Spirit West Coast - Day 3

This morning we had to make an unexpected but quick trip into town to buy a new cell phone charger. My car charger has been intermittently working for months and it picked right now, in the middle of nowhere, with me and my kids alone with thousands of other people to get lost among, to die. Grr...

Luckily, after the 10 minute drive down the hill, Walgreen's is only another 10 minutes or so drive and thankfully they had exactly what I needed. Back up the hill, I made a very late breakfast, and the girls and I discussed what we should do for the day.

Bailey mentioned that she'd been playing on the 'rides' all day on Thursday. She had a full-event wristband for the rides and was planning on going back today to play some more. A and K really wanted to go with her, so I agreed we'd go look at the prices and try to make it work. To be fair, these aren't exactly real rides. It's actually a series of the really big bouncy houses that are shaped like slides and obstacle courses, but the chance to play with the teenagers was definitely the draw here, I think.

Surprisingly, this morning A had been playing with Grace and Gabriel and decided she wanted to spend the day with them today as much as possible. So, K went off with Bailey and A stayed behind with Grace's family. I only had C with me because she had gotten in trouble and refused to make it right - otherwise, I might have been all alone!

While we were at the ticket booth yesterday, I completely forgot to redeem the Facebook prize I had won about a month back. I'd won $20 at the merch tent and I needed to claim the gift certificate at guest services. Even though I'd already bought my SWC t-shirt, I knew there'd be something else I wanted to buy, so C and I headed back up that hill to pick it up.

Once we got inside the event gates, I pulled out my calendar and noticed that Jeremy Camp was playing tonight at the K-Love stage. We'd just seen him at the Rock 'N Worship Roadshow, and I was kind of in the music for some rock music, so I made a last minute change and decided to sit at the Air1 Stage tonight. Unfortunately I'd already told Bailey's family and Grace & Gabriel's family that we'd meet them at the K-Love concert lawn, but we got it all settled after a few phone calls. Bailey and K met C and I in the bounce house area and I bought them unlimited ride wristbands for the day. A was in Veggieland on the bounce houses there, so I just pulled the wagon next to a big bounce house, set up a chair and chilled out for a few hours while they all played. I spent much of that time working on C and K's crocheted hats, especially since C's yarn was knotted to death.

Although we could hear the concerts at the Air1 and Rally stages, we actually didn't go to any concerts or do much of anything until after dinner. None of us had eaten much for lunch, so I decided we should head back up to camp to have an early dinner of hamburgers before the evening concert. We abandoned the wagon near the bounce houses and headed up the hill to our campsite. While we were walking, it suddenly dawned on me that I had packed the charcoal, the lighter fluid, the lighter itself, the hamburgers and all the fixings, but I didn't remember actually putting the barbecue in the back of the van. Darn it! Our neighbors had a little tabletop bbq, but they weren't around to borrow it, so I just made do pan-frying the hamburgers and turning them with a plastic slotted spoon (apparently I'd also forgotten the spatula).

After dinner, the kids were a little upset when they found out we weren't going to the concert lawn where there friends were, but they amused themselves playing on the bounce houses while I sat and watched Manafest. I even let A go ahead and get a wristband for the big bounce houses. They gave it to her for half-price since it was so late in the day, which was very nice of them.

I only recognized a couple of Manafest's songs. Turns out they are from Canada, just like the headliner Thousand Foot Krutch, and it almost seemed like they had gotten their break from TFK, too, or were trying to be like them, or something. I felt kind of bad for the guys from Manafest because apparently they'd left their lead singer's guitar at the car rental shop when they'd picked up their car, so they had to borrow one from TFK to do their show. How embarrassing!

Sadly, the Thousand Foot Krutch show started so incredibly late. I think maybe a speaker didn't show up or something, but I would say they were probably about 30 minutes late by the time they finally started. By then, the bounce houses had all shut down and the girls had curled up under a blanket on the asphalt. Mike had made his way to the concert grounds, too. I'd hoped he'd be able to make it for Friday night and Saturday, although I wasn't expecting him to be able to come into the concert area on Friday night with just a one-day ticket for Saturday, but he said there was no one around anywhere so he just walked in. Weird.

After A got tired of her sisters kicking her under the blanket, I decided to take her up front near the stage to show her what it's like up there. I remember taking Jessey near the stage of a rock concert here when he was just a couple years older than A, so I figured she'd enjoy it. Being smaller than I am, she managed to push her way through the crowd all the way to the front until I couldn't see her anymore. I told her I'd wait at the back of the packed area for her when she came out.

