It sounded like a grand adventure! We shot off a few of the smaller “safe and sane” fireworks at home on the fourth of July, but the next weekend, we packed up our car with camping gear, fishing gear, and our new inflatable boat (since there are no boat rentals at the lake) and headed east to the land of the free and the brave, that is, er, of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. We needed special permits to use their resources, but these were modestly priced: $9 to camp for a night, $10 for each one-day adult fishing permits, $5 for a one-day child fishing permit, and a $10 boating permit, which may not have been necessary for our little floating dingy.

There aren’t really any formal camp sites: you just pick a spot you like, pitch your tent, and if necessary, dig a fire pit. Bathroom facilities consist of a public toilet on the road between beaches, and there are some garbage cans on the trail into each beach. We went to the Indian Head Rock beach, marked by a huge rock. There we were really sorry Peter hadn’t opted for the 4-wheel-drive option on his truck, especially when we got stuck in the sand once or twice. We had to settle for parking on the last stretch of hard-packed sand near some other friendly campers, and carrying our stuff onto a section of the beach that we liked.

Both Peter and Neil tell me they’ve never camped in strong winds, so I must have camping-in-the wind karma. The beach was buffeted with strong gusts whooshing through all day long. It wasn’t like the 40-mph wind bursts my modest Sears tent had to endure atop a canyon wall last June, but I wasn’t looking forward to another night of  gusts blow-drying me all night long. The trick to wind camping is to either have a low-profile tent, which I don’t have, or to remove the rain fly, so the wind can blow through the mesh in the top and encounters less resistance. It still requires double-staking and a strong tent that won’t tear.

As I was setting up our tents (Neil has a smaller one, which was just short enough to work, albeit also without a fly), Peter was inflating our boat by the lake, and figuring how to attach the propeller to the battery. Once he had it ready, we put on our life vests, packed ourselves in the boat with our fishing gear (which was a tight fit together with the cooler I’d optimistically added in case of catching fish. As it turned out, the waters on the lake were so choppy due to the wind, that it was nearly impossible to tie on a lure, much less the sinkers we needed in the middle of the day. The waves sloshed on to me and Kelly in the front of the boat, which was fun enough for us. About half way towards the other shore (where Peter had heard the best fishing was to be had), Peter read the battery, which said it needed recharging. Suddenly, Indian Head Rock seemed very, very far away. He turned the boat around and we returned to our campsite, where the winds, despite the fact that I’d weighed my tent down as much as possible inside, and staked it solidly, had blown over.

So instead, we lounged in our camp chairs, splashed in the water, and made a half-hearted attempt to fish from the shore until the sun set. Thereupon, we pulled out all our dangerous, banned-in-California-and-Nevada fireworks, and proceeded to set them off. It was a lot of fun, but it’s still hard to understand why officials consider these so dangerous. Most of our fireworks were fountains, just slightly larger than the “safe-and-sane” kind, and sadly, not particularly impressive. The best show came from mortar fireworks, which shot high into the sky. These seemed like less of a fire hazard, since from their high distance, the sparks are cold by the time they land. They have long fuses, so all you have to do is set the in a tube, light them, and stand back. In any case, our fellow campers enjoyed the show, and some of the ones further down the beach set off a firework which was still available in the Smokeshops called “Yellowjacket.”

Our neighbors brought us watermelon, and we sat around and snacked and told each other campfire stories until 10:30, when the winds seemed to have died down enough for me to put the rain fly back on my tent. As the more experienced wind camper, I bunked down on the floor, because low resistance is everything when it comes to surviving the wind. Peter took the cot I’d set up mostly to support the tent, and ended up having a hard night as the wind pushed into him all night long.

In the morning, Peter took Neil and Kelly back out on the lake for one more attempt at fishing. Kelly caught something with her Disney Princess fishing rod, but it snapped the line before she could pull it in. I suspect it was one of the lake’s renowned cutthroat trout, which were out of season, so we would have had to let it go anyway.

Instead of cooking eggs and bacon on our new propane stove, we decided to pack up and have breakfast at a restaurant near Reno. It was a beautiful vacation though, and I love Native territory. So maybe we’ll be back when trout is back in season, or when we want to enjoy fireworks. And hopefully, the winds won’t blow as hard.

