A piece of paradise

On the way down to Oroville back to the storage... by the way, the main reason for us to stay in Oroville was to get a small storage and unload some extra gear to lighten up the bus. But by mistake we left there a container with gold pans and other prospecting material which we definitely need right now... so, on the way down to Oroville we stopped at a river that I absolutely loooooove.

I have a thing for rivers, swimming holes and clear water! It is such a gorgeous place; the water is green and so clear! There are no settlements on the bottom that clouds up the water.

Last time we were there, about five years ago, a trout swam right to the edge of the water so we had a good look at it. With faster reflex we could have taken it. We had a lot of fun. There is nothing better than swimming in a cool, well, cold water and lay down on a hot boulder to warm up. Can’t wait to go back and explore the creek up stream to find another piece of paradise.

We are leaving camp today. With all our scouting trips we found the perfect spot except for the mosquitoes, though they are everywhere and can’t avoid them! We’ve joined a gold mining association that has a lot of claims in the area. We’ll be parked in the wood next to the river. It is not a campground so we will be on "conservation" mode, no endless supplies of water... we’ll be off grid for a while... free of rent!

Sylviane

As you can see I didn’t do the driving on the way to Quincy. If you look hard at the above picture you can see Bill driving through a tunnel with a truck coming at us head on. It took us three hours from Oroville, about 80 miles, estimated time from yahoo map... 1 ½ hour. It was a beautiful drive up on hwy 70 along the north fork of the Feather River. It is nice to go slow as we have time to admire the beauty of nature.

We are staying at the pioneer rv park which is nice and quiet. Each site is spacious with trees between them, not big enough yet to offer descant shade, though. They have several restricting rules. One is about the children being supervised at all time... they can’t just bike around the camp. Not really a kid friendly place... that’s probably why I haven’t seen any around.

Yesterday we went on a scouting trip to find a remote place to camp and/or to do some gold panning. We ARE in gold country, you know! Found a pretty lake, silver lake, 6 miles up a dirt road too twisty for taking the bus on it. Plus there is no swimming aloud in the lake since it is a reservoir. So far only in Modesto have I seen a reservoir where you could swim in. After checking out an other lake, Bucks Lake, we took a side dirt road and followed it through the forest until we couldn’t go anymore.

Didn’t quite reached the river for we didn’t have the right equipment to hike down to it about a mile horizontally and about 500 feet vertically. On the way back, through a different road, we stopped by a little stream that had a claim on it so no gold panning aloud so we just went to put our feet in the water and enjoyed! It looks like all the streams and rivers around here have been claimed for prospecting. We saw a few dredges along the north fork.

Today will be another scouting trip to find the ideal spot.
Sylviane

Father's Day postponed

Hope that you had a healthy, happy Father's day.

Bill has been sick and in bed since we arrived here last Thursday. He spent Father's day in the ER to figure out what was going on. We decided that it wouldn't do for a Father's day celebration so we postponed it until he gets better. Good for us, now we have more time to prepare his special day. They didn't find anything wrong and Bill's already doing a little better today. Tomorrow we'll be heading to the mountains, to Quincy. I will be doing the driving if Bill isn't feeling up to it... yeah, right! The only time I drove the bus was before the conversion was done on a freeway in Arizona which was straight and almost deserted :) I loved it tough.

HAPPY SUMMER EVERYONE
May your summer be full of sunshine, precious family time and outdoor adventures!

Sylviane

Travel day

Travel days are quite exciting... going to a new place... but also a lot of work. We were hoping to be out of the campground, yesterday, by 10 am. Well, it was a little bit later when we stopped to get some propane and hitch the car, still in the campground. While checking the bus, Bill found out that we had a flat tire. It was a back tire, the one in the inside which is hard to see. Using the air system of the bus Bill was able to inflate the tire. It didn’t seem to loose air after that. It could have been pretty dangerous if Bill didn’t notice it. That tire could have heated up and eventually caught on fire. Thank goodness for his good eye! It was 12.40 when we finally hit the road. It was a slow ride all the way to Willits through the forest on a twisty road. The bus doesn’t do up hill very fast, plus Bill stopped at pretty much every turnout to let the cars pass. After that the road took us by some lakes, through some hills to finally bring us in the valley which reminded us of the Modesto area... farming and orchards. We saw a lot of rice fields.

During travels I usually stay in front on the passenger seat except to go make sandwiches or something else easy. I tend to get motion sickness so it helps if I keep looking at the road. I also really enjoy looking at the scenery. The children spend their time playing in their room, drawing at the table or seating in front next to me, reading or counting how many new beetles we see. It's a lot of fun!

