Spring Break, Just the Three of Us

This was the first year that we only had one kiddo home for spring break. They haven't always lined up with everyone off at the same time, but we usually have a weekend overlap with everyone. But this year, with Bug in Brazil and Bean going to Hawaii with friends, it was just Peanut and us. We let him pick what he wanted to do, and so. . . here's Spring Break 2026!

We stayed home for the first couple of days. Watched General Conference and had Easter dinner on Sunday, while packing up the van and getting ready to hit the road Sunday afternoon.

And we started off by driving to Death Valley. Had a dinner stop at Red Rock Canyon State Park,

and then spent the night at the Father Crowley Overlook lot. Got a gorgeous view in the morning!

We didn't have a lot of time in Death Valley the next day, but did stop at Dant's View for a little while. Getting to see Bad Water Basin from above was cool.

And there were quite a few wildflowers in the area.

The lower elevation superbloom was long gone, but we were happy to find more than a dozen different types of flowers.

I'm always more impressed with the desert than I think I will be.

And then, we finished the drive to Peanut's pick of destinations. He wanted to hang out with our friends in southern Utah for the a few days. 

We parked our van at their house and loved having evenings hanging out with them (and access to a hot shower after our hikes!)

Peanut and E. made a fort the first night and slept in it every night.

From all reports, it got really hot inside and the last night, they finally ripped down the walls so they could sleep, haha.

On Tuesday, we went to Zion NP to hike to Observation Point. It was really crowded driving through the entrance to the park with all the other spring break travelers, but luckily this trailhead was outside of the main part of the park and while still busy, it wasn't non-stop people.

And the view at the end was fantastic. We could look down at the end of The Narrows and see the whole canyon, which we had visited just two years ago.

Our hiking crew. Just missing the three oldest kids.

Found lots more flowers along the trail

Love that spring in the desert brings out all of these blooms, before it gets too hot for everything.

And we also found dozens of these catepillar "webs". We thought they were spider webs at first, until we looked at them a little closer.

Not pictured from our time together: hot tubbing, video games, eating lots of good food, and lots of conversations that kept circling back to the state of our nation, but also included good books and future plans and memories of our kids when they were a lot younger and all lived with us.

On Wednesday, we went to Bryce Canyon for an overnight visit. Last time we were here, Daddy-o wasn't with us, and the whole place was covered in snow, which was beautiful, but made it impossible to hike, so Peanut and I were excited to come back.

I think the hoodoos are prettier in the snow, but still amazing (and way easier to hike through this way.

We did a figure 8 loop, starting with Wall Street, 

which involved some crazy switchbacks. Glad we did this on the way down.

And glad that the whole trail wasn't as packed as the beginning (although I won't lie--this area was still packed and I did a little magic eraser to get rid of the extra people in this picture, haha.)

It was so crazy seeing where trees have managed to grow in these tight spaces that don't get a lot of light. But we found life scattered through the hoodoos,

including flowers growing right out of the rocks. There's hardly any soil here.

After coming down into the lower part of the park, we crossed a wash and did a loop on the Peekaboo trail. 

This hike was mostly up and down, over and over again, but it was so cool hiking through these rocks.

We saw lots of cool formations,

and other than Peanut drinking almost all his water in the first half of the hike, things went pretty well. Luckily it wasn't hot.

It was a full afternoon, almost 6.5 miles of gorgeous scenery. We were tired and hungry by the time we finished, and ready to go find a camping spot.

And even though we had to drive a couple of miles in to find an open spot, the area in Dixie National Forest just outside of the park was a great place! We were worried at first because you can only camp in designated spaces, and every one we came across was already taken, but luckily it's a long road into the forest. This would be great for longer term camping to explore all the parts of the park with lots of space and privacy at each campsite.

The next morning, we went back in to the park to hike along the rim and see the formations from up above.

We did a little over 2 miles and got some good views.

It's just so different from anywhere else that we have hiked.

Some of the formations that we had passed the day before, like the Alligator here, were much easier to make out from above. We stared at the rocks down below for several minutes without any idea which rock was supposed to look like an alligator, but the light colored layer at the top was a lot easier to spot this way.

By mid-morning, we were ready to say goodbye. But we'll be back!

We were starving so we stopped at Henrie's Drive-in for burgers and milkshakes, which always feel welcome after a couple days of hiking.

We had one more night in St. George with our friends and then one last camping spot in the desert--Anza Borrego this time.

This was our third free camping spot on this trip (plus the free nights on our friends' street). I've been impressed with all the options--the southwest is definitely bookdock friendly.

We pulled out the UV lights to explore once it got dark and found some great stuff, like these little blossoms on one of the shrubs around our camp spot.

And all the rocks in the area.

But the highlight was finding several scorpions. We could see them from 20 feet away, they're so bright!