She emerged several songs later and asked me what a mosh pit was. I explained the concept to her and she told me she'd been told by some guy up front that she should move because they were making a mosh pit there. Mosh pits aren't allowed at SWC and are usually diffused verbally, by shining flashlights, or by spraying water, if needed. The thought of water being sprayed on those guys was pretty funny to her, but I'm glad they make an effort to keep things under control here. I was passed by several security guards making their way through and around the crowds at that stage in that front area. It's certainly not dangerous here, but the Air1 stage is always a little more rowdy and 'active' than the K-Love stage.

Have you ever seen a mosh pit up close? Maybe you should try it once! One of my earliest memories of Mike was when he was protecting me from the people inside of a mosh pit. (Note: Although most mosh pits are safe, please visit them with caution. The mosh pit at Woodstock '99 was definitely not safe, although it was funny to walk through the area later and see hundreds of unclaimed shoes left behind once the crowd dissipated.)

Because this concert had been delayed so much, we only got to see part of it before the girls were too exhausted to stay anymore. Originally, it was only supposed to go until 10:30, but additional delays had put it way past then, so we packed up and went back to camp, hearing TFK's most well-known song "Rawkfist" on our way out. I like Rawkfis, but I now have a new favorite song by the band. It's very Metallica-esque, and it's a pretty awesome rock song.

Let The Sparks Fly

Spirit West Coast - Day 2

Our first night camping at Spirit West Coast went very smoothly. It was actually very quiet here, quieter than any national or state park campgrounds I've been to, and although it was very windy all night, the inside of the tent was warm and cozy. The overcast sky also lent a hand in blocking the morning sunrise for a couple more hours and with no reason to get up early, we enjoyed our slow-moving morning.

Nothing happens at Spirit West Coast before 10:30 am, with the main concerts beginning around 3 pm, so we knew we had plenty of time to relax and enjoy our morning without worrying about missing anything. Once the girls had all made their way out of the tent, I made them some sausage for breakfast. Oddly enough I almost never cook breakfast when we're at home. The girls usually just want cereal, waffles or bagels for breakfast and they make them for themselves. But when we're camping, I take advantage of the chance to cook elaborate breakfasts of all kinds. It probably seems a little backwards from the way most people do things, but it makes for a fun camping experience, I guess.

After breakfast I got ready to face my first challenge of the day - taking a shower. Even though this campground didn't have flushing toilets, they advertised that they would have showers onsite, a must for a happy camping experience for me. I wondered how many there would be and how the hundreds of campers would share them all, but I was really surprised to find that they were actually big semi-trucks that had pulled up and parked along the edge of the campground. I found out later that all the other nearby campgrounds had to walk all the way to ours to take a shower. I guess that's why they called ours a "Premium" campsite.

 It was about 10:30 when I headed down to the showers and luckily for me there was hardly anyone using them at the time. The rows of chairs out front told me that there must be times where there's a line to take showers, but I just walked right in today.

The semi-truck was filled with small shower stalls that each had two curtains in them. Between the curtains was a bench where you could set your stuff. It kinda slammed down when you tried to lay it flat, and when it was folded up it attached to the wall with velcro. Ingenious, no?

I was glad for a nice, hot shower (free, too!), and I came out to find the girls playing with their new friends and reading some of the library books they'd brought. Somehow we ended up with two overstuffed bags of library books in the car, and I'm pretty sure the girls read nearly all of them by the time we packed up to go home. Something about the wind and the cold made them want to do nothing but curl up in the tent or the car and read books for hours and hours.

We eventually made it over to the concert area, after making a quick stop to buy our event wristbands at the ticket center. After many years of coming to this event, I finally got smart this year and brought chairs, snacks and blankets, towed in our new wagon, down to the concert lawn. I should also note that this is the first year ever that I didn't bring any strollers to SWC, so I'm a little nervous about the girls trekking out of there late at night. I do know that I won't miss pushing 150+ pounds of stroller up those endless hills this year - that's for sure!

The first thing the girls wanted to do (actually, the only thing they wanted to do) at SWC had nothing to do with concerts, or anything at all to do with the festival, actually. They wanted to catch crayfish. Jessey has caught crayfish at the small pond there in years past, and they got a few tips from someone who was using a trap at Fallen Leaf Lake in Lake Tahoe. He told them to use salami. They brought some sort of weird homemade contraption to the campground and I did have salami, but they forgot to bring it down to the concert site. It really is a long haul up and down that hill, so they decided to try to catch them by hand instead. (I know we're supposed to say 'crawdads' here in California, but the girls like to say the crayfish are "cray", which means crazy - see the Family Force 5 below.) 

They did actually manage to catch one within a few minutes. 

Then they proceeded to get covered in mud (which I'm sure is actually the rotting corpses of who-knows-what, seriously that pond is disgusting!) and were immediately banned from the lakeside after that. Unfortunately there's no running water anywhere at SWC, and the hand sanitizer would probably run away in fear at the collection of germs they now had on their hands and feet. I could just imagine myself with three kids with the stomach flu in the tent in the middle of the night. Uh, no.