We arrived at the Koa campground in Oroville around 7pm. We usually eat out on travel days. There is already a lot to do to set up camp so it’s nice not to cook. We gave it a try, last night. We walked over to the casino, that is right next to the camp, since they have different restaurants (the only ones around... at a walking distance!) Well, it didn’t take us long to be back out the door. Too much smoke... just not the right place to bring kids to diner. So we ate at home that night!

Today, while Bill was catching up with work since we have cell service here, the kids and I went for a refreshing dip in the pool.

Sylviane

Bill’s Birthday

One week after Ben... it’s Bill’s turn to be celebrated!
We started the day with a nice breakfast. We bought a new bread machine that makes amazing breads, well, it is not only the machine, I have to say that Bill is quite an expert as he’s been making breads for many years now. But that machine helps a 100% whole wheat rise well. Usually we don’t go for "more expensive means better" but for this bread machine it is true. Check it out if you’re thinking about buying one, it’s worth the money!

Got a little side tracked here... Back to Bill’s birthday.

The kids and I made him a wind chime with one of the many abalone shells we have, sea shells and drift wood. We took advantage of Bill being gone one day last week to work on it. (Bill had to go back to Modesto for work) Turned out real nice!

After breakfast we packed a lunch (it’s all about eating, isn’t it?) and went for a walk through Caspar South to a marine reserve. On the way there we saw deers, quails and their chicks, wild turkeys and we also found some ripe yummy blackberries and some that were not. We had the beach all to ourselves that’s where we had our picnic. It’s a gorgeous beach with dark sand, surrounded by cliffs and so relaxing... just the sound of the waves.

We finished the day with a big carrot cake (Bill's favorite). We used a recipe from Evelyn our ex-neighbour from Modesto. The recipe is actually from her Mom. It is very moist and delicious. Feel free to email me for the recipe. I haven't had better carrot cake than this one but next time I need to remember to cut the quantities in half. It's way to much for the four of us. It made a good breakfast this morning, though :)

Happy Birthday!

Sylviane

Ben’s Birthday

Yesterday was a long eventful day. It started at 5.30 in the morning. We all got up and the boys got ready to go get some abalone. Slow start, it took a while for Ben to wake up as he is not an early bird... he takes that from me! They left around 6.20. Eva and I waved good bye and started on the birthday cake, blowing the balloons, decorating the bus and making breakfast. They came back 2 ½ hours later, Ben had got his limit again, three nice abalones. Great start for this special day. After breakfast Ben’s godmother, Natacha, called from Switzerland and he got to open her presents while talking to her (yes, even before he blew his candles!). She had given me his presents while we were there last March, that’s some good planning on her part!

After lunch we headed to Ricochet Ridge ranch for a ride on the beach. On the way there we took advantage of cell service to call Grandma who for the very first time was not with Ben on his birthday. She was even there, in Guam, when he was born! We missed her and Grandpa but we took them along in our hearts.
Ben had been dreaming to go horseback ridding for a long time. What really interested him was to be able to guide his horse himself. I was a little worried because sometimes on those rides the horses will not respond to any commands but just follow the horse in front of them. But, what a treat... we got an awesome ride along the beach, saw some seals close-up and on top of that the horses were very responsive so Ben got to practice turning, stopping, pulling his horse away from good grass and even trotting. He had a smile on bigger than his face. Eva was ridding a cute pony and had a wonderful time too. They are already talking about having a horse when we settle down somewhere. Well, they’ve had that wish for a long time but this trip reinforced the idea a whole lot!

After that we moved the party to the beach for cake and presents. We finished the day with nice meal... Bill made some abrellanos for diner which is Ben’s favorite abalone recipe. It was delicious! We topped that with an episode of the little house in the prairie. It was a wonderful day filled with memorable and precious family time.

Now my boy is 8! Even if Grandma is set on him being 6 forever:)

Sylviane

Catch of the day

I woke up early today so I took off to go skin diving to a new place. I heard it was good for abalone. It was great diving. Diving in the kelp beds is a treat. I saw some jelly fish, a small eel abut 16 inches long, a china cod (that I shot at and missed, darn it), and lots of nice abalone. I like to be in the kelp forest, it looks so cool shifting back and forth with the serge.

I get some exercise doing something I love, plus we get dinner too, it’s hard to beat that! I got three nice abs, there’s only two in this picture, I put the biggest one in the freezer. The fish I speared is a sea trout (also known as a greenling).