We enjoyed our last evening of real camping. Peanut got to pick the first half of our trip, but we had one more stop coming up. . .

First Wildflower Hike of the Season

One of the hiking groups I follow online mentioned a hike at Mt. Diablo that is good for wildflowers, so I immediately tried to figure out who I could get to go with me to check this out.

And I'm so glad that I have a friend who may not love the steep hikes, but is willing to do it with me so I can see flowers. It was almost 7 miles with 3 miles of pretty steady climb (1900 feet), but we lucked out with a beautiful day after a really hot week. There was a nice breeze and some hazy clouds that kept it from feeling too hot, even towards the end of the hike when it was warmer.

And we found a lot of flowers!

We probably saw at least 2 dozen different types of flowers, and some great patches along the trail.

The hills are still green, even though it won't last much longer because of the lack of rain this year and the extreme temperatures. We've had record breaking highs, in the low 90s, for the last week of "winter" and not much rain in the forecast, so we are quickly headed to summer conditions in the hills, which is going to mean it's time to switch to redwood and coastal hikes. We're pretty lucky to have good hiking year-round, just have to choose the right locations.

Lots of Random Goings On

After such a dry Jan/Feb, we finally got some rain halfway through this month, and it was lovely to see everything wet and fresh.

The almond blossoms have been beautiful. It's fun that we have a park so close to us with a lot of trees to enjoy this time of year. Our homeschool park group has been there this month and I went a couple of times without any kids, just to catch up with friends.

Peanut had a fun 4-H meeting. We haven't made it to any of the project groups he was hoping to do this year, but at least he can go to the club meetings once a month and have fun seeing friends.

And now, in an effort to be a lifelong learner, my fun find this month:

UV flourescence! I watched a lunchtime zoom seminar one day on bioluminescence and UV fluorescence that we can find all around the Bay Area and was so excited to go out and see what we could find, so I got a new UV light (I have a couple of cheap ones I've used in my science classes, but turns out the better ones have a different wave length, and it makes a huge difference.)

And we took the light out to explore one of the redwood parks in Oakland at dusk. We only found the one group of mushrooms (Sulfur tufts) and these little flowers, but a lot of mushrooms and flowers will do this.

The moss on the redwood bark was pretty cool. Redwoods are a lot redder under UV light.

And a lot of plants will glow red--it's the chlorophyll in the leaves. I have no idea what the blue parts are--I still have a lot to learn about this.

Redwood sorrel, which looks very green during the day, is a deep red under UV light. It was so much fun looking for things and realizing how different the world looks if you change the lens you're seeing it through. I've been reading a book--An Immense World, by Ed Yong that explores this concept, too. Living things have very different umwelts, specific ways that an organism experiences the world based on the capabilities of their sensory organs. It's fun when we can get a glimpse into another species umwelt.

All that rain finally got the creek going again. It's already slowed and largely dried up, but it had a few days with a lot of water.

Peanut and I went to the Science Odessey night at one of the local K-8th schools so I could see which community groups had booths there (getting ideas of who to reach out to for my science fair I'm doing in April), and one company had a couple of snakes there. They do research and analysis for a lot of organizations, including East Bay Regional Parks, working with endangered and threatened species.

And then, the next day, I had a nature hike scheduled at Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve. It's fun that we have an extinct volcano right in the Bay Area, even if the area has been crumpled so the volcano is lying on it's side now and doesn't look anything like a volcano. But there are some cool volcanic rocks to see in the area.

And there were a lot of these butterflies--California Tortoiseshells, I think.

And the real find of the day was about a dozen newts in a small pond on the hike. They were actively mating and laying eggs. We found this one that looks like it's curled around several large clusters of eggs. I've only seen eggs one other time and they were just attached on the side of a rock, but I'm guessing these were laid very recently.

This was by far the favorite stop for everyone on the hike. The kids also found a couple of young bull frogs, and had fun exploring the labyrinth that was right by the pond. I seriously love my job.

Our weather has been unseasonably warm this past week after the rain storms, so while we were working in the backyard on Saturday, I got the animals out for a bit. Our sweet girl, Charkie, just turned 6 years old this past week. Never would have guessed that she'd outlast the other guinea pigs, but here she is, the oldest one we've ever raised.

Luckily she's still around to keep Poppy company. Not sure what we'll do when the bunny is the only one left--I think she's going to be lonely.

We got to finish the day off with an evening in Palo Alto, getting pizza as a snack before watching San Francisco, a 1940's musical, at the Stanford Theater. I'd seen the movie back in college, but it was fun to watch again. And then we got crepes afterwards. 5:30 movie times are awkward for dinner, haha, so we kind of did a split meal with popcorn in between. It had been a few months since we'd been to this theater--it's seriously my favorite.