California, cont.

Still leaping that hurdle...

Before we move on to the next part of the vacation, here are a few more pictures from Shelter Cove. I took this photo because I liked the light/dark contrast on the rocks. Then later, I saw some rocks with less white and fewer birds. That's when I realized what the white was.

Shelter Cove light house:



Day Five

We hit the road again, heading south on Hwy 1. Spent a lunch and afternoon in Mendocino, CA. Cute town.

Of course, it was made temporarily even CUTER because of one certain little munchkin's presence:

Josephine wanted to bring her favorite overalls to pay homage to Wilbur, since airlines aren't quite progressive enough to permit cabin travel for hedgehogs. No doubt he was happier back home though, many thanks to my awesome friend Melissa.


More Mendocino...

We devised a little Ergo-chair at lunch because we'd left her highchair in the car. I remember eating something delicious there, but I can't remember what. I believe that's due to my preoccupation that at any moment, Josephine was about to grow insanely tired of the set up and ruin yet another meal. She pretty well made a habit of that on this trip.


Of course, we made several Skeledog plugs on our trip... here are a couple I managed to take photos of...

...And we travelled onward. A theme for our travels, from my perspective anyway, was I got to see Hwy 1! You might be thinking that's a pretty basic theme to come up with. But I'm pretty sure that, based on concrete [or specifically lack-there-of] evidence, Hwy 1 is about to cease existing. Which makes it a very significant theme, actually. I therefore attempted to appreciate every inch of it. Josephine outdid me, though, and on one roadside diaper change actually ingested Hwy 1. That's a level of appreciation I didn't appreciate. I tried to console myself by thinking about how baby ducks eat rocks, and it's good for them. But highway gravel? REALLY, Josephine-- and you're not a duck. Anyway, I digress.

Here's one stretch of highway the bankrupt state is wasting dollars saving from its certain demise:

And that isn't even close to the best example. So very many times did we see chunks of sunken road, warning signs alerting us to missing pieces, random stretches held up by newly-erected barricades, work crews risking their necks to re-support the highway, and numerous cliffs that had obviously encroached upon the roadway since it was established (--I'm pretty sure no highway engineer would design the initial road to run mere inches from a 500 yard drop off to certain death). Anyway, it was my first trip to California. And I feel that unless I make it back in the next few years, it will likely be my last due to circumstances outside our control. A warning to my dear friend, Nikki: please move back to Texas soon. And Mychel, you might reconsider Irvine.

Of course vistas like those below do somehow make risking your life seem worth it. (Kind of like sky diving, that state of California is [not that I've been sky diving, but I hear it's pretty amazing, and it must be]). Anyway, I understand better now why people brave the earthquakes. And of course, a still photograph can't do justice to the beauty and sound of ocean movement. It's just beyond PRETTY.

... Eventually we made it to our destination that day, well after dark (so this picture was taken a different day, obviously). Our resting place? One of several itsy-bitsy, early 1900's refurbished cabins on a piece of property in Guerneville, CA. Aaahhhh, Guerneville. And to think I was nervous about running into bears on hikes. Turns out Guerneville is a hub for a rather different kind.

Aaaaand it's bedtime, folks. Nestled down in Guerneville, we spent four nights there taking day trips, which will be in the next post.

(Don't be misled by Josephine's apparent readiness for bed. That's just her camera cheese coming out. The child didn't sleep for more than a couple hours at a time knowing we were an arm's reach away. And I felt obligated to respond every time out of consideration for other guests' slumber. As you might notice, we attempted to book units like cabins so we wouldn't have to worry about sharing a wall with other people, but it was a futile effort because the other cabins were only a few steps away, and nothing was sound-proofed. In short, it was the most tiring vacation I've ever been on).

Passive Aggressive Appreciation

That is what I'm dealing with, folks.

It turns out that a number of you can't decide whether to love or hate me for this blog of Josephine pictures; in fact, it appears you can do both on a whim. I take a liiiiiiittle time off (okay, several weeks), and suddenly I start receiving claims that grandmothers are forgetting what she looks like, great-grandmothers are enduring hardship, and siblings are reviewing my contract and threatening to retroactively bill babysitting time. (Sigh.)

Allow me to pass the blame. The real culprit is that California trip we took in September. Who has enough time to sift through all those dadgum digital photos and upload all the millions you can't decide between?? Not me! In fact, it appears my subconcious has actually found this task to loom even mightier than the gazillions of complicated (with me, everything is complicated) house projects I have going, because believe it or not, I've been opting for house projects over Josephine blog photos each morning! So on the bright side, while I might have some fairly dismayed relatives, I DO have a few more things completed around here! (Only 97%-of-a-gazillion house projects left).

Anyway, let's just leap this hurdle so we can all get on with life and return to loving me for the pictures of Josephine I provide, rather than hating me for the lack thereof. (By the way, I do appreciate my brother actually mentioning Wilbur in his hate mail. I am glad someone misses Wilbur. Here's a quick update on Wilbur: Wilbur has a new wheel he runs in ALL NIGHT. It is NOT as silent of a wheel as advertised. So Wilbur is doing wonderfully, but the rest of us are a little more tired than usual. I will try to share photos of him soon.)

So, California...

