Ski Trip 2019

With all the snow that California has gotten this year, the kids have been begging to go skiing again. Well, some of the kids. Peanut is still very anti-cold. I had hoped this would be the year that we could all go up to the snow together, but after he had a freak out a couple weeks ago on a chilly morning down here in the Bay Area, Daddy-o and I decided that it wasn't worth it to try taking him.

And that is how these three ended up getting to enjoy one of the most awesome powder days at Dodge Ridge, while I hung out at home with the little guy (and powder days are a little lost on these guys because they are still beginners--Bug came home and complained about how the deep snow was really annoying and made it hard to ski. If he only knew. . .) 

From all reports, they had an amazing day. Our church had organized this trip on the kids' day off after the trimester ended, so there were a bunch of friends up there to ski with, and not a whole lot of other people. Our kids were very happy to not have any lines to wait in at the lifts.

And it sounds like everyone did well--I'm glad that our kids feel comfortable on skis now. Bean even said she thinks she's ready to try snowboarding :)

There has been SO much snow the last couple months. And it snowed the whole week before they went up. As sad as I was to miss out on the powder, I did get to be cozy and warm in our house, while I watched an online homeschool conference I'd signed up for. And Peanut got to have a 4 hour playdate with a fellow Wild Kratts lover, so we didn't have a bad day.

After the skiing, Bean caught a ride home with friends, and Daddy-o and Bug stayed in this cabin with the Scouts from church. They had decided to tack on a little overnighter, and I think they all had a good time playing in the snow, watching a movie, and just being together.

On the way home, they stopped by Columbia, the old Gold Rush town, for a little while. It's nice that Daddy-o, who misses out on so many of our field trips, was able to do this whole trip.

By Saturday afternoon, when everyone was back home, we had a bunch of tired, very sore, very happy people. (That soreness was another thing I was happy to miss out on, even if it meant I had to miss out on the happy part. Snowboarding hurts so much more these days than I remember--I'm getting old!)  

Visitng the Gold Rush

I keep scheduling big field trips for right before we have trips planned. This was no exception, and I was debating cancelling, but the kids and I had been looking forward to this one, and because of the fires in northern CA, the air quality in the Bay Area had been terrible so a day in the mountains with clean air sounded really nice.

Friday morning, we drove up to Columbia, CA--an old Gold Rush town in the foothills.

The air issues actually meant school was cancelled so Bean was able to join us instead of having to stay behind to finish her finals. (I had already planned to pull Peanut out to come with us anyway.) We missed Daddy-o, but he was taking care of some necessary business (separate post for that!)

This field trip was through our local homeschool group, so we had lots of friends along.

These wild kids would have fit right in back in the Wild West.

Our tour included a gold rocker pan demonstration,

a visit to the Wells Fargo office,

lots of stories about the people who settled this town,

and a stop at the San Francisco store.

And then, in a very timely activity, the kids got to do a fire bucket brigade race.

I think they learned that moving water was really hard. It's no wonder that all these towns burned down at least once back in their early days. Even now, it's hard to get the fires under control.

I love that we have groups to go on field trips with. And that there are other people willing to organize these sometimes.

We are definitely going to have to come back to explore this area more.

CA Weekend

We're winding down our Gold Rush studies and had a free weekend so we decided to visit a couple of historical sites from the Gold Rush days. On the drive, we listened to another Sid Fleischman book, Jim Ugly, which wasn't directly about the Gold Rush like two of his other books we've read, but was set in the same time period, and in Nevada and Northern CA--he must have really liked that time.

 First stop, Old Sacramento.

We happened to go on the weekend of a music festival, so along with the old buildings and museums, we watched a parade.

These police were walking with their paddy wagon,

and came over to give Bug a ticket.

There were a couple community marching bands, as well as some school bands. The festival took away from the Old Town feel a little, but it was fun hearing bits of music as we walked around all day. We even stopped to listen to a high school jazz band that was playing over by the Delta King.

The steamboat was beautiful and sometime, we'll have to come back and eat here, or maybe even stay overnight.

We saw the old schoolhouse.

One thing I regret from the various years we've homeschooled is that I have never organized a group to do one of the old schoolhouse field trips where the kids get to "attend" school for a day. I have always wanted to do this and I know my kids would have loved it.

At lunch time, we met up with my cousin and her family, who live just outside of Sacramento. I can't believe that I didn't get a picture with everyone at some point during the day, but I didn't.

We went to see the old store.

The hardware displays were beautiful--I wonder if the stores really looked that good when they were actually in use.

And then we went to the California State Railroad Museum. It made for a nice intro to our next social studies topic.

Only picture I got of one of my cousins kids--we had a lot of fun with them and are glad to have someone from my side of the family in the area. After the museum, we went to their house for dinner and movie night. They were also kind enough to let us crash there for the night so we could continue our explorations the next day.

Because our next stop was where it all began--Coloma, CA, site of Sutter's Mill and the first CA gold discovery.

We took the self-guided tour of all the spots around town, some recreated (like this mill), some original. The kids worked their way through the Jr. Ranger booklets and earned another badge, and we learned a few new things.

James W. Marshall pointing down to the river where he first found gold.

There were a couple blacksmiths working in the shop, one of the few buildings that was actually open for us to go in.

Peanut loved these "mustaches".

Lots of fun buildings.

I really liked this section on the different mining techniques and equipment used.

As close as they could get to riding a mine cart.

"Oh no! The mine is caving in!"

Even if we had some moments of serious whining and crankiness, it was still a good weekend. As always, history is so much more fun when we can see where it all happened.

And for me and the kids, the weekend wasn't quite over. Daddy-o had to go into work on Memorial Day, but the rest of us went with some friends to explore the newest national park--Pinnacles. I am loving showing the kids how many different types of beauty there are in CA. This felt more like southern UT, compared to the coast, or redwood forests, or the Sierra foothills we'd just spent the weekend in.

The caves we were trying to hike to were closed for the bats who live there, but we did find a few other cave type places.

And we hiked up to a small reservoir, where we found a water snake, tiny frogs, and lots of different insects. The kids started the Jr. Ranger booklets for this park, but had to finish them at home because we had to get back home to go to a cookout at another family's house.

Jam-packed weekend, but so much fun. The kids have loved that we managed to squeeze in 6 field trips in 10 days. I'm hoping to still do some local excursions during the week this summer, but our Saturdays are about to be taken over by swim meets for the next 2 months so weekend travel is over for awhile.