Notre Dame wins, and all is right with the world

Today was another laid back affair. Mom even slugged down half of a can of the bubbly orange wine-based "sangria" in the late morning to pass the time.  Erica took the morning James shift, and afterwards we went to the water park on site (mentioned previously on this very blog!).  James blew a happiness-gasket, loving every single second in the pools and on the tiny slides.

And James got to swing for the first time...

Photo evidence of mommy pounding some Medalla Light

We enjoyed a Thanksgiving dinner at Julia and Mike's place, where I splashed out too much on more crappy Puerto Rican wine.  Erica and I ate our meals in front of the tv, watching the second half of the Notre Dame/LSU bowl game, where--miracle of miracles--the Fighting Irish pulled it out with a last second field goal (actually, Erica had to take James home to sleep and so missed the very end of the game, which stinks)!  ND had been among the heaviest underdogs of the entire bowl season, and LSU's loss was the only one by an SEC West team against a non-SEC West team all season.

We spent the evening hanging out on the lanai listening to the waves.  Good day!

Thorn: $43 tab for wine.  Yeesh.
Rose: watching James love on those pools
Bud: just more beach time :)

Erica's favorite kind of day

Yesterday (we're still operating a day behind on this blog) was dedicated to doing nothing, except of course being asked to once again go to the grocery store for more supplies. So that was my morning.

The afternoon, though, began with a whimper, as we larded up for a day in the sun at the Palmas Del Mar waterpark, only to discover that they were painting the waterslides (in the middle of high season, naturally).  So we spent a hour or so illicitly swimming in the Wyndham pool, whose swim up bar never opened while we were there (and during the high season, too!)

For lunch we schlepped over to the beach bar.  "Schlepped" is a good work for walking in flip flops while carrying tons of baby gear.  Anyway, lunch was passable and the views were great.  I even got to spend some time body surfing, before the beach cops told me off for swimming outside out of the flagged area.

 And James got his most scenic meal yet...

and dipped his toes in the warm Caribbean waters.

The evening was low-key.  Erica got to make her tasty shrimp dish, and there was a round of the official Smith family card game, Oh Heck (aka, Oh Hell - the name was changed by my cursing-conscious grandfather), which was won by Dad by a point over Uncle Mike (I finished dead last; Erica is "not a card game person" and abstained).  

Thorn: going back to the grocery store

Rose: lunch, watching James in the water

Bud: waterslides?  

Thorny Bud: Notre Dame's inevitable destruction in the bowl game by LSU

El Yunque Et Al

I didn't have time to squeeze out a post yesterday, but here's what happened as far as I can recollect it:

James woke up around 6am as a good baby should, and greeted me with a soft "da-da" as I picked him up.  Grandma took over shortly thereafter and Erica and I got a few minutes to walk along our secluded beach and even get in the ocean, imagine that!

No tengo a nadie

The post-morning nap phase of the day saw the whole group trekking to El Yunque National Forest, billed as the only rainforest in the United States forest system (seriously, though, there are tons of others (e.g., the Hoh rainforest in Olympic National Park) under federal protection, but apparently technically not under the "National Forest" designation.  So not really something to really hang your hat on, IMHO.  Nevertheless,) it was very awesome, despite its largely unhelpful visitors center, which did however serve as an impressive backdrop for a family picture.

James scored another stamp for his National Parks passport book which, you'll remember, he got here.  Then he tried to give it a munch.

At the visitor's center, we decided to drive to the Big Tree trailhead and hike the 0.8 mile or so to the Las Minas falls.  Since it was a Sunday and most of the Puerto Ricans themselves decided to visit the park too, we had an extremely difficult time finding parking along the slender shoulders of the crapo mountain roads.  The trail itself was "paved" with poorly poured concrete, an excellent choice for a steep trail in a rain forest.  We did finally get to the falls themselves, which were ample.  The water was freezing, and neither Erica, I, nor James did more than dip our toes in, but dad went whole hog right under the falls themselves.  

Red shirt, waving

Aunt Molly had stepped up to the plate and carried James all the way there (which seemed a lot longer than 0.8 miles all agreed), and gave way to me on the way back.