We have, after all, been at this point before. In 2009, our then-governor vowed to close all the state parks: summer beaches, beloved camping grounds, famous wildlife observation areas, all. I took it seriously enough to make sure I used up by cache of visitor passes (given with an annual membership in the California State Parks Association.) But more seasoned nature lovers pointed out that the plan was astoundingly stupid. You can’t keep Californians off of their beaches, so now you suddenly want to stop collecting the $7 parking fee you get from each visitor every day? And they’d shut down Big Basin, which is has solidly booked camping spots, in favor of frosty Jebediah Smith, which sees only hardy souls once in a while. Riiiiight. They didn’t close the parks, because it was stupid to do so; they did push an $18-per-car license registration tax, which failed because we’re already freakin’ taxed too much.

I do not question the fact that my state is dead broke, with no hope of ever collecting all the revenue it needs to fund its many services, like public schools (including the public universities), Cal-Trans, Medi-Cal, state parks, the California Highway Patrol (CHiPs), the DMV, the EDD, and many little offshoots from them and other agencies that fund, feed, and dictate what the residents here may or may not do. But invariably, when the time comes when the brutal and necessary funding cuts must be made, the very first victim is the middle class taxpayer. God forbid our assemblypersons take a pay cut, or that the Bureau of Transgendered Activist Benefits should disappear. The public schools are a huge portion of the budget pie, and politicians love hearing the shriek of already tax-burdened parents as the pink slips are handed out to teachers, and the districts stuff ever more children into each class. Our park system (which includes most of the beaches) is also well loved, so the greedy demogogues find it easy to threaten their closure, counting on the fact that we’ll squeal with agony and hand over even more gobs of money.

Well, I am sick and tired of the show. If the politicians were honest, which as a rule we know they are not, their appeals would feature Gladys the DMV clerk.

“For only $12 a day*, you can save the job of this beloved public servant! And your next visit to the DMV may be as much as 5 minutes shorter! (*Average; actual cost may vary according to reported income; members of select constituencies may be exempted.)”

Well, I’m sick and tired of this annual show. Go ahead and close the state parks. Go ahead, do it already! We all know it’s just a game of chicken. Were the parks to actually close, the end savings will be nill, or even less than it. Either the state will have to continue maintaining the land without the offset of visitor entrance costs, or squatters and chaos will take over, making a mess that will cost more to clean up than it ever would have to prevent. Would the state dare sell off the land, or let a concessionaire run it? Those are options a private owner would already have brought up, but which is barely murmured, the assumption being we’ll blink first and acquiesce to another round of pocket picking.

Just as I absolved the state from educating my children by educating them myself, I can figure out how to have a great time outside without state parks. Close down the beaches, and we’ll spend the summer at Raging Waters or poolside. Close down the campgrounds, and I’ll go sleep under the stars at a friend’s ranch in Stanislaus County. Close down the hiking trails and I’ll just explore the county parks instead.

As it is, with 10% sales tax, a property tax bill which is doubled with all the parcel tax riders that have been voted on to it, and the highest state income tax rate in the United States, California residents are already better than anyone else at having their income redistributed for them to the less well off. No mas. So if the parks are really going to close down, I’d rather they actually did so rather than have some political bozo jabber on about it while having his hand out in eager anticipation of more money with which to “save” him from that unpleasant task, which hurts him none.

Inarguably, Yosemite Park has spectacular natural beauty and we enjoyed it, despite the constant dampness and cold. Beyond just its beauty, like Disneyland, Yosemite is deliberately accessible to the very young and the very old, who have the luxury of leisure time and disposable income. Many of the paths were paved–a real rarity for most of my own hikes–and you can still easily enjoy much of the park’s most dramatic scenery from within the free bus which tours the valley, or any of the dozens of tour buses with go slightly further afar. Thanks to Peter’s parent’s friend making reservations a year in advance, we got a motel room with a view of Yosemite Falls right within the park. There’s another hotel with more luxurious rooms and better, pricier meals nearby, as the “low-end” option of $100-a-night tent cabins.

