Pink Drinks Without Umbrellas

The brief Seattle summer is in full, luxuriant swing. We're late starters out here- summer weather doesn't usually start in earnest out here until somewhere between the 4th of July and Bastille Day, and it doesn't really go on for longer than anyone else's summer. But when it's in swing, it is the most marvelous, sunlit-sapphire sort of summer you could possibly imagine, with perfect days piling up in an impossibly beautiful string. Yesterday, it was downright hot (for Seattle. Again, keep in mind that few people out here have air conditioning, and many natives are babies when the temperature rises above 80), with temperatures hitting 90. Old-fashioned heat-beating techniques were put into play: sprinkler play, lemonade with plenty of ice, a dinner that involved virtually no heat and generous amounts of ice cream, cold showers before bed, and for the grown-ups:Pink drinks. I love a pink drink. They aren't very sophisticated, macho or tasteful (if it looks like a little pink umbrella would make a good decoration, it may taste good but is probably not tasteful), but they can be so, so good, as long as they're not too sweet. I love apertif-style drinks, which often do have a hint of sweetness or bitterness (kirs, biancos), and so I adapted Tom Douglas's recipe for Biancos to make... Pinkos (yes, I'm sure there's another drink out there called a pinko, but it was too hot to spend much time thinking of a better name). Regardless of the laziness of the adaptation or of the naming, it's a delicious drink, whether you use a little or a lot of sparkling water (on a hot day, I go with a lot).

Pinkos, adapted from Tom Douglas's Big Dinners

enough for about 4 drinks, depending how much club soda you use (I tend to use quite a bit when it's hot - in which case it makes substantially more)

2 cups rosé wine

sprig of two of lemon balm (don't go too heavy. Lemon balm has lovely fragrance, but too much can impart a soapy flavor)

about half a dozen lemon verbena leaves

zest of two lemon (in a twist, not grated)

sparkling water/club soda

ice

1. Mix the rosé, lemon balm, lemon verbena and zested twist of lemon from one lemon together. Let sit for an hour or two.

2. Put ice and club soda as desired in a glass with a bit of the lemon peel. Add rosé mixture, stir and serve.

I Hate Songbirds, Puppies and Apple Pie

What kind of songbird starts twittering at 4am? What's wrong with them? Did Starbucks put espresso in birdfeeders all around town, causing birds to tweet like they've gone beserk?

Why was I awake at 4am to hear the beserk twittering of birds? Hmm. Well, there's another culprit, who I feel a little bad for, since he has been working crazy long hours. That would be Stumpy, who, true to his nickname, came stumping in from work at about 3:30am this morning (Stumpy is a big guy, and, let's put it nicely: he's not exactly stealthy), waking me up. And, as people who are utterly worn out are wont to do, he snored loudly and persistently enough to keep me up. Maybe he woke the birds up, causing them to twitter in revenge. He was certainly loud enough. I thought about grabbing a blanket and moving to the couch.

But then I remembered that it was when I was washing our two spare blankets that the washing machine BROKE, leaving them sodden and dripping into the utility sink as I fiddled around trying to sort out what might be causing the malfunction (not a drainage hose clogged with one of Curly's itty bitty socks. Not a drainage problem overall. Not... etc). The problem appears to be the stupid motor, which I cannot fix. However, the person who can fix it has not come yet. So... no blankets. So I lay there, listening to my exhausted husband snore and I started to drift off, anyway, and then? The damn (insert as many additional obscenities as you feel like here. I certainly did) birds started singing.

Finally, between the snoring and the singing, I just got up. I washed dishes, wiped down counters, swept the kitchen - you know, exciting things to be doing at 4:30am.

But what I really, really wanted (if I couldn't be sleeping)? Was a BB gun.

I'll post on travel in Oregon and camping food (such as it is for us) when I get some more sleep and a lot more coffee. And maybe a BB gun.

