Lisa on a pony.

Tom first did not get on a horse, but soon changed his mind.

After returning from Oregon we were looking forward to our next trip with the kids. In a hot weather it is best to cool down at the seaside, and so we headed for Half Moon Bay. Lemos farm offers pony rides, which we regard a little as a program for Lizzy. She keeps attending Tom's trips to various trains, why should she not have once again something to her liking? Tommy first claimed he did not want to ride a horse, but he soon changed his mind and in the end seemed to enjoy it. After the ponies, we continued to Pigeon Point Lighthouse and then to our beach in Davenport. It appears that Lisa had ceased to be afraid of water; she had transformed into a duck and demands to splash. Hence all we need to do is release our offspring on a beach and relax. Tom digs in the sand and Lisa runs up and down the surf line.

On the following day we loaded kids' bikes and went to Vasona Park with Matýsek and Filip. All children had bicycles, Hippo and I were pedestrians, and Radka rode a scooter. Tom and Filip biked like crazy, while Lisa rode hers with a dignity of a small town mayor's wife; still we had managed to deliver the whole team about one and half mile up the trail, and get them a ride on the local attraction, namely miniature train and a carousel. Then there was begging for a hot dog, and I declared it a lunch. The whole biking team had to endure the whole stretch back to the cars and then to our swimming pool. Finally a program where kids get sure tired faster than we adults -- while they jump and swim and dive, we can sit back, relax, and have a drink.

Juniors can now properly enjoy the beach.

We have rented a huge slide for our neighborhood party.

I have another, funny story about our pool, though. A neighbor came visiting, with her four years old Dominic. Tom behaved absolutely awfully, he kept bossing Dominic around, was grabbing his toys and generally made himself a nuisance. After several (fruitless) talkings-to, my patience ran out and I took my son to his room, forbidding him to get out to us until he learns to behave properly. Later, I was chatting with Dominic's mom, when she told me that there was a note for me in the window. Tom was standing behind our family room patio door, holding up a hand-made sign saying OPEN MAMA. What was I to do, after receiving a duly submitted, written request, except allowing him passage out. I was incredibly proud of how beautifully he wrote it -- until the moment, however, when I discovered that he doodled it on the bedroom hardwood floor, using a permanent marker, which soaked right through the paper. Sometimes one does not know whether to laugh or to cry, or whether to praise the kids or tear them into small pieces.

Then came our Independence Day. Like in the past two years, neighbors got together and organized a party, this time a whole week ahead of the actual date. First year we had been meeting and planning and debating. Second year we just agreed to do it just like the year before, and since we had the practice, it turned out quite well. This year there were just a few e-mails circulating, and nothing had seemed to point to any organization -- and then it all just happened. People came. They brought bowls of side dishes, salads and desserts. They even conjured some sun shades; a few brought their own lawn chairs. A gang of pubescent girls took to organizing the kids in sliding on a big slide, working with the little ones for several hours. There was a parade, meat grilling, chatting with neighbors, water sliding.

Bigger kids lasted in sliding for many hours.

Tommy liked to ride behind this veteran car. Both children pedaled like in a race, thus keeping up with the head of the parade.

Lisa was a bit afraid of the slide, so she went down only a few times and then played with her peers in a small pool. Tom at first fooled around and was being obnoxious, blocking the slide and harassing others, so I pulled him off and served him lunch. This is a common symptom of hunger with all my man (yes you too, Sid!). Tom had sat there for thirty minutes and systematically feed himself, after which he went back to the slide and used it for subsequent three hours without a conflict. He did not even cause a scene when signaled our retreat. It had been, after all, a quite hot day and I had been frying in the road since nine in the morning, and had enough of it all. Back home we all jumped in our swimming pool and finally cooled off. Tommy was perfectly content -- although firemen did not come with their big red engine, the parade had been led by Marty's veteran car, and then he exhausted himself on the slide -- simply a big success.