I hate crowds, though, and I hate them even more when everyone in that crowd is giddily paying exorbitant prices for something which for me personally, doesn’t match the value. Yosemite is a huge park, but the vast majority of visitors are crowded into the small valley portion of the park, with the rest inaccessible to all but wilderness backpackers–and even then, given that most of Yosemite is the top of a mountain, only during the warmest months of the year. As a result, even at this time of year, when it was still pouring rain and occasionally sleeting snow, all accommodations were booked months and months in advance. The free bus which picked up and dropped off every 10 minutes was packed to standing room only space. And even the dreary dry documentaries of Yosemite in the mid-20th-century which were shown each evening at 8 didn’t have a dry space big enough to accommodate all the eager guests wanting to hear about, say, the construction of the Ahwanee Hotel, or the long-gone 1940s vaudeville shows at Camp Curry.

Personally, I hate crowds, and as soon as anything starts feeling too crowded, especially when I’m paying, I’m looking for the exits. These are the reasons why I cannot bear Comic-Con, and why I disdain Fisherman’s Wharf and the Monterey Bay Aquarium despite their world class attractions.

Yosemite is beautiful, I know, but as a lucky California, I have other options which I can easily visit any time of year, at my leisure. I love to mountain bike up to Berry Creek Falls inside Big Basin Park, and when I want to take my children there, there’s an easy hike to Sempervirens Falls, or an even easier one making a simple loop near the park entrance. They have nature programs, as does another place with falls, Memorial Park near La Honda. You’re not in the isolated wilderness either, but at their worst, the paths are more like the mall on a slow day, rather than the mall on a weekend in December, which was what Yosemite felt like. Oddly, I felt slightly better to find out the Yosemite hype is not new: according the history museum, it sounds like Yosemite has always been an expensive place to stay. The $100-a-night tent cabins at Camp Curry and other places are actually the low-cost alternative which appeared as a democratic protest to the high costs of the few hotels.

In my opinion, I thought $271/night was too much to pay for a room which was like a low-end motel room, despite its spectacular location. But by economic standards, the room was actually underpriced. These motel rooms book out in seconds as soon as they become available. If you charged $400 or $500 or $600 a night for the same rooms, they might book up just as fast, given how eager people are to stay there. You’d eventually reach the point where some well-off senior can go to Yosemite with just a few months notice, or that the fewer overnight guest can switch their reservation dates as well. After all, you got a cheapskate whiny schmuck like me to shell out $271 three times over; at a higher price, I may actually balk, leaving those rooms to those who want them more. And I may be happier playing away those hundreds of dollars at a casino table in Reno, while staying in a cheap hotel room with free drinks and a coupon for scary $1 hot dogs.

Peter argues the opposite: that more of the massive park should be open and accessible to visitors, thus giving all who want to enjoy this public park more breathing room. But that would cost money that the national government doesn’t have, building more roads into the higher portions of the park, and those areas may not be as popular, thus losing their ability to cover their own costs.

In short, Yosemite is beautiful, but way to freakin’ crowded. Next time I want to escape to the high Sierras, I think I’d rather go camping at Lake Almanor again, or check out Big Trees or Sequoia, which have a similar vibe to Yosemite, but less of the hype.

We drove further up the mountain near the Badger Point and played in a huge fresh snowfall, throwing snow balls at one another and creating all sorts of snowmen, from a wizard, to a squirrel, and Kelly’s own Ratchet from the video game she currently enjoys:

We hiked up to Lower Yosemite Falls, often going off the path which was busier than the mall on Christmas eve.

We found a less beaten path up above the Lower Falls, and ended up seeing squirrels and getting directions to a secret Indian path to the top of a mountain.

When we woke up the next morning, it had snowed overnight, much to Kelly’s delight, who made a slushy snowman and tossed slushballs at me and Peter.

Later we hiked with family up to Mirror Lake, where we found the area of many menhirs. Though many wanted to put romantic associations to the menhirs, the native Indians are long gone, and there’s no paths from here. It’s obviously a group art project which must reappear with the first visitors of each Spring.

Completely soaked and cold after the hike, we ate a light lunch with everyone in a crowded cafe, bought Kelly some dry socks, watched the corny Yosemite movie, and checked out the excellent and informing Yosemite Museum. Afterwards, we went to Bridalveil Falls, where we had too much fun getting soaked again in the spray from the massive waterfall.