Rhinestone Sneakers and Redwoods

There’s a lot that can go awry with camping. Pouring rain. Blazing heat. Damp chill. Wet wood. Burn bans. Rude neighbors. Sloppy neighbors, which often leads to another problem: wildlife ransacking the site (my favorite comeuppance on this, ever, was watching a troop of baboons make off with pretty well all of the left-out gear and food of the slatternly site a couple over from ours. One baboon held a plate over its head and hooted in baboon-y triumph as it loped into the scrub.). Filthy, reeking bathrooms. Wet gear. Faulty gear. Lost gear. Forgotten gear. And teenagers. Despite cold (which I’d expected), filthy bathrooms and a teenager (also expected), we had a fantastic time in the redwoods. We stayed at a campsite on the ocean, the sound of wind and waves (and it being a campground, other people) in our ears as we fell asleep at night. The sea-fog that rolled into the hills, while cold, was also, in its bone-chilling way, gravely beautiful. The cold was not to be discounted - particularly if, say, you were a teenager who thought his aunt was daft in saying a warm sweatshirt would be required (in California. In July. You can kind of see his reasoning, even if I wished he’d just bloody listened) and brought only t-shirts. On the bright side, gift shops usually stock plenty of sweatshirts. The eerie, silent beauty of the chill fog was much easier to admire once everyone was warm enough. Just a mile or two inland (or even at a spot a couple miles up or down the coast), we’d slip into brilliant sunshine and wide blue skies. I loved looking back as we headed out, seeing the sunlit mist trying to claw its way over the hills; I wish, now, that I’d taken a picture of it. There are worse regrets to have about a trip. The network of parks that composes what we think of as Redwood National Park is a patchwork of state and national parks (the state parks in the patchwork are all at risk for crippling cuts in their budgets because of California’s budget crisis). The network sprawls down the coast, from just east of Crescent City to well south of Mendocino. It’s amazing, how many bits and pieces have been stitched together over the years (not contiguously), but it’s also remarkable how fragile it all is.
Walking through the groves, though, it’s hard to think of much but the ancient, craggy trees themselves. They are literally stupefying. The number of people (including me), stumbling along syaing "woooow" with their necks craned upwards, trying to capture with their camera lenses the placid, massive beauty of the trees was testament to how astonishing the trees are. Also: it's pretty funny watching people stumble about, looking up.

Our stay began with some good luck. We nabbed a campsite at a terrific but busy first-come, first-serve campground. As we unloaded the gear, we looked up and saw:An elk having a little lunch graze. All three of the kids were excited, and a little nervous. Elk are big. And it was close. When there's no fence or glass between you and a large animal, you have a sudden and deep appreciation for just how big they are. We stepped out onto the beach that the campground lay along and saw a seal sunbathing, brown pelicans swirling around one another and plunging from the air into the sea for food. The kids were, as one would expect, delighted. And dirty. I had some grubby, grubby people with me. I couldn't bring myself to insist that they bathe, because the showers were solar-heated, and about the temperature (I took one) you would expect a solar-heated shower to be when you're enshrouded in chilly mist, which is to say: FRIGID. It's possible that my speed-shower was accompanied by a non-stop parade of expletives and a fervent prayer for room service and hot showers (fat chance, lady), despite the fact that I have had plenty of previous disappointing experiences with solar showers, which may have improved over their previous "heat your water to almost tepid in a hefty bag" but still basically... hmm, what's the word? Oh, I know. They suck. I decided better that the kids were really, really dirty, dirty people than subject them to the joys of an unheated shower in a dingy concrete room. We did a few hikes and walks, and, um… a drive-thru tree. It is tacky, but… sometimes tacky is also fun. And it was fun. One of the groves we hiked through was the Tall Trees Grove (it’s probably wise to consider that in a park dominated by massive trees, designating a particular group as “tall” might mean they are staggeringly gargantuan, which they were), breaking for lunch on Redwood Creek, where Curly and my boy spotted tadpoles in the gin-clear waters, and the Incredible Eating Nephew perfected his stone-skipping skills before we finished admiring the grove. As we hiked back up, I felt a twinge of sympathy for the young men coming down the trail in hiking gear, clearly feeling like rugged adventurers (the grove is reached by a long-ish drive down a dirt road, and requires a free permit to unlock the gate, for a not-quite 4 mile hike), because when they laid eyes on Curly, in her seersucker skort and bedazzled, sparkly pink rhinestone sneakers (they might not be tasteful, but again, sometimes tacky is a total blast), their faces fell. Curly was unfazed by their stares and gratifyingly thrilled by the trees.