Needless to say they were not happy about my declaration, but I didn't care. And as K's feet began to itch and A's hands started to smell bad, the pleadings became increasingly rare until they stopped altogether. You can't see more than a fraction of an inch into that green-tinted water, and it just sits there year-round, undisturbed.

The only point where we actually walk across the Laguna Seca Raceway is right here at the giant Cooper Tire bridge. I'm not sure how our shoes would ruin the asphalt, but we all stick to the green carpeting just to be safe.

Since we were so close to Veggieland, we thought we'd stop in and see what it was like. This was our first view at some of the cutbacks from the financial setback they suffered last year. The riding ponies were nowhere to be seen. I suddenly realized, though, that as huge as the girls are, they probably would have had to take turns riding that one giant pony they always had in the corral in case the big kids came by. They were a little sad not to be able to ride ponies, and since they all declared themselves too big to play on the bounce houses in this area, we wandered back to the art tent where the face painting had just started. After a brief wait in line, A got her turn. I noticed that only a couple of the people were actually painting kids faces. The rest of them where using some sort of sticker-stencil that they stuck to the kid's face and then painted inside of. I figured that was a good way to get volunteers for this area since they don't have to be all that artistic to pull it off. I was shocked when they actually ended up having a dragon stencil, which is what A wanted. But instead of painting in the stencil area, they rubbed glue all over the area and then stuck glitter to it. She even took the time to add some painted flames to his mouth and I was pretty impressed at how cool it looked (although the picture doesn't do it justice). I didn't know it at the time, but A told me later that the lady said it would last up to a week. I was glad to hear it, especially since I made the girls take showers just a few hours after her face was painted and it was still on there when she came out.

We walked through the vendor area to the concert lawn at the K-Love stage. It's not very crowded on this first day of the festival (which is a Thursday), so we grab a nice spot in the second grass area (the area closest to the stage gets really crowded and you have to fold your chairs up at 5 pm because it gets a little rowdy, too) and setup our chairs. The girl on stage is rapping about changing our view of stereotypes, which I suppose is an accurate thing to sing about considering she's a tiny Korean girl. Her name is HeeSun Lee, and I've never heard of her before.

the second grass area

The next band is Capital Kings, a late add to the festival that was labeled as a band for the dub-steppers in the crowd. Unfortunately my crunk-rockin' dub-step lovin' child is not impressed. She wants to hear songs like Family Force 5's Cray Button, one of her favorites.

There was a little break before The City Harmonic came on and K entertained herself by playing with Grace and Gabriel, whom she'd found nearby on the lawn. They play catch for a long time in the open area on the lawn where no one wants to sit because it's right behind the light towers and you can't see the stage.

When the City Harmonic comes on, I remember why I love this festival so much. It was quite an experience to listen to them sing Manifesto with the bass beats pounding in my heart - truly one of my all-time favorite sensations.

The next band up is Matthew West. I remember seeing him here at SWC before and he is hilarious. C instantly falls in love with him when he goes all 'Adam Sandler' and sings a song he made up while he was waiting for his turn to come on stage. It involves talking about the Port-a-Pottys and is an instant hit with the kids. And thanks to the miracle that is the internet and Youtube, you can all enjoy it, too!

Matthew West really is a funny guy, and he's an amazing songwriter, too. I love seeing him in concert because he can't help but tell the stories behind all the songs he writes. A few years ago, while looking for inspiration for a new song, Matthew initiated a contest. He wanted people to send in their stories and he was going to choose one winner and write a song about their life story. Well, as it turns out, he was so moved by every single one of the thousands of stories he received that he's been writing songs about them ever since. Two full albums have now been released with songs like "Strong Enough", "My Own Little World", "Forgiveness", and the song "Hello, My Name Is", which is currently one of my kids' favorites. The K-Love booth was handing out giant, red and white name-tags that said "Hello, My Name Is" and invited the festival attendees to take them and fill them out with descriptions of their new identities in Christ. It was pretty cool to look around and see the things people had written on their cards as they held them up during the song. Matthew was moved as well by the sheer number of name-tags in the audience.

The last concert of the night was Tenth Avenue North, but by this time the girls were exhausted and hungry and we decided to call it a night. I've seen these guys many times, and I was ok with saving our energy for the bands that were still coming in the next two days, so we packed up our wagon and headed up the hills to the campground. After a quick dinner, the girls crawled in the tent for bed around 9:30 and I headed to the car to watch a movie. I'd brought a little portable DVD player with me since I've been enjoying watching movies on my laptop in bed lately and cozied up with a Netflix rental of Fred Claus.

I also had decided earlier in the day that I'd like to make some hats for the girls since it's considerably colder here than I was expecting. I'd brought a ton of yarn with me thinking I'd play around with it a bit, but I didn't really have any other inspiration. So, while I watched my movie I made A an orange hat with ear flaps and tassels. It was pretty cute!