Perhaps the only person who did not enjoy the party was our granny. She claimed having an indigestion problem and was not feeling well. When she later started aching so much that she could not sleep at night, we went to the doctor. That is -- the kids and I drove granny to the clinic, she met there with Martina who acted as an interpreter, and I continued with the kids to visit Gabka, so that my juniors would not need to spend the afternoon in the doctors' waiting room. The doctor had said that it was most likely a gall bladder problem, they collected granny's blood for lab tests, and we took her home again. She was scheduled for ultrasound to confirm the diagnosis, but never made it. Shingles showed up on the next day, the blood tests did not confirm gall bladder, and so it would seem that her pain was all coming from the shingles.

Our whole family enjoyed wading in the mouth of Big Sur River.

Fog (cloud) alternated with sunshine on the Big Sur coast; a pleasant cool wind was blowing.

Shingles is probably much better alternative to gall bladder issues, but it means for us that we lost our granny for now. Shingles is caused by the same virus like chickenpox, and is contagious. Our children had been inoculated, but this represents about seventy percent protection, and we have been isolating granny at Yvonne's in Monterey. She's got her friends down there, and we stay in touch over the phone, waiting for her illness to pass. We shall enjoy her presence again in the fall, and we'd better manage without her for a few weeks.

Originally we did not want to drive anywhere on Fourth of July, but after all we had been around the house for a few weeks, and the atmosphere started to resemble a submarine. Furthermore I found out on the internet that folks in my beloved Bridgeport had planned several days of celebrations, consisting of country style affairs like grease pole climbing competition and rubber duck races; it was a matter of a moment to decide: our family must go on a trip.

I started packing on Thursday, and we threw a few remaining things in the car on Friday morning, and drove out. At the first intersection, Hippo demanded to know where the power invertor for the computer was, so we turned around and went back. On the second intersection, he asked whether we packed his trousers and sweatshirt (although I told him that I had cleaned the whole bus empty and put only things inside that we had agreed to take along) -- and so we were returning twice.

We stopped in Tracy for lunch, and soon we were exiting the freeway in French Camp, continuing on over our back roads. According to a later report of Sid's colleague, we did well, for allegedly a traffic jam in Oakdale stretched out to another town. We sped, as is our custom, through East Carter Road, where another jam consisted of one pickup truck driving ahead of us, and another one going in the opposite direction. Geezers in these lemons endeavored to chat from window to window, but at least they first made enough room for us to pass, before taking the whole dirt road for themselves.

Snowball fight in July (10 thousand feet elevation).

Snow is cold, even in summer.

Both juniors demanded snow in Sonora Pass. This year we had to walk a bit to reach the snow line, but eventually we found a satisfactory snow bank. The kids soaked their feet and sandals, and eagerly joined a family snowball fight. One of the highlights of this trip was the opportunity to freely target their parents.

Tommy asked to build the tent "by the creek which we have to ford several times", which we were glad to oblige with, heading across Bircham Flat to nine thousand feet altitude. After all, forecast promised too hot for this weekend to chance sleeping at Buckeye, and we reckoned incredible crowds were filling the wilderness, so one could expect a camping site near hot springs to overflow with humanity. We built our giga-tent, allowing offspring to splash in the local mini-brook, and then Hippo demanded a beer at Jeff's.

I rather like this piece of California, even just because of this restaurant owner who always welcomes us, maintains excellent beer, makes wonderful Texan barbecue meat, and sees no problem with changing the menu by the immediate fancy of his customers. With the feeling of being "home" again, we sat down for a while, ate, drank, kids got a couple of lollipops, and we drove back into our alpine den.

Lisa even slept almost till eight in the morning and thus we picked up an unforeseen delay. We got to the Hays Street Cafe in Bridgeport by nine, which is the time of their peak business. We thought that if we were not to catch a breakfast there, we'd make a reservation for lunch, and in the meantime call on various attractions in the town; alas, they refused to take our reservation, as they would not be able to manage it. I could relate to that -- the small town was bursting at the seams, with festive madness all around. It was this nice madness, without nervousness and anger, simply a heavy concentration of holiday-minded people. Eventually we resolved to wait for our breakfast; we made it just so before the parade started.

