Camping with the Gooch

Some of the best times I have had, have been hanging out and camping with my brother Gooch (or Greg as our mom calls him). From the boy scout days, to wild weekends in the desert as teens, to beach trips in Baja, and now I get to share him while camping with my family.
  Fathers-day weekend we headed up the coast to Manchester beach. Always a beautiful drive, the northern California coast along Highway 1, winds in and out of grassy hills, wildflowers, coastal pines, and redwoods. We found ourselves at a KOA of all places. Not a bad place at all. It was windy and cool as is the norm for the north coast this time of year. We some how managed to cram 3 adults, 2 teens, a toddler and a little dog in the motor home, but only for the drive. Ian and Aden had to pitch a tent next to the RV (heehee).
  I would like nothing more than to find a a nice little secluded place with very few campers nearby, but I got to tell you, KOA's are great for families. They had a swimming pool, hot tub, game room, store, showers, even wine tasting, an  ice cream social and Karaoke. Yeah, I couldn't resist the karaoke at the KOA. Nothing like a little Bon Jovi to get the camping moms worked up. Gooch and I made some friends, and introduced Melanie to them. Next thing you know, our campsite was party central for 2 more adults, and 4 more kids. Melly was a little over

  stimulated from all the adult conversation, that she started throwing her sandals at people and trying to punch our new found friend in the face, all the while laughing hysterically...yea, she doesn't get out much.
  Apollo loves a good party and was more than happy to stay up until 1 a.m. with us.
  Okay, it was a little windy and cold, but amazingly pretty. One thing many people do not realize about the northern California Coast, is that there is so few people and a lot of open space, probably because it tends to be chilly there. You only need to head inland and the scenery and the temperature change rapidly. Literally a mile inland and you  enter the beautiful coastal redwoods. For myself, few things are more inspiring than the redwoods of California. The forests are so lush and green and the air is filled the wonderful smell of redwoods and earth. Its hard to describe, but if you have been to the redwoods, you know what I am talking about.

   The following weekend, we headed to Lawson's Landing at Dillon's Beach. This place is bizarre; part trailer park, part campground, part fisherman's paradise. All and all a unique and cool place. A very low tide early in the morning, brought out a large amount of clam diggers; the majority of them asian. What you have to love about the asian people, is their amazing work ethic and the fact that they don't let anything go to waste. Am I stereotyping? Maybe, but the deal is, I am always impressed with them as a people. They showed up early, clammed harder than us honkeys, and kept everything. Us white folk tend to kick aside anything that is to small, broken or we don't recognize, but these people eat everything they take, there is little, if any, waste.  By the way, the type of clams we were digging are called horse necks or geoducks (gooey ducks). They are ugly, phallic looking things. Of course once we found out from our new asian friends that the clams can be eaten raw, Aden thought he should taste one. I am not going to even comment on this photo beyond that. :-0 . To add to our clam feast, we even collected some live crab. Mel kept us well fed with her fabulous dutch oven cooking skills. I did not know (and neither did she) that you can cook so many different things with a dutch oven; very impressive Melly.  Gooch always likes to go all out on any adventure.

Between Gooch and Melly, we could have kept half the campground well fed for the 2 nights we were there. Gooch also managed to keep Ian and Aden occupied with clamming and fishing and showed an unusual amount of patience listening to Ian's endless fishing stories, and gun stories, and stories about blowing things up, and stories about how cool it would be to catch a fish, stuff it with C-4 explosives throw it back in the water, and shoot it with a gun right when a shark ate it, and watch the shark blow up.... I hope Gooch comes back and visits after that.


What a satisfying weekend and an awesome end to a two week visit from the Gooch. Apollo had a great time as well. He loves his Uncle Gooch. It was so sweet to hear him every night saying "Good night, Gooch". We even managed to give the little guy a much needed bath in the motor home sink. Apparently, using the dish scrubby is the best way clean yourself when you are a toddler. He was using the scrubby to wash his armpits all the while giggling and saying, "tickle,tickle".
 Thanks Gooch! We miss you already! Come back in the fall and we will harvest some mussels and make some wine! Blue skies until then.

Gooood Niiight!

  For a two year old, some of the sweetest moments come when they are asleep. Even after you have had a day of tantrums, or general crabbiness, once they fall asleep, you cant help but remember how precious our little ones can be.
  Apollo was pretty sick last week. His temperature hit 104.5 a couple times and Motrin would not bring it down to less than 101. He also had a bad cough. You feel so helpless. Apollo would open up his eyes and look at me with the most pathetic look, reach for me and say "Daaadaaa." in a very sad week little voice. I know all he wanted was for me to make him feel better. It is very heart wrenching. We took Apollo to see the doctor twice. The first time Melanie went by herself with Apollo and Stevie, an 8 month old baby that she has been baby sitting. The second time I went with them. Apparently, Melly wanted a second opinion. No, not from a second doctor, but from the same doctor that saw Apollo the first time. The doctor received a second opinion...and then a third...and then a forth...and several more. I stopped counting after a while and was looking for a place to bury my head in the sand. You see, when Melanie took Apollo in to see the doctor the day before she felt like he just blew her off.    We were worried about Apollo as he was breathing really fast and had a high fever, and not eating. Not that he was really around while we were de-micing the motor home (see my previous post), but I know Melanie kept hearing her moms voice echoing in her head; "HANTA VIRUS!!!!". She expressed this concern to the doctor and he agreed that it was possible, but not probable that he was exposed to Hanta, and then said he is going to be fine, and sent them home with out even really doing an exam. Keep in mind that Apollo was screaming this whole time and there was not a whole lot he could do except say, "Well he is screaming, that means he is breathing. I think he will be fine."