Someone had a birthday!

I'm interrupting the previously chronological blog posts to bring you this important update - A had a birthday yesterday and somehow she turned 11! I'm not entirely sure how that even happened, but I'm glad she's still the sweet and snuggly girl I love.

When the kids have birthdays, we set aside the entire day for them to plan. They pick breakfast, lunch and dinner, the activities we'll do, the places we go, and occasionally something we'll buy. The whole day is under their control, although we had to make it clear last year that they do not get to control the actions of other people (namely, their sisters) after C decided it would be fun to turn her sisters into her own personal puppets for the day.

So, A's day started with one of her favorite breakfasts, Pillsbury cinnamon rolls from a can, she loves the orange frosting ones in particular, which are a little harder to find sometimes, but we got lucky and found them at the first store we went to. Yum!

She already had lunch and dinner planned out, and had chosen to go to Chuck E. Cheese and bowling for her activities today. I guess I know them so well that there's really no surprise in what they'd pick to do for the day, or maybe the choices are just burned into my brain because they each ask to do them constantly. 

Since we always go to the Chuck E. Cheese's by our house, I thought it would be fun to checkout the giant two-story Chuck E Cheese that we haven't been to in years and is much less familiar to us. I was surprised when we pulled up to the place at how many people were there at 11:30 on a Thursday morning. But after having been there for an hour or so, I totally get it - that place is amazing! I remember liking Chuck E. Cheese as a kid, but the places went way downhill after that. The smaller one got a face-lift a few years back, but last time I came to this one it was the typical run-down arcade where half the games are broken and everything looks three decades old.

This time I was shocked! The games were so cool and so fun that most of the adults were playing them, too. Some adults were even ignoring their kid's pleas for tokens because they didn't want to be interrupted. One man actually asked a total stranger walking by to take his $20 and get him some more tokens because he was on a roll and didn't want to walk away from the machine. Wait a minute, are we at Chuck E. Cheese or a casino in Vegas here?

But don't worry, the place is definitely made for kids. The music is loud, the colors and lights are blinking and bright, and Chuck E. himself makes an appearance every 20-30 minutes or so and runs around the building throwing tickets in the air like a giddy flower girl. The kids scramble behind him like they're chasing a moving pinata, grabbing all the tickets they can off the floor. The place is so dynamic and exciting that I didn't even realize quite how loud it actually was until I got a phone call and my poor Aunt was yelling at me and speaking slowly like I was someone's great-grandpa who's hard of hearing.

A huge touchscreen Fruit Ninja game. It was fun to watch all the kids play this one. They can move their arms so fast! 

A giant Connect 4 game (I heard C won both times they played)

A's haul from a couple of chases after Chuck E.

Games, games, everywhere! (note: this is less than 1/4 of the upper floor)

After spending more than 4 hours at Chuck E. Cheese (and hearing "Slow Ride" a few too many times from the Guitar Hero game behind me), I told them we had to go. Not only was I afraid of ruining the meal schedule (we had people coming over for dinner after all, and 3pm is a pretty late lunch indeed), but I was hungry and I was also afraid we'd run out of time to go bowling before we had to head home and greet guests. Amazingly, my crochet pattern gave me a bigger headache than the arcade games did. Had it been a different day, I wouldn't have minded staying longer at all, and I'm sure we'll be back very soon. Armed with my tablet and my library book, combined with the entertainment of people-watching in this zany place, I was pleasantly distracted the entire time.

C and K had been exchanging their tickets for paper receipts periodically while we were there. At one point K had hit the 500-ticket jackpot, spurring an immediate exchange. But A wanted to wait until the very end, and we were all surprised when she took them down to the machine to be counted.

Wow!

I remember way back when I was a kid, we didn't have these handy receipt printers. If you won 1100 tickets, you had to carry around 1100 tickets. And if you decided you didn't want to spend them all today, you had to haul them all home with you and bring them back each time until you had enough to get what you wanted. I also remember sitting at home as a kid and hand-numbering my tickets on the backside. Why in the world I did this is anyone's guess, but I actually wrote a number on the back of each one of the hundreds of tickets I had, and I had huge rubber-banded wads of them. I think I might still have a few of them somewhere.

At some point between then and now, they instituted the highly error-prone method of weighing tickets, where you would place all of your tickets in a little basket on a scale and the scale would tell you how many tickets were there. I never quite trusted that system.

This new machine reads each ticket as it passes through the rolling wheels and the number counts up for each ticket. When you're all done, you hit the "Print" button and a little receipt comes out. But the more I watched the machine, the more I realized that I think this thing is rigged, too. Not severely, mind you, but I did notice quite a few times that a ticket would go through and the number would not go up. A couple of times, the number actually went down one. It's impossible to count the long rows of tickets as they go in because they go so fast so I only noticed the onsie-twosies, but I found easy solace in the fact that most of those tickets had been picked up off the floor from the generous man in the mouse suit, so I guess Chuck E. gives and Chuck E. takes away. No big deal...