After nine months of absence, I missed my favorite Eastern Sierra Nevada

Our mega-tent at Cottonwood Creek

Tommy refused to approach the parade, and spent all its duration in the front yard of the restaurant. The rest of us moved just a few yards closer, admiring floats, private participants and local clubs and associations. From a very diverse list, I would like to mention Marine Corps on horseback, fire fighters with Smokey the bear, Lewis and Clark expedition including Sacagawea, Kentucky Bluegrass Band, Volunteer Mounted Posse, emigrant covered wagon, stage coach, various carts, tractors, a snow plough, miniature coaches pulled by little ponies and Aurora Town float, carrying a surveyor, prospectors as well as loose women holding up signs AURORA CALIFORNIA and AURORA NEVADA and also WHERE'S THE STATE LINE? Aurora, a gold mining town founded in the year 1860 used to have a population of ten thousand and was (simultaneously!) a seat of Mono County (California) and Esmeralda County (Nevada), until somebody re-surveyed the state line and discovered that whole Aurora indeed falls inside Nevada.

The parade ended by eleven and we were pondering whether to immerse into the whirl of festivities in the town (for I had been longing to witness a rodeo), but a blasting sun convinced us that we'd be better off in a forest, several thousand feet higher. We had never explored Lundy Canyon with our offspring, and thus were headed there. Juniors appreciated the presence of a creek with rapids right from a parking lot, and we had to keep them away from it while we were still packing and preparing for our hike.

Aurora Town float

Lundy Canyon

Tommy rumbled at the beginning that it was going to be too long a hike and that he would not make it, but then he discovered a rather fun attraction right in the first meadow. The clearing was not just a meadow, it also was a little pond. Certainly not for since long ago, as we could still see bushes and regular grass, now submerged, and its banks sported downed trees with stumps chewed into characteristic conical shapes. There was a crafty weaved beaver dam at the bottom edge of the new lake. Two years ago we had encountered a similar pond at a slightly higher elevation, and could not figure out, how it came to be that many trees were now dying in the middle of a lake; we guessed an accident and higher volumes of spring melt. This year we understood -- the dams are being built and meadows are being flooded by beavers.

We ate our snacks on a rock, and juniors tried to spot waterfalls in the distance. Continuing upstream, my Hippo had to part with his water bottle: although we returned within ten minutes of him forgetting it on the aforementioned rock, the elegant, shiny aluminum container was gone. Till this day we don't know, why someone would take somebody else's water bottle from a hiking trail. Especially since our hitherto experience was that nothing got ever stolen from us; such a deed appears quite nonsensical.

Nevertheless we moved on. Tommy was quite ecstatic on account of having to cross small streams and balance on logs over water. Lisa started to fade away and complain about achy legs, tight shoes, hunger, tiredness and so on. We found a spot where we could stretch a blanket, where Lisa and Hippo actually lied down and rested. Tommy kept jumping around the creek, walking on logs, and subsequently asking for more hiking. I took him a little bit farther up the trail, to a prospector's cabin. That satisfied him and we could rejoin the rest of our family.

A beaver dam at Mill Creek

Cheeeeeese!

On the way back downhill, even Tom began to feel tired, and so I think we turned back just in time. We pumped gas at the junction to Tioga Pass, as our tank was below half, and also bought a six-pack of hard lemonade. They only had bad beer, and drinking it in such heat brings a kind of stupor. Slightly reinforced lemonade seemed a better choice. We returned to our tent, released the kids, and took to reading and sipping. Meanwhile, children were busy carrying water in their little buckets and pouring it behind the tent on some kind of heap construction. I have a feeling that they haven't actually managed to make the tent wet.

