The Swimming Hole

On August 18, I wrote that I was writing and organizing while my brother was driving down from Oregon. My host and I chose to meet him at Mill Creek. We drove up Howell Drive out of Cresent CIty like we had done when we visited the Titans but this time we stopped at another trailhead.

When my brother arrived with my twin nine year old boys, they were really excited to see me. We climbed on trees and chatted for a while. We settled on the Mill Creek Loop trail and looked at all the stumps and hidden spaces. We found these mushrooms my brother identified as Fried Chicken. Eventually the trail came to a dead end but we found another which took us to a cool swimming hole on Mill Creek proper. After that, we walked to Boy Scout Grove trailhead and then back to the cars.

We drove to the South Fork then. We jumped in the river on the rope swing – I was really impressed with my boys with that one. I managed to get a good shot of one of them. However, we mostly played in the sand. I noted that the swimming hole is all greenstone. I floated around a bit. Our host did a flip from the rope. My brother left a few minutes before us but once he was gone, our host brought us to the confluence of the Main Fork of the Smith before we left.

We drove back to the house on Pebble Beach. I told the boys how I had crashed into the Washington drive overpass the day after the WTO in Seattle in 1999. While we were driving into town.

I started dinner for the boys. The boys peppered our host with questions while we ate and a bit later, they went to bed. We sat up talking for a while and then I went to bed exhausted.

I got up in the morning of Saturday at 9:30 or 10. My host had been to the store already. He was working and there was coffee out. The boys and I slowly rose. We ate and did other stuff. I had had a bowl of cereal.

Later the four of us went for a walk, crossing Pebble Beach Road and descending to the beach. I noted that there’s pebbles everywhere but normally more. There was only one agate hunter that day. There is a sandy beach a rocky beach and as we transitioned between them, we found the tide pools.

My boys got wild looking through the tide pools for hermit crabs and other things. I saw a super cool rock. They built a little dam below the foot of the cliff and spun flat stones – rolling them like a bowling ball. The weather was really muggy.

We walked the cliff back to the house and after getting inside, I made the boys hot cocoa. Then we made a bag and then we drove to the river confluence again, stopping at Hiouchi Chevron. I got some delicious Pilsners. Once past the confluence, we headed out on the South Fokr to Sand Camp Beach.


Our host pointed out his favorite bike ride path, along Little Bald Hills. We set up a blanket on the river’s edge like the day before and had a snack. I had a beer. I noticed that it wasn’t going to get hot. Our host got in the river anyway and a short while later, the rest of us did too.

The river is really deep there.

A bit later we drove back to town and we stopped at Safeway. Our host needed a ton of food because he was preparing for a ceramics collaboration potluck with a kiln and everything that evening. He was in a rush buying everything in the store. I on the other hand had to make the boys dinner. So, I bought stuff independent of him. I needed a toothbrush and a few other things. I got them a new hairbrush.

After our host left with his potluck foods, I made the boys eat some of the fruit he had left behind and did laundry. Later, I made Ramen and used the house made coleslaw in the fridge. It was very garlicky and lemony. Then, when dinner was over I was lazy. I bought bus tickets on the Amtrak website. The boys got packed before going to bed as we were getting up early.

I woke up at 4:30 that morning and I made coffee. The four of us were all ready by 5:15 and left in our host’s tiny Toyota. It was foggy in Del Norte County all the way to the Klamath. We couldn’t see the giant statue of Paul Bunyan as we headed over the Golden Bear Bridge there because it was dark and foggy.

We were up way too early. Our host told us about stuff on that we saw on the road and my boys asked a lot of questions. The ride was wonderful. I appreciated his not driving too fast and he still saved us about 20 minutes. The lagoons were invisible in the fog. I told the one stone lagoon story I knew – where a friend of mine got a spider bite. Sunrise started in Trinidad. I tried to relate how I had climbed the Butte there.

In Arcata, I got coffee and the boys were cute with our host and the bus was on time. The driver almost left without us. I let everyone know that we had gotten on the bus via text and then stayed awake until Garberville. I fell asleep but woke when we got to the town of Laytonville. Later, in Willits, I reminded the boys about our trip to see the Skunk Train there and they remembered.

We went to the smoothie place in Ukiah at Arthur’s request. (He remembered!) We had a smoothie (Erin says it was his). The ride was kind of boring after that. I figured I had put us on a smart and catch the first SF bus but we got passed by the 1 oh one bus along the way.

We made it home at 3:30 exhausted. A few hours later, I took the boys to pizza and we settled in asleep after TV at 10 o’clock.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.