Henry Cowell (2)

I always say that things like Teacher Appreciation Days are so unnecessary. We do what we do for the kids, we don’t need tokens, the joy comes from the work… blah blah blah. But OMG look at this DOOR!!! Some incredibly thoughtful parents went above and beyond this year and I am pretty floored. When asked what my interests are, apparently one of my students said, “Oh! She has a Dory!!” With the addition of the words, “Alto” and “trailer,” and a bit of Googling, they were able to create this incredible surprise for me when I arrived at school Monday. You guys, it has a moon globe, little battery operated stars, and grass. I would enter it in a Best Door Pageant if there were such a thing. I felt extremely appreciated, and profoundly grateful right on back. Special ed families are the BEST!!

Following a full week of being spoiled and well fed (guess I picked a bad week to get back on the healthy train), we returned to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. I had scoped out the sites on our last trip and noted #46 as being a good one. Huh. Not sure what I was focusing on there, guess the tiny bit of solar. I mean, it was fine, just really hard to level, even using the Caravan Mover to position, and it is right next to the dumpsters. It had a huge area to spread out tables or tents or chairs, but we were feeling especially lazy and didn’t do any of that. Still nice and a very pretty campground.

We have added a bit of assistive technology to the back of Dory. We’ve always known that Richard has a hard time with directions, but last Spring Break, I became concerned enough that I reached out to my special education professional colleagues and asked, “No seriously. What’s wrong with him?” Well lo and behold, it turns out he has a bonafide disability. His visual memory was assessed at the 5th percentile, while his visual sequential memory is in the 1st percentile. What this likely means is that he has a really hard time holding onto visual spatial information. Like, for example, left vs right when he’s trying to navigate me into a campsite.  We had given that up long ago, in favor of the words: “driver” or “passenger,” which works great unless he can’t see the car from behind Dory. So we put a green reflector on one side of the license plate, and a red one on the other. Now all he has to say is “green” or “red.” Problem solved. Good thing he’s not color blind.

Saturday we went on a hike, recommended by a friend, out to some old lime kilns. The trail from the staging area on Felton Empire Road will take you along Fall Creek a little over a mile until you get to the remains of a series of limestone kilns, used back around the turn of the last century to supply lime for construction in San Francisco. We had previously seen lime kilns at Limekiln State Park further to the south, but those were huge towering metal structures. These were made entirely of arched stone walls. Using this structure, you keep fires going in the spaces down low, while you pile the rocks above. Either way, that’s an awful lot of back breaking work, and makes me appreciate plaster a whole lot more. Saturday night, we ate out at a great place called Ambrosia India Bistro. The Tandoori Chicken was fantastic.

Sunday we meandered our way up the coast, stopping at the Pescadero deli for a delicious bbq pork sandwich and cherry pie. Then it was up to Half Moon Bay to dump tanks, and then on home. It was a lovely way to spend a Mother’s Day weekend.

Total miles: 86.1, 17.2 mpg, 3 hours 4 min (lots of traffic and I missed the turn to our loop twice). Site 46. Not very level, so needed the BAL leveler and the step stool. Other sites to try: 5, 7, 11, 15, 18, 35, 33, 28, 32 With some solar: 40, 42, 43, 44. LTE for ATT, but only 3g sometimes for Verizon. No dump.