But that was enough for us. Peter decided we could forego another night in our expensive motel room inside the park, and we simply packed up and went home to dryer weather.

I still have several passes to state parks which will expire in April, so I decided to take the children to one of our local state parks, Big Basin. I found a hike just about the right length for us, and with an interesting highlight: namely the 3.5 mile hike to Sempervirens Falls and back.

The tall redwood trees are always spectacular. At the park headquarters, we saw a cross section of one of the big trees which sprouted around the time of the Pharoahs. The spacing of the rings gave you a perspective on the scope of history. For instance, right now CSA is just concluding a section on the French Revolution, which is much closer to the present day, than say, the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire.

Neil and Kelly got some gymnastic exercise scrambling on an exposed pipe and fallen trees.

We walked right through the Huckleberry camp ground (and had lunch there on the way back), which reminds me it would be fun to go camping again.

We made it to our destination easily. Neil was unimpressed by the falls. They’re not as spectacular as the ones in the middle of the park, true, but them Sempervirens Falls isn’t 12 miles away from a park entrance, either.

As it turned out, two other families with children near Kelly’s age joined us, and we headed out to see the lake and hike up the ridge to Wild Rye Trail together. The lake was probably the favorite part of the hike for most of the children. They could spot fish in the lake and climb the trees.

I thought they might run down the hill the way Neil and Kelly did the last time we were there, but that was taken more cautiously as the parents pointed out the birds in the area.

Kelly’s favorite part of the hike was the chance to fill out a visitors’ journal in the nature center at the park’s headquarters. She even drew a picture to show other visitors the trees and a bird she saw.

Afterwards, she insisted I help her find the journal I’d given her and took to filling that up with her opinions and observations.

So we ended up being the only people to go from our group, and even a friend of Neil’s cancelled at the last minute. However, if you’re lucky, you can always find some beach buddies, and near us were a bunch of boys who also had sturdy shovels and were willing to help Neil with his favorite beach project: excavation.

The seaweed was thick and heavy both on the beach and in the ocean, which made wading kind of treacherous. Imagine long stringy weeds wrapping themselves around your knees and ankles and trying to pull you in whenever the waves retreat. It didn’t stop Kelly, of course.

At one point, Neil was creating a moat to tease the ocean, and the ocean didn’t like it. It sent out a huge wave which swallowed Neil’s shovel just as he was jumping back to avoid getting wet. It looked like that shovel was lost for good: we couldn’t see it anywhere. Neil and I walked up and down the shore, hoping to see it washed ashore, or bobbing in the waves, but it was no where to be seen. So we ate our lunch and I wondered how I’d be able to replace that shovel, which was a very nice one which one of the homeschoolers had given me just because her child had been touching our plastic dollar store shovel when it disintegrated.

I mentally apologized to the ocean, and the next thing I knew, I saw the shovel, washing up almost at my feet. I grabbed it, to the cheers of my children and the group they’d been playing with. Then we decided not to push our luck any further, and we went home, with a stop for beach ice cream (a Peter-founded tradition) on the way home.

At first, I thought about making it a “school” hike, but as soon as I announced it to my hiking buddies with young children, I rethought it. The lake itself is only a mile and half from the entrance, but the loop to go there and back is 4.5 miles, with some steep portions. Kelly’s a trooper, but she still needs to sit and rest on longer hikes, and this one (especially if we had the other parents’ chipper-but-also-limited-by-size) 3 year olds along, it could take all day, instead of just a morning. So instead, I did it myself.

Henry Coe is a huge park and if you get on the western side of it and look out, it’s all undeveloped land, from the state park over to a privately owned undeveloped site and into the county-owned Grant Park. In essence, you’re seeing local California how it would look if no one lived here.

The flowers and wildlife were remarkable. I saw butterflies, a wild turkey, and lots of native plants, and the trail (even on a Saturday) was surprisingly lightly travelled (even though the park’s parking lot was nearly full.) I ran across what looked like a group of college students, a backpacking couple, and a small family; otherwise, I think most of the visitors had already started on a weekend-long backpacking trip out to the park’s furthest edges.

