address:

Poot’s House of Cactus

Unusual Plants from Around the World

17229 E. Highway 120

Ripon, CA 95366

Telephone: 209-599-7241

Here are some of my photos:

Images by Katy Dickinson (Copyright 2006)

Our daughter is taking an intensive Spanish class at the
University of California at Santa Cruz
Summer
Session. This program was recommended to us by a friend who
volunteers with
Habitat for Humanity, building
houses in Guatemala every year. We decided to do this because Jessica is interested in studying international relations when she goes to college and four years of classical Latin will not be much help in that field. We hope
that she can test into the second year of Spanish for her senior year in
High School.

Jessica is the only high school student in her class and the only one
in her dorm. She is having a good time being on her own for half the week
even if it can be lonely. The experience is giving her some excellent ideas
on what she wants in a college besides academics. Living in a redwood forest, daily encounters with deer and the campus mascot, the
Banana Slug,
and eating in a cafeteria are all new experiences. We
expect her to come home wearing a Fiat Slug t-shirt.

Next week, Jessica also begins an SAT tutoring session three nights a
week with Excel Test. The first
time she took the
SAT, she got a perfect score
in English but her Math score may not be high enough to get Jessica
into some of the more technical colleges. This tutoring company
was recommended by her college advisor.
The advisor said that frequently the more imaginative students had trouble
getting the highest SAT Math scores because they kept interpreting the
questions instead of answering the simplest way.

Sadly, the day has come when my youngest child is taller than me.
My son Paul will be 14 next month and is in a major growth spurt.
At the start of June, we were almost the same size but now Paul is
noticeably taller. He is only gloating a little because we told him
that the taller of us has to wash dishes.

It is beastly hot this week. It hit 106 degrees Farenheit (41 Celsius)
today in San Jose, with no breeze. We were missing the pool we took out
to put in a caboose rail line, so we filled our outdoor spa with cold water.
Paul has been enjoying paddling around and splashing the plants to keep
them cool too. Our
neighbors are sleeping in the cellar to get away from the heat. We
were at the hardware store on Sunday and listened to a frantic woman
complaining that she had been to five stores and all were sold out of
any size of air conditioner or fan. We are watering all of our plants
daily, spraying the dogs with water, and discussing shaving the cats.

Paul is very excited that the whole family and his best friend Zach
are going to Raging Waters water
park this Friday. Going there was one of his special requests for this
summer. In this heat, it will probably be very crowded.