Over a month ago, we returned from our 5th anniversary vacation to California (the northern part-- we didn't even try to do San Francisco). For a more comprehensive take on the trip, you might revisit Sean's more timely post. But since I just want the photos UP and the complaints to CEASE, you will have to forgive my somewhat bare-bones post. Here are chronologicalesque pictures, with a bit of a general itinerary included. Again, my goal is to get through this post and on to the random pics I can upload easily in an evening. Otherwise I will continue to avoid the blog (and make progress on the house at an unprecedented rate. We wouldn't want that!)

Days One and Two

Waiting in the Austin airport:

As you will see below, she shares her father's anxiety about flying (or perhaps just his oral fixation. Between the two of them, there is nothing not chewed on in our house. Which is just a warning, in case you come over and plan on touching anything. I will try my best to keep them from chewing on you. But sometimes it's a little hard to restrain Sean.)

We landed in Oakland, and the next morning drove up Hwy 5, in order to get north as quickly as possible. Clearly the scenery was lacking on that road. See below. Regardless, my husband was feverish with Vacation Syndrome, where everything looks, smells, tastes, sounds, feels, JUST IS better when you are somewhere technically new even if it seems much like home. Case in point: he actually used the word "golden" emphatically to describe the hills we were driving past. Folks, we were looking at fields of dead grass along a flat highway in hotter weather than we left back in Texas. I'm afraid I had to ream him for that dreamy tone. But things did get prettier quickly.


So, up north was the Shasta Cascade region, around Redding. We stopped to see Shasta Lake. Very drought-stricken as we expected, but pretty nonetheless. Then started heading out west. Went past Whiskeytown Lake, which was smaller, but equally gorgeous and blue. For some reason, it didn't seem as affected by the drought. So I suggest stopping there, not Shasta Lake, for all you people who are right on the cusp of going to Redding, CA.

Shasta Lake (so low!):

My view from the passenger seat, looking back at Josephine in her car seat:

We stayed that night in a supremely classy (it was $48) cabin in Weaverville. It's the kind where the floors sloped treacherously in all kinds of directions and nothing totally locked, but it was clean and smoke-free, so I was happy.

Day 3

Headed from Weaverville out to the coast on a small, winding road (Hwy 299) that followed Trinity River (quite clear and pretty-- you could tell that in non-drought conditions it would have been downright awesome).

This put us out near Eureka, and though our destination was south, we drove north a bit through Trinidad (not bad scenery for a road-side nursing session!)...

A little further up the coast, Josephine stood in an ocean for her first time (much to her horror-- she even cried)...

Continued going north to the Redwood National Park...

Then we turned around and started heading south again. A lot of this, like the size of the redwoods, the gorgeousness of the sun reflecting off the water-- it's really not possible to capture on a little digital camera. Like the picture below was too bright for the little machine, so I had to shoot it through Sean's sunglasses. And I would say it sort of kills the effect that way...

We finally ended up at our destination, Shelter Cove. Our room was on the second story, left. Much nicer than the cabin we were in the night before!

Sunsets were lovely here (assuming you didn't have an infant doing this through the whole thing).

You could see sea lions and get down close to fun tide pools full of starfish, hermit crabs, and plenty of other squishy, colorful things.

After a couple nights there, we headed further south along Hwy 1, and I will continue with those pictures in a separate post, because uploading too many photos onto one entry is a formatting nightmare.

oh no, we're not exasperated at all.

various thrones

So what I really need to do is post pictures from our trip to Northern California, but as it turns out, nine days in a scenic environment with a first-born baby = scads of pictures of that little child. And I've yet to muster up the energy to go through all those photos and select a mere few [thousand] to post.

An easier task is to just share random pictures I've taken since we've gotten back. Since pretty much all she does is sit, it wasn't hard to select a theme... les trônes pour la princesse...

Josephine now rides (energy permitting) in the cart-seat at stores, much to her extreme delight (as long as mommy is pushing the cart attentively and/or a random stranger is doting on her).

In other news, Sean and I recently made the big high-chair decision. We went with the clip-on option, especially since our floor space is super-limited in the dining area. Best thing about this one is that it folds to less than 2" thick and only weighs 2 pounds (so it is truly quite portable; in fact, I can squeeze it in her travel crib case for trips like CA. I'm generally a fan of the opinions on Portable Baby-- these two things have served us well on multiple occasions). And of course, we still use our trusted little bouncy chair. Found a mosquito net for it at Pumpkin Patch (a local consignment store) for super cheap, which is great, because we do a lot outside, and the mosquitoes can get ridiculously enormous, plentiful, and vicious. Especially lately, it seems... NOT that I'm complaining about the blessed rain!!!! I'll take the mosquitoes, if that's the price! (Of course, Josephine occasionally becomes obsessed with taste-testing the mosquito net, which after enough wriggling and pulling, renders it entirely useless, so it's not as perfect of a plan as I'd hoped. I once found a mosquito trapped in there with her, trying to get away from the baby that wanted to bite it.) Anyway, I don't have a picture of the net in action, but in the photo below, it's bunched up at her feet. I just like this picture because I think she looks so big and old in it. Can't believe she will be 6 months tomorrow!!

Lastly, the final throne is merely a promise of more California pictures to come...