Frog Lake was a surprise. It had no fishermen, even though I saw a small fish. The lake itself was tiny, but lake standards: if it was an acre, I’d be surprised. And yes, these are the actual colors of the nature around it:

While I was sitting by the lake, I heard a rustling behind me. I turned around, expecting to see a large urban rat, which is what city wildlife contains. I suppose what I saw was a rodent, too, but it was a prettier squirrel. The squirrel ran away when I tried to get a picture, but I lured her back out with a cracker.

I don’t think she was completely spoiled by humans stupidly feeding the wildlife, because she ran away after she ate the one cracker, instead of descending upon me like human-fed birds (and rats) do.

The longer trail back to the headquarters was narrower though high stalks of grass. One thing I will miss about state parks is their excellent signage, like this:

Most other types of parks have sign posts, if anything at all, and a compass and map are always a good idea to have along.

It was a pretty good hike, and I’m glad I opted against making it a kiddie hike.

Kelly already built a reputation as a banana slug murderer when we took a hike in Sam McDonald Park, which that summer, was banana slug central. It was hot and dry in San Jose, but just over the ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the redwoods were damp and misty, and the banana slugs were out all over. Kelly was in a kiddie backpack at the time, but she marvelled and pointed at the slugs. And when we returned to the trailhead and had our picnic, Kelly was out and grabbed a banana slug that was unfortunate enough to have crawled under out table. I know she didn’t mean to crush it, but that banana slug never moved again, and Kelly’s reputation was set.

Since then, we’ve been unable to see banana slugs again, even in known banana slug terroritory–until we saw the one (albeit very quiet and possibly dying) on at Villa Montalvo. I thought it would be fun to take this hike at the Portola Redwoods State Park.

It’s a wonderful state park, but I didn’t anticipate that getting there required an hour’s worth of driving in and out on narrow, winding mountains roads which would make both my children carsick. When we arrived, the ranger let us know the bridges were still removed for the winter, so if we wanted to take our hike, it would require wading through ankle-to-knee high water several times as we crossed creeks. But since we were just there to see banana slugs, we had alternatives. He pointed me to two child-friendly trails where banana slugs were known to be out and about.

Sadly, the weather was too warm and dry for the slugs and we didn’t find any slugs at all, even though we enjoyed the spectacular redwood trees. For a final try, I took the children down a trail towards the creek, and there we found one slug.

That poor slug! We we fascinated with him, and he was put through all his banana slug paces. We turned him over to look at his toes, and he curled up and showed us how quickly he could right himself again. Neil created a maze for the slug, and our slug popped out his eyes to examine in and then crawled right over the obstacles, leaving a trail of slime behind. If my camera battery had been working, he would have been the subject of more photography than a  fashion model on a go-see. And he survived Kelly’s touch, because she’s learned now that the slugs are more delicate than they may seem.

We looked for more slugs, but any others were gone. But with our slug hunt complete, we headed home down the long windy twisty road.

Although I was still thrilled to be able to see the new museum, my family and I were disappointed overall. On the one hand, it is an aesthetic marvel that uses light,  form, and technology for a unique experience. On the other hand, I found it over-crowded, over-priced, and off-puttingly eco-smug.

There were lines and crowds around everything in this museum, including the bathroom. Kay had joined the museum when it opened in November, and told me it had been even more crowded then: in fact, by 11 am, all the tickets too all the shows in the Planetarium had been distributed. On this day, we had better luck: Kay stood in a long line to get the tickets while the children and I hung out in the one uncrowded portion of the museum: the “climate change” section. There, you could calculate your carbon footprint based on how many miles you travel each year in your preferred mode of transport and by what you eat.

In short, I’d be a little less of a burden on our great green Gaia planet if I became a hard-core organic vegan bicyclist. Of course, then I’d be so bitter that I’d become the sort of person who enjoys this sort of self-righteous eco-preciousness. I also found it a bit disingenuous: after all if the Academy of Science really believed what it preaches, it could just be a web site and turn its former location into an organic farm.

The aquarium was downstairs, and the fish (and related animals) were attractively displayed. It was crowded, but to be fair, it was all crowded with polite tourist- and museum-types, and the children had plenty of chances to admire the creatures as well as play in the touch tank. There were a few clever displays where waving your hand could bring up a fact, but I saw no-one actually bothering to read the facts after being impressed that a wave of the hand changed the display.