We drove back along PR-53, a highway sort of road.  Puerto Rico, the majority of whose citizens recently voted for the first time for statehood, is twice as poor as Mississippi.  In many ways it looks like the third world--everything is predictably made from concrete and corrugated sheet metal, and most homes and buildings are unfinished to one degree or another.  But you will also happen upon just about every kind of American chain store or restaurant, most people speak at least passable English, and the bars all serve Shaefer (!) beer and show NFL games (a note on the beer here: the ubiquitous Medalla Light, of which there is no "heavy" antecedent, is your classic very light international adjunct lager and comes in 10 oz. cans.  There is also the native Magna brand, which is a Touborg clone, so get that instead.  All other beer is either Heineken or some American beer.)

Due to a communication error between the members of the meal-planning contingent, we enjoyed a nice home-cooked meal of Erica's legendary pepper shrimp warmish burgers on a dying gas grill.  Afterwards, Erica and I, along with Molly, Mark, Uncle Mike, and Aunt Julia enjoyed a beer at the beach bar, and later drinks in the open-air Wyndham lobby, where the poor waiter was confused by my order of a Negroni.

Rose: the hike with the family; watching James enjoy the forest

Thorn: the traffic in Loquillo and Fajardo

Bud: just a day on the beach

Puerto Rico!

We left Naperville at 4:45 yesterday morning in hopes of making it all the way to Puerto Rico without any meltdowns.  James was, per usual, as good as gold, and never once ever cried one single drop.  He played happily during the morning flight to Atlanta and made several friends with the people in surrounding seats.  He didn't nap, though, and was getting quite edgy as we waited for our (delayed) flight to leave for Puerto Rico.  But once we lifted off he fell asleep with prejudice and slept for two+ hours before waking up and cooing cooly all the way to the island.  El Gordito fue muy bueno!  After a long wait for the rental car, during which a vaguely bilingual Thrifty employee spent 20 minutes affixing James' car seat, we hightailed it south an hour on into the dusk and on crumbling roads to the swanky megacondotron Palmas Del Mar.

We arrived at our place just as the sun was setting, and Silva and Claire were ecstatic to see their baby cousin.  Mostly Silva, actually, as Claire is shaking off a cold and was distracted by the television.  Within the hour, Dad had taken James and the girls down to the pool and, despite explicit instructions, took him in swimming with him.  James was in heaven.  The rest of the evening featured the "haggling over what we're going to do" routine, and despite our best intentions to formulate a schedule then a there, the details of the itinerary are filtering in slowly.

In the morning, we were able to shuttle around the Palmas Del Mar compound, and our little corner of it (Crescent Beach).  It's essentially a walled-off section of the coast about 7 miles long and extends about 3 miles inland.  Within it are several commercial districts, two golf courses, a K-12 school, a casino, tons of opulent condo developments that all basically look alike, and lots and lots of old people.  Our place is RIGHT ON THE BEACH WOOHOO (except for the pools in between, which I'm willing to forgive.) To the view!

James was quickly snatched off to a morning session in the pool by his adoring cousins and grandpa, who went whole hog into it...

...while Erica, Mark, and I a made quick grocery run to pick up food for James and some booze and mixers to make Painkillers, which turned into the proverbial 3 Hour Tour.  The byzantine morass of crappy roads and their medieval signage had us lost just shortly after we took this glam snapper from the mountains above Palmas... 

That's Vieques in the distance

Shortly thereafter a dinobaby-sized iguana ran across the road in front of our car, and we were also treated to the sight of a local boy bareback on a horse riding at full sprint against the grain of traffic.

Completely lots within 15 minutes, we were forced to unmanfully stop and ask directions at a home improvement store (we never found the Ralph's we were looking for).  Mark was overheard by a patron who was headed directly to a Ralph's in Humacao, so we followed him there, and he stopped twice (even getting out of his car once) to make sure we wanted to go to Ralph's and not Walmart. This had us put off for Ralph's, but it ended up being basically a Jewel, so I'm not sure what the hold up was.  Among the items purchased was Puerto Rican wine, which wasn't awesome.

We met Julia and Molly at the Bohio Beach Bar just down the beach for a late lunch.  Much to our wondering eyes, it was not even outrageously captive-audience-at-a-resort pricey.  James stayed back to play with grandma and then refused vehemently to nap at all,which rendered him fairly crabby the rest of the day. 

Romance!

Romance!

Molly and Mark made tasty fish tacos for dinner, and we all enjoyed some good family time on the lanai, backed up by the sound of waves crashing on the beach.  Tomorrow, a visit to El Yunque, the only rainforest in the US!

Thorn: no nap.  erg.