This Chuck E. Cheese location also has tons more options for prizes, and much cooler prizes, too. A decided to spend the 126 tickets, but she wanted to keep the 1000 extra tickets for next time. No idea what she wanted to keep them for, but I recognized the look in her eye as she said it, and I was suddenly glad that we didn't have those paper receipts. She'll never know better, but it was so much more gratifying somehow to walk out of there with a wad of tickets in your hand. You feel so much more accomplished than just holding a little slip of paper. At least she won't have to secretly worry about being mugged in the parking lot this way, though.

I did notice this one prize that seemed a little ironic to me...

C and K happily enjoyed their cotton candy while A 'shopped', and for some reason K decided to make it "flat candy" instead. She actually squeezed it so much that by the time we got home it was a bag of little sugar balls. At least that's better than when it briefly resembled recycled newspaper.

We headed off for a quick lunch at Wasabi, one of A's favorite places to eat. They have yummy chicken teriyaki rice bowls there, but I think she likes it best because she gets to have sushi (actually, California rolls) with her meal. C and K both love the Udon soup, and I'm glad they both do because the bowls are monstrous and even both of them put together can't finish one.

It was almost 4 by the time we were done with lunch and we were quickly running out of time. The grandparents were going to be at our house at 6:30 and we still had some bowling to do (not to mention a quick trip to the grocery store, and hopefully some last-minute house-cleaning ;) Although I would normally take them to the cheaper bowling alley a little further away, we had no choice but to go to the pricey one closer to our house. It's the fancy bowling alley that keeps your credit card when you come in and doesn't tell you how much things cost until you're ready to leave. The one that has a waiter or waitress that comes by your lane every so often and offers you drinks and food, hoping to hike that final price up a little higher still. Ya, that one.

Having my own bowling shoes doesn't save me much money here, but what I can I do? It's the kid's birthday! We settle into our lane and of course A wants to go first. K decides she doesn't want to bowl, so she assigns herself the job of ball-holder, grabbing each of our bowling balls from the return chute and holding it in her lap, handing it to us just before our turn begins.

And just as an added birthday bonus, the very first ball A throws on the very first frame is a STRIKE! 

She won the first game easily and was super excited to play one more. We had (kind of) just enough time to play one more game real quick, even if K wanted to join at the last minute, so we set up to go again.

This bowling alley was actually pretty cool, with a huge supply of bowling balls already distributed at each of the lanes (so no hunting around or arm-wrestling the day camp kids who have all the kids' balls tied up). They also had a bunch of different themes for the scoreboards that you could choose, changing up the animation and color schemes of the TV screen, and they had another cool thing I'd never seen before - they called it the Sparefinder. Unlike the bowling alley we usually go to, which will show a picture telling you which pin to hit and where to hit it, this one actually showed a little video telling you why and showing you what happens after you hit that one. Here, take a look...

Neat, huh? The girls were able to actually see what was going on back there, and they started to notice patterns of where the ball hit and how that changed which pins it hit (or which pins hit other pins). Not that it improved their game at all, since they still subscribe to the 'run - stop - heave the ball' method of bowling they've used since they were little. But it was still pretty cool. And I got an extra chuckle at the animation for the 7-10 split which told you to hit the 7 pin on the left side, and then told you that if you got a lucky bounce it might come back and hit the 10 pin. I guess that's the best strategy you're going to get at that point.

A was not happy that she didn't do as well in the second game. The alley had actually moved us to a different lane between games because they had a birthday party coming in, so at least she had something concrete to blame it on, but somehow she had gone from a dominating first place to a dead-last place game. (And as a shameless plug, I'll go ahead and point out to you that I nearly turkey'd the 10th frame that game :)

Notice the names: "AJ", "PythonLover", "Mommy", and "GuineaPigLover". I'll leave it up to you to decide who was who.

Jessey met us at the bowling alley to watch the last couple of frames, and then we all headed to the grocery store and back home as quick as we could. Typically our family goes out to dinner for birthdays, but A decided she wanted to have Little Caesars this year, a place with no indoor seating. I was actually relieved to be having it at home. It would be a lot cheaper this way, we'd have leftover pizza, and we'd be freer to hang out as long as we wanted. A decided she wanted to watch a movie, so after serving herself pizza and getting her drink, she sat on the couch and promptly ignored everyone in the room. So, she pretty much invited everyone in the family to come over to our house and watch her watch a movie. Yep, sounds about right!