The best parts of the museum, that is the more classical ones, were off to the side in various ways. The penguins were in the Africa section which mostly had fresh (stuffed) animal from the African Savannah (in the mode of a good natural history museum. A few dinosaur and large animal skeletons were on display and mostly hanging from the ceiling. The albino alligator is in exactly the same display that an alligator used to be in in the original museum. The library and study, where you can get up close to actual musty specimens and directly quiz a scientist, is upstairs, and now includes a few puzzles and games for younger children, too.

Naturally, we had to see what we had been observing for years: the green, growing roof. Smartly enough, the museum put a deck on top so visitors can see it for themselves, as well as look over Golden Gate Park. On this day, a band (not the Golden Gate Park Brass Band) was playing in the music shell, which you could also see and hear from the top. Not so smartly, the growing roof suddenly struck me as immensely impractical: in the distance, I saw people weeding the roof, and I imagine it also needs to be watered and replanted and resodded now and again.

Kay persuaded us to go into the rainforest globe with her; I’d been resisting it because like so many other things, it required waiting in a line. But I’m glad she did, because it was only right I check out the museum completely my first time, and it had a delightful asethetic touch by having a bottom which also happened to be the top of an aquarium, which itself was a tunnel. The marvelous effect created was that it looked like museum visitors were below you in the bottom of an aquarium:

Inside the rainforest globe, I was considerably less comfortable. Even though I have no respiratory problems, after a few minutes of being inside, I started feeling suffocated. I tried to relax; I told myself it was perhaps it was just the warm, misty air, but by the point I felt faint and black spots started forming before my eyes, I begged Kay to watch the kids and dashed for the elevator. My unfounded theory is that even the sacred glorious rainforest inside this globe wasn’t enough to process all the exhalations of thousands upon thousands of carbon-spewing humans, and without proper circulation with the outside, there was less oxygen in the air. Or it may have just been my imagination, because no one else seemed to be on the verge of passing out.

My impression overall was that it was the same museum it had always been, content-wise, except that now it was cloaked in a more stylish and far more expensive guise, with a heavy dollop of eco-smug added on. I also thought it was overpriced, though obviously the vast horde of visitors who arrive every day and pay, disagree. Most of the cultural/educational attractions in the area offer reciprocal admission with similar institutions at a certain level of membership: for instance, if we become members of the Exploratorium, we also enjoy free admission to OMSI and Chicago’s Museum of Technology and Industry; if I join the San Jose Museum of Art at the advocate level, the same membership also gets me into the Asian Art Museum, the Legion of Honor, or the Quilt Museum. If I join the San Francisco zoo, I can also visit most other zoos in the nation, but I think you’ve got the point. The only other such museum that doesn’t have reciprocity is the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which classifies as a major tourist attraction, and is bigger than most nature museums, including the Academy of Sciences.

With the new building, the Academy of Sciences abolished reciprocity: in short, membership with them is only good with them, and no other museum’s membership will get you in there. At $25 per, adult admission ranks with the bigger Boston Science Museum ($23.50) though it’s slightly less than the Monterey Bay Aquarium ($30). And the Academy of Sciences’ family membership is no bargain either: it’s $159, whereas even the Monterey Bay Aquarium (whose eco-lecturing only goes so far as advising you what types of fish you oughtn’t buy) will let your whole family in for a year for $120. That said, as long as people are paying the ticket prices (and they obviously are), there’s nothing wrong with the Academy charging the price people are willing to pay. It wasn’t enough to sell me: I’ll continue to check out fish at other aquariums, natural history at the admittedly more run-down Oakland Museum or the irregularly-available University of California, Berkeley, and live animals at zoos. Perhaps the hype will die down and the Academy will go back to being the regular science museum it used to be; or it will become (or should I say, continue to be?) an international destination, like the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It’s fine either way, but I’m only buying into the former.

Kay wanted to let the children run off some energy before we drove home, so I directed us to the blue playground, which is semi-hidden off the concourse, under two underpasses:

Kelly liked the playground best of all, because she got to play with babies and found a nickel buried in the sand. I plan to go back to Golden Gate Park more often again, even if that’ll be for its many other pleasures, like the De Young Museum, Stowe Lake, and the Botanical Gardens.