I don't know what else to say, other than to recommend that you find a way to see the redwoods. The sections in northernmost California are not easily accessible without a car and a bit of time. Like most amazing places, you’ll get a flashing, tantalizing glimpse of how wonderful it is if you only spend a day, but longer will allow you to absorb the startling, serene beauty of the place through your skin and into your bones.

Also, despite being in possession of pink rhinestone sneakers, Curly says "leather" instead of "leath-uh."

Redwood Details

We stayed at Gold Bluffs beach campground. There are bear-proof trash and recycling bins, cold running water, flush toilets and solar-heated showers (perhaps "heated" would be more accurate) for the campground, and at each site bear lockers and fire rings. Although we only had a few bull elk in the campground itself (but still pretty exciting, particularly since they were just about in our campsite), apparently the entire herd can sometimes be seen walking along the beach (we saw the herd in a meadow one evening, fawns and all, close enough to the car to hear them chewing. Although… they do chew quite loudly. Their mothers don’t appear to spend much time teaching them the finer points of table manners). The ranger sells bundles of firewood out of the back of the pick-up near the ranger kiosk on the way to the campground (day-use fees for Fern Canyon and other trailheads are also charged there).

Gold Bluffs beach campground is first-come, first-serve, and it is BUSY in the high season. We snagged a site at about 11am on a Tuesday; by noon all of the sites were taken. On the Friday we left, as we were packing up, no less than 5 groups had asked for our site – before 8:30am. Most of the rest of the campsites within 20 miles are reservations campgrounds. However, the ranger let me in on a little secret: the nearby Elk Prairie campground (which is closest to Gold Bluffs, just back down the dirt road and up 101 about two or three miles) is also a very good campground. You can reserve a spot there, and transfer your paid reservation to Gold Bluffs if there’s space there, and that way, you have a campsite even if Gold Bluffs turns out to be full. The bad news? Elk Prairie campground is often pretty full, too. More (and likely more up-to-date) information on campgrounds can be found on the Redwood National and State Park websites.

The towns with actual supermarkets are in Trinidad and Crescent City. Orick has a smaller market, and there's another small market north of Klamath, next to Don’s Gas and Diesel. Trinidad is fairly charming (and tiny), with a dwarf lighthouse and a bay of surpassing beauty (pictured above), studded with sea stacks. Crescent City has a decent bakery (Continental Bakery, which bakes its own bread for the nice sandwiches they make and was sold out of many of their pastries by the time we stopped through a little before noon one day, always a good sign with a bakery), and the usual suspects in roadside chain restaurants. And, um, a Starbucks, if you happen to be longing for someone else to make your morning latte instead of fumbling around with the camp stove of a cold, foggy morning while three hungry kids circle you, waiting for hot milk for cocoa. Lattes (for the espresso-minded) also appeared to be available in Trinidad.

Our top three walks were (and to be honest, we didn't do many more than our top 3; the kids enjoyed goofing around on the beach and watching pelicans and seals. Drive times in between hikes aren't always negligible, either):

Tall Trees (the required permit is free, and gives you the combination to the gate that needs to be unlocked). The final half mile is mostly up, but not brutally so. Curly is going into 2nd grade; it was near the top of what she able to do, but an ice cream sandwich from the Orick market revived her pretty well. Even before she got her ice cream sandwich, though, she agreed - and her brother and cousin agreed with her, that every moment of the walk was worth it. Fern Canyon. Unbelievably verdant, with enough little planks criss-crossing the creek (apparently just in summer, though, so in the off-season galoshes would be wise) to be incredibly gratifying for kids, and tiny sprinkling waterfalls along the side, watering moss that sometimes turns almost blue. It’s just up the road from Gold Bluffs beach, with, for kids, the additional fun of driving across two creeks.

Stout Grove. Up in the Jedediah Smith section, along the Smith River. Loads of poison oak along the path that approaches, but a very short walk to a grove that even locals said still awed them every time they went.

And then, and then and then

We're home. If I told the story of our trip right now, it would mostly comprise "and then we went here and did this, and then we went there and did that," very much in the story-telling style of a second-grader. So instead, a few pictures.