It felt good to get some exercise, not just the diving but the walk back up the cliff, and the hike along the trail on my way back to the car was a work out too.


Abs are a lot of work. But it is all fun work. First the diving, then clean the abalone, clean the dive gear, pound out the abs, dip them in flour, egg/beer mixture and finally pat on the bread crumbs. During this last phase of putting the abs in the beer batter the kids asked if Mom would show them some yoga poses. Here’s a quick pic that I took.

Sylviane has been doing yoga each morning and now the kids are starting to get interested in it too.


Dinner was great, there were no left over’s.

Tomorrow is Ben’s eighth birthday. He is so excited, so is Eva. I will wake him up about 5:30 so we can go get some abalone to start the day off. :)

Bill

Crabs for dinner

The kids and I set out yesterday to hunt some crabs and what a blast we had. Sylviane helped us get a picnic lunch together and put sunscreen on the kids. I grabbed some squid from the freezer and got our gear ready. We have these new crab snares that we wanted to try out. They have small cages made of wire mesh that form a cube of about three inches. It has a hinged door to open and insert the bait and some heavy fishing line rigged into loops that will snare the crabs. Ben, Eva and I each had a snare and we walked out to the rock coast and set them out. Eva caught the first two crabs and oh what excitement. Ben was so cool saying "wow Eva you are good luck for crabbin". Her smile was priceless.

We spent the whole afternoon out on the rock just pulling up the snares and yelling "a crab, a crab, I got another crab, get the net dad!". It was the best day I ever had getting crab. Ben caught several crabs at one point and Eva hadn’t got any in awhile. Ben said "hey, Eva come try my 'good luck' spot and after you get two we can switch again”. It was a fine plan because sure enough Eva got crabs in a short while. It never stopped being exciting every time we pulled up the snares and saw a crab. Each of us used the measuring tool on the crabs we pulled in to see if they were legal size. Ben really liked to pick up and handle them and I kept worrying that he was going to get pinched. Pretty soon Eva was getting into grabbing these snapping critters and loading her own into the bucket.

Eva did so well that soon she had gotten more than either of us boys. Ben decided Eva was good at deciding when to pull up the snares because she was a natural to know just the right time, so he asked her to decide when to check. She liked that responsibility. The kids wanted to stay and keep on crabbing, it was such a fun after noon, but it was after 5:00 and time to go cook dinner.

What a meal! We ended up getting 3 dungeness crabs and 11 rock crabs. I put two of the biggest in the freezer for another day and cooked up the rest of them up. Eating crab is a messy business but it’s just as tasty as it is messy. We decided next time we will eat them outside.

Bill

Gotta do what you gotta do

The internet connection isn’t very good where we are. They say it was because of the some big rigs that are parked in front of us and are blocking the signal. I bet the people behind us don’t get any! Bill still has to do his work so he made it work by relocating his office! It worked better up there.

Bill, Ben and Eva left earlier to go spend some time at the beach, fishing. Yesterday Ben caught a rock crab with his fishing pole. It was exciting! Now I think I’ll go do some reading. I had brought a couple good magazines from Switzerland that I haven’t had a chance to look through yet... aaahh, relax time!

Sylviane

Nina

This is my doll Nina that I made myself with a little help from Mom. I made her ball dress all by myself. I sewed it by hand. It took a long time to make my doll though. I'd like to make some shoes for her and a night gown. I'm also going to make a bed and a blanket for her. I already made the pillow with the sewing machine. I love to sew and make stuff for her.

Eva

Life is good

Our friends, Terry and her daughter Shannon from Modesto, came to stay with us for the week end. It was good for Ben and Eva to have a friend to play with. The three of them had a blast at the beach making up all kind of stories while Bill was enjoying some reading about seashore life. During that time Terry and I were in town enjoying some shopping and some "raw vegan" lunch.

It has been a very pleasurable week end but as all good things must come to an end (wait a minute, I don’t really like that saying... it’s not always true) they left this morning after we took a walk through Mendocino and a lunch at the beach.

I think that I’m falling in love with this part of California. It is so green and wild flowers are growing everywhere. My favorite little town is Mendocino. It has a strong feel of community, uniqueness, health and nature consciousness and creativity... a lot of artists are living there. You won’t find any big chains in the town and they have no parking structures or even lines on the asphalt. I think I could live around here. It’s the first time I say that about an other place than San Diego and maybe it won’t be the last... really, we are just starting our trip, there is so much more to see. What is your ideal place to live?

Sylviane