Hello, all! I'm now back from our two+ week family vacation. Warren, the kids
and myself made this year's vacation our "California vacation", where we 
never left the state. Our oldest daughter has just finished 4th grade, and 
Kristin will be entering 4th grade in about 12 days when school starts for 
the fall. Since 4th grade here is when they study California geography and 
history, it was befitting that we spend our summer vacation seeing what this 
state is really like. We visited most climate zones within California, 
staying for the most part out of the cities and seeing the "real" California. 
(If I end up homeschooling, I am hoping that we learned enough California 
history on this trip not to worry too much about it for Kristin this year.)
While crossing the state on Interstate 5 going north, we were able to get 
good views of the Central Valley where agriculture is king. It was also a 
good start on a mini-study of how water is transported around the state, as 
we got some very good views of the California Aqueduct. To round this out, we 
spent the night in a campground on the San Joaquin River, where it was hot, 
muggy, and full of mosquitoes. By the following day we were along Lake Shasta 
where we could continue this learning adventure on how water gets around the 
state - we toured the Shasta Dam and then went around the lake. (I highly 
recommend taking a tour of a dam if you have one nearby to you when you are 
studying water or electricity. It's educational for the old folks as well as 
the kid students!)
We needed to "get cool"...it was 108 in Redding...so off we went to Lassen 
Volcanic National Park east of Redding. Since the elevation was so much 
higher, it was so much cooler up there. There, we toured Lassen (which is 
*beautiful*) and learned all about volcanoes. We hiked all over the place, 
including thru a lava tube (north of Lassen Park) and over a field of 
spattercones (also north of Lassen Park). (Since we were able to study so 
much of volcanoes this year on vacation, I hope to spend more time on 
earthquakes when we do a study on the Ring of Fire this year.)
We came out of Lassen via the long, scenic route. I highly recommend that 
anyone wanting to SEE the country, get off of the interstates and travel the 
county, state and US highways. We came down via CA 89, which took us 6 hours 
to navigate the not-quite 200 miles to Truckee. At Truckee, we took the girls 
to the Donner State Memorial Park. The girls were as fascinated with the 
Donner story and the park as they'd been at the Dam and Lassen.
Then we spent four days in the Mother Lode country. We saw Sutter's Mill at 
Coloma where James Marshall found the gold that started the Gold Rush of '49, 
also panned for gold ourselves and toured a gold mine (hard rock type). (The 
only only type of mine which we never toured was a hydraulic mine; those were 
further north.) We also looked for liquid gold (i.e. went wine tasting) and 
picked our own blueberries at a place near Placerville.
Our final days were spent coming down US 395 on the eastern side of the 
Sierras. Man, what magnificent mountains. We went into the Inyos to find the 
world's oldest living things - bristlecone pines - which interested the girls 
as well. It was also quite eye opening to drive past Manzanar (the Japanese 
internment camp near Mt. Whitney). Mt Whitney itself is quite inspiring 
anyway.
Living as a family in a tent trailer for 16 days was fun yet not without its 
problems. You just have to work some things out as you can, and learn not to 
be overly impatient. Mostly we stayed outside, anyway. We purposely don't 
carry a TV/VCR (like others do) because we like to spend our vacations away 
from that stuff. And honestly, I haven't even picked up a newspaper in about 
2 weeks. I got my news from other people that I talked to, in campground 
laundry rooms, poolside, and in the grocery stores.
We're glad to be back home, tho none of us wants to go back to the workaday 
world like we must do, come this Monday.
                                 -donna
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