Rose: the beach! the sun! the fun! the rum!

Bud: La Mina waterfall in E Yunque

I'm interrupting this blog's long winter's nap with some news

Erica and I braved 19 degree Black Friday early morning temps to stand in line for a bit at Best Buy for a new camera. Crass, I know, but James was already well up, Cheryl was willing to watch him crawl around for awhile (we're in Naperville), and we figured there was no point in waiting for them to sell out of the door buster camera deal we've had our eye for quite awhile.

After much research, we settled on the pricey-but-worth-it Sony a6000 as our Christmas present to one another.  We weren't really satisfied with the quality of pictures we were getting from our point-and-shoot (which also lately has developed a spot on the sensor which appears as a dark blob in every shot), so we pulled the trigger on something that we hope will take excellent pictures and do so for many years. 

I'm a complete photography novice past "point the camera at desired object and press button," so I've been reading up on how to use all of the bewildering options this camera has, as well as some of the basic manual settings know-how that will allow me to make the most of what it offers.  So far, so...decent?  Yesterday's shots were a mixed bag, save when the auto function was on; I went outside this morning to take picture of the snow, and ended up with a lot of white-outs (again, unless the auto settings were engaged.)  Still, I'm very happy with the quality of the good ones.

Here's a sampling from this morning:

This one got a bit overexposed

There's a little bird in there, making this Nature Photography

The James shots turned out pretty well.  We did a photo shoot for our upcoming Christmas card, and I also got some good ones of him ranging over the house:

We're excited to set the camera loose on our sure-to-be-scenic trip to Puerto Rico over Christmas vacation with mom and dad, Aunt Molly and Uncle Mark, and Silva and Claire.  We'll have full daily reports.

Grant

Day 10: Home

We left Novato, or rather the Days Inn located on a deserted stretch of highway outside of Novato, around 10 and headed toward Oakland for our return flight.  With just a bit of time to spare, we stopped off at Oakland's surprisingly cool Jack London Square and strolled a farmer's market that wasn't selling a single organic thing.  JUST KIDDING.

Jack London Square is the home of Heinold's First and Last Chance, a tiny shack of a bar so named because, for sailors, it was the first chance to get liquored up when coming ashore and the last chance to do so before setting sail.  Jack London himself drank there, often before heading out on one of his adventures to the great white north.  Since it wasn't yet 11:30am, it was closed.

The plane ride home was not quite as smooth as the ride out, but it certainly could have been worse.  All in all, Erica and I are agreed that James performed spectacularly on this trip, and that he has promise as a world traveler, whenever such an opportunity may arise.

Actually, it semi will this December, when we jet with my folks and the Carlsons to sunny Puerto Rico!  So, this blog will return then, but perhaps even a bit sooner with little snippets of things here and there.


--Grant

Day 9: PCH

Erica and I drove the PCH from San Diego to Sonoma County on our honeymoon.  This trip, we went the other way--from way up in the north down to the Bay.  We didn't manage to get in the little blip of about 5 miles north of Crescent City into Oregon, nor the little blip from Bolinas, where we ended the day, to Muir Beach, just north of Frisco (the locals love it when you call it that).  But we've now covered 99% of that magnificent stretch of tarmac, so that's gotta be worth something.

We were worried that today was going to be a bad day for James because it involved so much driving time.  We needn't have.  He was a grand champion sleeper in the car today, possibly because of his amazing genes, possibly because the road was as serpentine as they come, and driving on it felt like rocking to him. (I wanted to write "the road was windy", as in, it winded a lot.  Like a clock that one winds.  Not "windy."  Like a lot of wind blowing around.  Roads don't blow wind, of course, but it's hard to dislodge the homograph "windy" from one's mind when writing "windy" because "windy" is a much more commonly encountered word. You follow me?)

We made it almost two hours before he stirred, all the way from Ft. Bragg to the tiny art colony of Jenner.  We stopped, stretched, and had the best clam chowder I've ever tasted at a little roadside stand run by extremely crunchy hippies.  James loved the view from the back porch of the Russian River meeting the Pacific Ocean:

Cool handmade hat courtesy of Mary Ernesti

The drive south of Jenner was beautiful.  We woke a sleepy James to take a series of pictures, the best one of which is this:

At Sonoma State Beach

But I'm also kind of partial to this one, too:

We cruised into Point Reyes Station around 2:30 and met up with John and Kaity Hunt for some cheese tasting at an artisanal/organic/local/etc. creamery. Incidentally, the town of Pt. Reyes Station sits at the foot of Tamales Bay, a long finger of water that separates the Pt. Reyes Peninsula from Marin County. The Bay itself sits atop a submerged portion of the San Andreas Fault, meaning that the land on the other side of the Bay is one of the very few pieces of our continent that are not part of the North American Techtonic Plate. Is it xenophobic to find that weird?