No, actually we did have a great time together. There was much silliness (including watching parts of the movie again in French), much yumminess (with lemon-frosted yellow cake and 5 different flavors of ice cream), and 3 1/2 hours of hanging out and talking with the family. It was a great night!

Happy birthday, A!!

Spirit West Coast - Day 1

Apparently I am a compulsive do-er. There, I said it. If there is some meeting somewhere called Do-er's Anonymous, it is very possible that I should attend at least a few meetings. Our family seems to be stuck in the cycle of exhaustion, extreme exhaustion, recovery, repeat... and I think I'm enjoying it a little more than I should be.

After our camping trip to Lake Tahoe, we were home for a whopping two days before heading out again to our next adventure. This time our destination was Spirit West Coast, a 3-day Christian music festival at the Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey. Having gone to Woodstock '99 in New York for the 30th anniversary of that music festival, I can't honestly conjure a valid comparison of the two, but I suppose it's the closest thing in relation.

We've been attending SWC for years now, starting when the girls were little toddlers. At first we just drove down for Saturday and drove home afterwards. A couple of years later we drove down for Thursday and Saturday, coming home each night and taking Friday as a recovery day. A few years ago, we tried out staying in a hotel down there and going all three days and the next year we stayed in an even closer hotel. Last year was going to be the year where we took the leap and finally camped out around the racetrack itself, fully immersing ourselves in the festival experience. Unfortunately, last year's festival was canceled at the last minute due to lack of funds, and although our money was refunded in full, we were sad to miss our chance at camping and being involved in every aspect of one of our favorite events.

SWC is currently planning to do an every-other-year event in Monterey, alternating with the one in San Diego. It was too costly for them to do both each year and since Monterey was canceled last year, it was going to get its turn this year. So, once again I logged onto the website first thing in the morning on the day camping reservations became available to ensure us a spot in the Premium orange camping area. It's a tough walk in the middle of the night up out of the pits (ha! get it?) of the raceway to the campgrounds around the perimeter, and there was no way I was going to make it any worse than it had to be.

Our camping pass came in the mail a couple of weeks before the event and I was glad to see we had landed the Orange campsite. Unfortunately, in all the hullabaloo of this summer, I forgot to buy our actual entrance passes to the concerts, so we'll have to do that when we get there. Oops! At least I did the important part.

I had heard that people line up for hours before the gates open at 4pm to secure the best camping spots, but I was too exhausted and unprepared for this trip after our recent camping in Tahoe, so there was no way I was going to stress myself out by trying to get there that early. We actually got to the campground at 5pm, which I was pretty happy with, and we found the camping area easily. Thinking about the festival for the last couple of days, I was getting a little worried about my ability to pull this off by myself since Jessey didn't come with us this time, and I wondered if camping with the girls at the festival would really be a good idea at all. Apparently my recovery period wasn't quite long enough this time.

After driving and walking around the campsite a couple of times, we finally settled on a space that we thought would work well for us, and I started feeling a little better about this whole thing. We were only about 20 minutes from town, and the weather was so nice and cool this week so being in a spot without shade was not going to be a problem.

The 20' x 20' square that would be our home for the next 4 days

Our area all setup. 

The squares were marked off with orange paint at each of the corners. Our square was on the corner of a row, so we had one row of cars and tents behind us, but there was a fire lane in front of us and also to the left, leaving us with lots of elbow room. You can't tell from the photo, but it was exceptionally windy up there. We watched several tents blow away and blow over as their owners chased them across the lot. Luckily I had three other pairs of hands to hold the tent still while I staked it. If our tent can last through this weekend unscathed, I'll be very impressed. The wind was relentless as I tried to stake it down. The extremely hard-packed dirt didn't make my job any easier and I had to move the stakes around again and again to find a spot I could even drive them into. I bent a couple of them a little bit, but in the end I managed to secure them all except for one corner one that wouldn't go in no matter what I did. We setup the table and chairs in the space between the car and the tent, providing a little bit of a wind block for us while we ate and relaxed.

Cars and tents were packed together in two back-to-back rows with fire lanes making aisles between them

No flushy toilets for us this weekend. Just rows of port-a-pottys. But they cleaned and stocked them every day, so they were in really good shape all the time. Definitely not like Woodstock.

The girls made friends right away with the other kids in the campground. Two kids about the girls' ages (Grace and Gabriel) were riding down the hills in their Radio Flyer wagon and immediately caught K's eye. We were sure they were going to break their necks, but they managed to escape with just a few scratches and bruises. The campsite one over and one up from ours had three teenagers, one of which would be the girls' other close friend this week. Her name was Bailey and the girls absolutely loved hanging out with her and some of her teen-aged friends.