  Well, let me tell you, after Melanie chastised the whole office staff and then the doctor, Apollo got a very thorough exam and Melanie received the apology she was looking for, and we both received the reassurance we needed that Apollo was going to be fine and that there was a lot of this virus going around. After 3 nights of little to no sleep, he started to recover.
  I was happy to get back into our night time routine which typically goes like this:
  Between 9 and 9:30 pm, Apollo begins to ask for his "baba" (bottle). That is my queue that it is bed time. I fill his bottle with about 4 ounces of milk. We make our way into the living room to find mom watching T.V. and say, "gooooodniiight" and give mom a kiss.

"Apollo, take dada to bed now" I call to him. He trots over, grabs my hand and walks me to our...yes, our bedroom, (Apollo still sleeps with his mom and dad). We make our way into the bathroom to brush our teeth. As I prepare our tooth brushes, Apollo climbs onto a chair in the bathroom and then onto the counter. I hand him his tooth brush and then grab mine. Now this part he definitely got from his mom; as he brushes, he wiggles his whole body back and forth. He looks like a bobble head doll! Super cute! When finished, he gets down on his knees on the counter and positions his head under the sink for a drink. "Aaaaaah!" As, I grab him from the counter,he turns to the faucet that just quenched his thirst, "Gooood niiight, juice." and waves. (All liquid is 'juice' at this point) We get into bed; "Baba?".  'Here you go little guy' "BABAAAA!"...Now, at this point a good baby would fall asleep. We do not have a good baby. Some times, we watch Shrek 2, Cars, or Bee Movie or at least a portion of them. Other nights, we have song time. When Apollo starts to get fussy, that is the queue to turn off the movie which sometimes involves a couple minutes of tears. Then the last phase of our bed time ritual begins.
"Baba?"
'No baba...sleep'
"Cookie?"
'No, cookie.'
"Apple?"
'No Apple, silly. Its time to sleep.'
"Pake?"
'No Pancake either.'
"EAT!...please?"
'No eat, its time to sleep.'
"Dada?...." After our little exchange, he crawls up into the crook of my arm, yawns, and slowly drifts off to sleep. 
 A good night, indeed.

New adventures

When Grandpa Joe passed away, One of the things he left behind, was a motor home. With a fair amount of persuasion, Melanie was able to convince the family that we would give the RV a really good home. I have owned an RV in the past, and agreed that we would put it to good use. We happen to live in area that is surrounded by many beautiful places to camp, within minutes of our home. We have been dieing to go camping for several months now, but we are in the middle of an active El Nino year. What the hell does that mean? It means that the ground is wet and it is often raining. For you die hard outdoorsman types, I know you don't see what the big deal is with a little rain and some mud. Well, add a 2 year old and a couple of teens that can't remember to remove their muddy shoes before they enter a tent or a car,

 and maybe you will start to understand.

A couple weekends ago, I traveled to Central Oregon and picked up the RV. We spent the next few days after I got back, evicting the mice that had taken up residence there. I am relatively certain we found the spot where the all mice huddled together, scared out of their minds and crapped themselves as I made the 9 hour drive back to Santa Rosa. It was pretty nasty. They had set up camp in all the compartments behind the appliances. We found 3 nests where they raised their young, made from insulation and bits of styrofoam, stolen from various places through out the RV. There was absolutely no food in the RV, so the only thing they found to munch on in the motor home, was a bar of soap that grandpa had left in the sink; it was uniformly marked all the way around with mouse teeth scrapes. We never saw any mice, though. We set traps that were never tripped, set out poison that was never touched, but we are still very confident that they have all left the building. Next, we did some intense cleaning, disinfecting, sterilizing, bleaching, and then repeated the process.(For Melanie's mom; please see the hanta virus disclaimer at the end of the blog)  I know that half way through this, Mel and I both started to question if this was worth it. In the mean time, I began to do diagnostics on all the equipment and checking all the electrical to make sure the mice had not damaged any of it. First off, let me just say, that for being an 18 year old RV, there was only 12,600 original miles on it. It runs like a new vehicle. RV's are quirky though, so there is always little things that can, and do, go wrong with them. Fortunately, I have had experience with RV's before, and I am pretty good at finding the problems and fixing them. That coupled with my new found experience of tearing them apart and putting them back together, I am almost an expert.I  found a few items that were broken and some things that were not working, probably from age more than from use. With all systems go, we awoke early sunday morning, memorial day weekend and headed out for an over night trip.  I am not sure who was more excited about the RV; Mel or Apollo. We had a great time and the best part was, when we got home, all we had to do was vacuum and a quick, light cleaning; No tents to dry off and air out, no sleeping bags to wash, no repacking and stowing away in the garage. Thank you Grandpa!!

Okay mom; we went to the CDC website and learned all about Hanta Virus. To sum it up, it only lives 2 to 3 days outside the host, and you can kill it with bleach. Melanie mixed the correct ratio the first time through, and then doubled it the second time...just to be safe! :)