The mountain in the background is not one of us.

After Pt. Reyes, we headed to the small surfing hamlet of Bolinas, which is famous for not wanting visitors. So much so, in fact, that the New York Times has done no less than two separate travel features on its notorious misanthropy in the last decade, and every guide book mentions how the locals tear down road signs pointing to their town. Bolinas itself was quite packed today with tourists. We walked along its dark sand beach for awhile watching surfers in the frigid waves, and then headed into town for a beer and some fresh calamari.

With the Hunts at cold and windy Bolinas Beach

Kudos to baby James, who has now visited both American oceans before turning five months!

We left John and Kaity in Bolinas and headed to our hotel in pleasant Novato for our trip's last evening. James, who had refused to sleep the whole afternoon, dropped off to dreamland almost immediately after we took off.  Tomorrow it's back home and back to the grind.  But it's not tomorrow yet, so we'll hang on to vacation as long as we can.

Thorn: Nearing the end of vacation.

Rose: The Hunts, PCH views

Bud: The Golden Gate bridge tomorrow--I'm always a sucker.

Car Miles: 190.5

Total Miles: 3141

Day 8: Forest to Coast

James slept until 7:45 this morning, which means that upon awaking ourselves we felt pretty damn good.  Lest you think the California coast is one long stretch of sun-kissed bikini bimbos frolicking playfully in the warm surf, I'm here to tell you that north of, say, Los Angeles, its mostly fog and chill.  It was about 55 and cloudy when we left Eureka's sublime Rodeway Inn and we didn't find warmer weather until we got to Humboldt Redwoods State Park further inland.

Humboldt Redwoods proudly serves up the largest contiguous swath of old growth Coastal Redwoods in the world.  And because it boasts both a protective mountain range to the west that blocks the coastal marine layer and massive alluvial plains along the Eel River and its tributary Bull Creek--perfect conditions for redwoods--it grows 'em big. 100 of the tallest 134 trees in the world are in this park, including 7 of the top 10.  How about that, huh?  This is a blog where you learn stuff.

We started out in the Founders Grove, a grove of huge trees named after the founders of the Save-the-Redwood League.  The StRL were a group of bourgeois alarmists who had had enough of the lumber baronage chopping down every tall tree in the state.  Founded in 1918, the League spent its time and money (it raised over $300,000,000 in today's dollars!) convincing other landed elite not connected to Big Timber to buy up redwood land. They were wildly successful for an environmental charity in early-20th century terms, and most of the old growth areas today owe their continued existence to their efforts.  Anyway, back to the Grove.

It was boss.  The centerpiece of the grove is the Founders Tree, named for the founders of the League. At 364 feet, it's is 59 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty + pedestal, and quite girthy.  Here's a snapper of the giant:

Another curio of the Grove is the so-called Dyerville Giant, a 2,000 year old titan which stood 370 feet when it toppled in 1991 (here's a dated but interesting story about its fall).  I had been wondering about the rate that these bad boys decay, given that a.) many of the fallen trees seem to have been there rotting away for quite a long while, and b.) the forest floor isn't particularly littered with them.  The only answer could be that they fall over very rarely, which makes one appreciate that time in these forests moves much, much slower than it does for us (and MUCH slower than it does for the poor mayfly, whose lifespan lasts all of one day).  In places like the Founders Grove, an entire decade might pass with nothing happening of significance, save for the trees silently growing about 6 feet.  When one does go over, it's big news, like Brigadoon appearing.  The unlucky tree will then rot there for 50 years until it turns into loam, and, in time, other redwoods.

The Dyerville Giant helped put all of this in perspective. It has been 23 years now since it fell, and yet it still very much looked like a tree lying on its side.  Here are some pictures to give you some idea of what I'm talking about:

Erica at the base

James, holding things down in the foreground, and Erica way, way, down the at the midpoint of the trunk, basically invisible to all except those who can somehow zoom in on their computer screens

Erica took this picture from the midpoint of the trunk, at the same spot at which she is standing in the above picture.  That's me way down there at the top of the tree.  See, it's BIG!