We had gone straight to the campsite when we got to Monterey because we were concerned we might get a really bad campsite there. I'm actually glad we did because we got one of the last couple of spaces that had semi-level ground and was in the area closest to the front entrance gates of the raceway. But now that we were all setup, we needed to head back into town to pick up some last minute groceries and some gas. There's really only one road up and down the hill and it's a long, winding road. On the drive down, I noticed this sign. I'm not sure what they've got going on up on that hill, but it definitely has nothing to do with racing cars.

By the time we headed back up the hill, it was getting dark. I made dinner while the girls played Parcheesi with Bailey and then we all headed in the tent to read for a while before going to sleep. The festival begins tomorrow and I'm pretty excited!

Map Contest Overload

I just completed my first attempt at one of the Map Challenges I discovered from Ken Jennings' book Maphead. And by completed, I mean guessed, fudged, assumed, estimated, and guessed some more. That was SO much harder than I expected! You know it's bad when they give you instructions and you have to use Google Maps to figure out where in the world that highway/county/etc even is because you can't find it on the map, then you finally find it and the question asks which of these four places you see and you don't see any of the four choices they have listed. <sigh>  I had to work the questions backwards and forwards and read and re-read and re-read the questions again.

I'm really curious to see how I did, and I won't have to wait too long because the entries must be postmarked today and the answers will be posted online tomorrow. Keeping my fingers crossed that I at least got the ones right that I thought I did correctly. There is definitely a learning curve with these contests so hopefully I'll get better each time. Right now my eyes hurt and my head hurts, but I had fun doing it. The next contest is in the Winter and it's the big one!

The summer time challenge is called The Independence Day Fireworks

Camping at Lake Tahoe

Ever since we spent the night at Lake Tahoe in April on the very first day of our cross-country road trip, I've wanted to go back and spend a little more time up there. So Mike and I sat down to look at our calendars at the beginning of summer to see if we could find a free weekend to head up there and camp. Our summer has been pretty busy, but there was one weekend that was open and I decided to try for that one.

Unfortunately, I dragged my feet in making the online reservation, and by the time I finally decided I definitely wanted to go camping that weekend, it was only a week away and I was pretty sure we wouldn't be able to find a place to stay at all. But when I got online and searched for a campsite for the weekend, I was shocked to find one campsite available at one of the campgrounds up there. Considering that all the campsites were booked for every weekend for the rest of the summer, I took this as a sign that it was meant to be!

Of course, since I was born with a oversized version of the 'anxiety gene', I started to worry that maybe this campsite was no good and everyone who had ever camped there knew better than to reserve that one. Maybe it was in a ditch. Maybe it was covered in anthills or wasp nests. Maybe it was haunted. Yeah, I know. Welcome to being me.

But regardless of my anxiety about the site, or the knowledge that the next two weeks were packed with activities and we were adding yet another thing to our schedule, I was so excited for the chance to get away with the whole family and enjoy some time together.

Since many of you traveled with me around the country, it probably isn't necessary to mention that we didn't even get to our campground until the middle of the night (I know - a perfect record so far!!) But, I was relieved to see that the campground seemed perfectly normal, except for the fact that it was nearly entirely on a slant. We did manage to find a fairly level area, though we had to move the picnic table out of the way to set up there. The camp site was set back a little way from the road, had plenty of parking, was very secluded and shady, and looked quite peaceful. We were even near (but not too near) the showers and  bathrooms. Not too shabby!

Since it was already so late, we just set the tent up real quick, threw the bags in, and went right to sleep. The campground was completely silent all night. The appeal of this campground was increasing more and more by the minute.

We'd never been to Lake Tahoe before (except that one night in April), so we weren't really sure what there was to do in the area. One of my friends who has family up there recommended a few things to do, so those were already on the list (thanks, Audra!), but we also decided to make a quick trip to the forestry department's visitor's center to see what else was around. While we were there, we caught a quick glimpse of Smokey the Bear, and grabbed a list of local fishing places since that was what the girls wanted to do most. We weren't really in the mood for hiking, which seemed to be the main focus of the center, so we headed back out to the car to hit a fishing spot.

Even though Mike has a fishing license, the best places to fish on Lake Tahoe (besides on a boat) were on the West and East shores, but we were on the South shore. There were some other lakes and rivers, too, but they all recommended using a boat since the water is so shallow by the shore. So, we just decided to go ahead and go to Sawmill Pond, a small fishing hole that is only for kids 14 and under, and was actually pretty close to our campground. 

I am SO glad that Mike likes fishing, because I was perfectly happy sitting it out. I think I remember liking fishing as a kid, but I am so over it now. I brought my latest crochet project with me and sat on the bench cheering them on while I repeatedly swept humongous ants and spiders of all sizes off my legs. A and C both fished while K spent time trying to catch moths for them to fish with. In the end, while they saw several fish and even a giant tadpole, they didn't end up catching anything at all. But they had tons of fun (and I successfully completed my test attempt at my next pattern, though I can't show it to you because it's a surprise!)