Honeymooning

I had a funny conversation recently. I was chatting with another woman about this and that, and it came up that she was a little ticked that her husband had suggested camping for their honeymoon. It just wasn’t right, she said. It’s their honeymoon, after all, and something nice was in order.

Then she asked me what Stumpy and I did for our honeymoon.

Yep. We went camping.

I felt pretty badly for her, because she was absolutely mortified, and I wasn’t the least bit offended.

On our honeymoon, we had planned to camp at Crater Lake, after a couple of nights heading down the coast, but got up to Crater Lake and found that there was still a whole lotta snow. And I’m game for camping, and I know that many Northwesterners think snow camping is all kinds of fun, but I am not a Northwesterner, and… no. Just no. I’m okay with a cabin that only has a woodstove, but for snow, I like a hard wall. I also have a strong preference for interior heat when it's freezing outside (room service is a plus, too, but... generally isn't included anywhere that has a woodstove).

I bring all this up because I’m taking the kids and the Incredible Eating Nephew to Crater Lake as part our road trip (we’re not camping up there, though).

I am, I have to admit, so glad that I chose camping over shoes (which kills me, a little, to type). I am so excited to go see all these places with the kids, and have them grump at me that they’re hungry again and can’t we just buy dinner and ask me when we’ll get there, and maybe, hopefully, just go utterly silent in awe a few times. I cannot wait. Shakespeare (we’re going to finish up with Much Ado About Nothing in Ashland) and redwoods and volcanoes and elk and seastacks.

And after all that, best of all, will be home.

Very, Very Sick

There’s a pair of shoes at Barneys that I covet. Who am I kidding? There’s always a pair of shoes that I covet.

They’re on sale, but still very, very expensive (they’re a marginally less expensive variation of these – I love the shape of that heel), but... I’ve promised to take the kids and the Incredible Eating Nephew on a camping trip in northern California and southern Oregon.

Shoes... or camping with grade schoolers and a teenager?

It seems like a brain-dead choice. But somehow, I ended up choosing the camping. You’d think my time as a camp counselor would have taught me better (nothing like a canoe trip with a dozen 6th graders when the other counselor didn’t load her canoe properly, and then tipped in the rapids… in the canoe with most of the food… in the days before cell phones. Good times.), but no.

I’ve abandoned my Prada Principles (not that I can afford them, anyway, but still).

And I’m thinking much, much more about issues in the Seattle Public Schools than I am about food. Which may be just as well, because there hasn’t been much time for food. Sure, there have been picnics and potlucks and parties (oh my), but there hasn’t been much time for home food. Eaten, you know, at home. I think if someone says the word “potluck” in my hearing, I may go postal. No more potlucks, please.

So something is wrong with the world (and by that, I mean the part of my little world that is about me, me, me). I am not considering fancy salt and fancier shoes, but… whether or not it represents educational continuity to force a child to re-apply to their school every year if they’re from outside of the neighborhood. Sure, it sucks for the neighborhood kid who gets boxed out of their local, but… shouldn’t priority go to the kid who is already part of the community? Does it really make sense to boot a kid out of school in, say, 5th grade or 8th grade or their senior year in high school? Should a kid who got in because there was space at the school, have to wonder every year if there will be space for them the following year? It’s a tough question, and someone will get screwed no matter how it’s answered, but my instinctive reaction is to say that there comes a point when one child’s educational continuity should trump the other child’s proximity to the school. And I'm really troubled by the central office saying they've reduced staff by 8%, because it looks as if those numbers were bolstered by firing the copy repair person, the mail room clerks, some custodial staff and the like, when what should be getting trimmed (at least per an audit done by the state) are supervisors, department heads and the like. And, while over 100 teachers in the district are going to lose their jobs from a RIF, the Superintendent is looking to increase the budget for her office. Huh?

Clearly, I need to have a margarita in the shoe section at Barneys. Because how is it that it was my wedding anniversary yesterday and someone as shoe-loving as I am, instead of seeing if I could get shoes out of Stumpy as a present, had him meet me at the school board meeting before dinner (Spinasse's handmade pasta is as good as people are saying), so we could review the budget together (romance!) before I spoke? Maybe I should call the doctor.