After gaping at these trees for awhile, we drove to the inventively-named "Big Trees" section of the park.  Erica strapped James into our (borrowed) Ergo side-carry style and we had a very nice 2.4 mile walk in the woods.  James love it.  Erica got peed on, but enjoyed it nevertheless in a matronly sort of way.  

Happy Hikers

With James' nap time growing near, we packed things up and hit the road.  We had big plans to go see Mendocino tonight, but it was slow-going on Highway 1, with its twists and turns, so we landed in Ft. Bragg, checked in to our hotel, and headed out for dinner.  James made it most of the way through our meal at the absolutelyamazingandtotallyawesome North Coast Brewing taproom, where I partook of the beer sampler and calamari steak (this is the second time we've encountered "calamari steak" on this trip.  I've never seen it before in my life.  It's a thing?).  Then the boy kind of lost it, so we took him back to the hotel and put him down for the night.

Tomorrow is a long day in the car, and it will be interesting to see how James handles it.  He has been very, very good so far, easily exceeding his parents expectations, but we've got over 4 hours of car seat time planned, and it's going to be an adventure.  We're hopeful to meet up with John and Katie Hunt in Pt. Reyes Station for some cheese tasting tomorrow afternoon.  Let's hope we make it there without incident/meltdown.

Thorn: hmmm...long car rides?  They are beautiful, though...
Roses: Dyreville Giant and the Bull Creek Flats hike
Bud: the secretive town of Bolinas

Car miles: 135
Total miles: 2950.5

Day 7: Behind the Redwood Curtain

We left dreary Crescent City and the even drearier Curly Redwood Lodge around 9am and hopped on Highway 101 South to Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park.  The schedule today was light, and we took a few short treks though the flat alluvial plains of the park where the behemoths grow.  The pace was slack, but the scenery was alllll right. James mostly slept during our first set of walks, which were level enough to take the stroller.  Erica was on her photographical game today.

I'm calling this the Handstand Tree

Here's another shot of the ol' Handstander from farther back.  I'm the tiny human one at the bottom.

And I snapped this one of Erica shortly thereafter:

We had been told that the gem of Prairie Creek was Fern Canyon, with its 50-foot fern covered vertical stone walls.  We took a seemingly endless dirt road to Gold Bluffs Beach, where we espied some rare Roosevelt Elk, and then drove another 4 miles along the beach to the base of Fern Canyon.  Sadly, it turned out to be more or less a Turkey Run-type affair, albeit a bit greener.  I love Turkey Run, but as far as natural wonderment on this trip goes: thorn.

Leaving Prairie Creek, we headed to the be-bike laned, bicycle recycling program-initiating, uber-crunchy, Arcata, billed as the most progressive city in America. In 2003, it outlawed voluntary compliance with the Patriot Act and its city council several times voted to impeach George W. Bush.  Indeed, their city council has outlawed many wasteful, harmful, and illiberal things.  The town is so liberal that it seems you're not allowed to do anything.  

Our plan was a loose one, and it consisted of just strolling around town checking out just how many head shops one small seaside village can cram into its downtown.  The main square was very pretty, and so we threw a towel down and let James roll around in the shade for awhile.  A kindly, bearded young man in a tie dye t-shirt sat nearby and played Grateful Dead songs on his acoustic guitar (not kidding).  After while I began to notice more hippie-type guys and gals, though not necessarily of the friendly bearded variety.  More of the it-was-cool-when-I-was-20-and-unwashed-and-reading-Jack-Kerouac-novels-to-move-to-California-with-no-job-plans-other-than-to-kindly-panhandle-but-now-I'm-35-and-still-unwashed-and-still-in-California-and-just-as-poor-and-I've-got-a-drug-habit-to-feed-and-my-panhandling-has-gotten-rather-more-aggressive variety.  So we split, and headed to Eureka's fabulous Rodeway Inn, where I now sit typing this.  

We had a lovely dinner of indifferent pub grub and pretty good, but hardly world-beating, craft brews at Lost Cost Brewery.  James slept through the whole thing like a good boy.  Tomorrow, it's off to Humboldt Redwoods State Park, our last redwoods park.

Thorn: Fern Canyon, slow drivers on one lane roads

Rose: Great morning redwood hikes

Bud: Humboldt Redwoods, the largest tract of old growth redwoods in existence.

--Grant