 Getting the poles ready

 A Giant dandelion Mike brought me

 Looking for a good spot to fish

Waiting for the big one

Sawmill Pond (the view from where they were, looking across the pond)

This is serious business

Trying to teach little sister how to fish

The view from the where I was

Once they'd had their fill of fishing, we headed back to camp for lunch. I was shocked to see how heavy the traffic was and it took us forever to get back to our campground. Camp Richardson and Pope Beach were packed! There were cars covering every square inch of the shoulders and parked in every possible space between the trees. All the lots were full and the cars were creeping along the highway as the cars in front of me were undoubtedly wondering where they could find a spot. I was suddenly very glad not to be in Camp Richardson today, and also happy that we had our own little dedicated piece of property waiting for us up ahead. It suddenly seemed like a lifetime ago when I was up here in April and I was the only single, solitary camper at Richardson, enjoying the beach with just our family and absolutely no one in sight anywhere. Remind me to come back in Spring or Fall next year!

Once we finally made it back to our campsite and had some lunch, we thought we'd try out the lake here. Fallen Leaf Lake (the lake for which Fallen Leaf Campground is named) was on the other side of a short hiking trail that just happened to be directly across from our campsite. I was actually starting to think that we may have snagged the treasured gem of this campground since there was nowhere to park near the trail and the rest of the campers had to walk across the entire campground to reach the trail. We'd driven around the campground a few times now, and I seriously think we might just have the single best spot in the whole place. If we ever came back, I would definitely request this one first. (By the way, it was site #82, and you are welcome to it as long as you leave it for us once in a while).

Fallen Leaf Lake was crystal clear. You could walk out until the water reached your chest and still see the individual shapes and colors of the rocks at your feet. It was a little cold (and I would probably recommend water shoes since the rocks are a little hard on the feet near the shore), but we had a blast and spent the entire afternoon there.

Once we were back at our campsite after our quick warm-up showers, we got ready for dinner, and I took the chance to finally burn that stupid bundle of wood I'd been carrying around since Rawlins, Wyoming. I know that technically you're supposed to burn it where you buy it, but every single campsite after Omaha was either too windy or too hot to have a fire, so that second bundle sat in my car for nearly the entire trip around the country. Maybe the parasites and fungi from 20 different states all destroyed each other in the back of my van.

We spent the rest of the evening just relaxing. We played games, read books, and just enjoyed each other's company. The girls spent some time catching grasshoppers in the open field that backed up to our campground, and I strained my eyes looking through the trees, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the black bears that lives in the area. I would love to see a bear in the wild!

This was all that was behind our campsite - just a big open field

I didn't see any bears, but there were several of these little guys darting around all day

 

The girls caught tons of grasshoppers to use as bait for tomorrow's attempt at fishing

The girls wanted to try fishing one more time on the last day, so I gave them a quick breakfast of cereal the next morning so they could get out there early while the fish were still hungry. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring bowls. But luckily the table was slanted just enough and the edges of the paper plates were just high enough that eating a plate of cereal worked just fine.

While they were away, I spent the morning packing up the sleeping bags, tent, and supplies. Lucky for me, I also had enough time to cook myself breakfast, do the dishes, take a shower, and spend some time reading in a chair between two trees at the edge of the field. It was so peaceful and was a wonderful end to the weekend. As it turns out, the girls were also having a great end to their weekend. Their persistence and grasshopper collecting paid off and A managed to catch a fish! 

A special thank you to A for bringing her camera with her so Mike could snap these shots!

All in all, we had a fabulous time going to Lake Tahoe (without ever actually going to Lake Tahoe, that is), and I think this is definitely something we'll be doing again! (although probably in a month other than July). 

We even took a few minutes to geocache before we left. I just happened to pull my tablet out once we were all packed up and noticed a cache listed 450 feet from our campsite. Even though I've been notoriously pathetic at finding caches, Mike was with us, so I figured we should give it a shot. Maybe we could finally get rid of Roger, the travel-bug we'd picked up in Fairfield while visiting the Jelly Belly factory and had been unsuccessful in placing in a new cache yet. Mike had his GPS, which was very helpful, because my tablet gets you close but isn't very exact with coordinates and we (he) managed to find the cache! Roger was placed safe and sound in the circular cookie tin and now has a new home in Lake Tahoe. And that brings our total caches found up to 5. Yay!

(On a side note, completely unrelated to Lake Tahoe or camping, I noticed when I logged into Geocaching.com the other day that two of the three caches I could not find actually weren't there. The one at the Jelly Belly factory that we weren't willing to dig in the bushes for was apparently there somewhere, but the one in San Francisco we tried to find while on the UrbanQuest and the one at the library down the street were both confirmed as missing. That definitely makes me feel a little bit better about our caching abilities.)