We cooked dinner; slowly the time had come to journey back to Bridgeport to see the fireworks. Alas, Lisa fell asleep on the way there and we had really hard time waking her up; subsequently she did not show much interest in firecrackers. She only wanted to be held so she could sleep. Tommy, on the other hand, was ecstatic, although he carefully held on to my hand and jerked with every large bang. At least one tenth of California must have come to Bridgeport to watch the fireworks, with perhaps half of Nevada; the ensuing traffic jam took a while to disentangle -- but everything went cool. Having spotted an endless line of cars headed for Twin Lakes and Buckeye, we were quite glad for our lonely camping site by Cottonwood Creek.

Prospector's cabin in Lundy Canyon

On a bridge over one of many tributaries to Mill Creek

Naturally, the children slept long in the morning, so we had stumbled into Bridgeport by eleven. Our original plan counted on catching the opening of the rodeo at ten, which of course we missed. The staff at the gate mentioned that so far the riders were only getting ready and the official beginning would be in a few minutes. Thus we bought our tickets and dragged our bucking Tommy, who in any case did not care to see horses race, onto the stands. We had never been to a rodeo before, and so I can't judge whether this one was typical or special. In any case, it was a ranch rodeo -- local ranches competing with each other in various categories. Which means it was no traveling show, but instead just people who still earn their living by raising cattle. I had a feeling that we were actually among very few people who were not in any way related with the competitors, who, when not performing, would ride around and mix with the audience.

We lasted through the ceremonial opening, although I had to tell Lisa a few times to be quiet during the national anthem, and prod Tom not to pick his nose. Then came a competition in calf branding. Lisa demanded to know if these were nice horseys and nice cows and why the cows run away and why these men tie them up. She calmed down after she learned that the calves won't get harmed and after they get marked with a pink paint, they cowboys would release them again. We hope to have explained to Tommy what it's about and that it was just a competition. I have to say that it was interesting to watch how different teams handled their four assigned calves. Since I manage to keep up on a horse just so, and I have never hit even a static object with a lasso, I could not help but gape with an open mouth at cowboys controlling their horses by legs alone and slinging a loop on hind legs of a furiously zigzagging calf. We could gaze, fascinated, at this theater until it was over, but then we noticed our vision getting all blurry on account of heat and hunger; we left to refresh ourselves at Hays Street Cafe. Noticing a seemingly endless stream of motor homes leaving the area, we concluded that we would go home only much later that night, after the biggest rush recedes.

Driving down from our camp site in the morning, we enjoyed a view to the mountains around Sonora Pass.

Rodeo continued through the mid-day heat, but fortunately at such an easy pace that we still managed to see bronco riding after lunch. I think that everybody loved it. It was a challenge, explaining to Lisa that broncos were no evil horses, but only untamed and untrained to carry a rider. Our daughter told us in return that she did not want to be an untamed horse, that she was a nice horse. Well, we can always hope for it to last.

The hat was the first to fall.

A horse and his (grounded) rider.

Getting back to our campsite, we let the kids play some more while we rested, finishing the remaining lemonades, and slowly packing all our stuff. We moved on to Walker, to see Jeff and to let him serve us an early dinner and beer. And then it was time to slowly wind across Sonora Pass towards home. Easter side highways looked pretty deserted; traffic picked up after Strawberry. After some tipster (a.k.a. SUV) could not get over my overtaking him (with my white van!), and who tail-gated me for about twenty miles with high-beams shining, we turned off toward Knight's Ferry and continued over our favorite back roads. We re-entered the stream just before Tracy, but I have to say that since they had widened the freeway there, traffic got quite better. By then, Sid was driving, and I got my usual headache. Descents from ten thousand feet of elevation don't do me well. Still there were plenty of cars going, but no jams, and we got home by eleven.

On can only be surprised how some things linger in kids' memories of such a trip. Tom told his teacher in pre-school that we went over some really bad roads and mommy told daddy to drive carefully. And allegedly he also mentioned that we camped near a creek and that we like to camp where there are not so many people. Well, at least something.