Today we cleaned up the cabin and headed out.  A big thanks goes out to the Bernards families (Jr. and Sr.) for their generosity in allowing our big family to use the cabin and the boat.

After we left the cabin, we went after a geocache.  Success! (even through Lucy’s whining).  Then we stopped at the Hungry Hut and experienced the truism that Jeff had said earlier in the trip.  “Its not that great, but it is the one in town”.  The kids had ordered chicken strips and they were raw more than half way through.  Who can say ‘salmonella’?  The supervising lady was also kind of brusque.  “Its not that great, but it is the one in town”.  So true.

We stopped in Bakersfield for a McDonald’s break.  I whipped out the GPS to see if there were any close caches.  One was across a parking lot less than 500 feet away.  Toby and Lucy gave up about half way due to the heat.  They waited in the shade of a parking lot tree while Max and I soldiered on.  Success!

Home in the evening and with the kids helping it was easy to unpack the car.  A great long weekend.

Jeff had to leave early today, so we began to use the boat right away.  We only had the single, double booted ski to use so I couldn’t shore start like I prefer.  After I ski’d, Jan ski’d, because she wanted to say she still could.  Poppa didn’t want to be left out, so he decided to try.  He also prefers to shore start, and decided that he just wouldn’t use the back boot.  Using lots of binding slime, he squeezed his foot into the boot and yelled ‘Hit it!’  He successfully skii’d with only one foot in the binding.  Congratulations!

Camp was cleaned up and we were off the lake by 2p.  After naps, we drove to McKinley Grove to see the giant redwood sequoia trees.  Those trees are huge.  It took 10 of us holding hands to encircle a medium sized tree.  Rich, Katie, Alex, Max and I were in the car together, so we decided to stop for a few geocaches along our way back.  We stopped for ones that were within a few hundred feet of the road we were driving on.  Rich is really good at following the device.  He was the first to spot 2 of them.  We were 3 for 3 on this run.  Alex really seemed to like it.

That night, Poppa and YaYa presented separated the boys and the girls for some special time.  The girls did some fingernail painting together (Lucy has little red flowers on her thumbs).  The boys all got small flashlights with shadow covers (to make shapes in the light). 

Poppa took the boys (and me) out for a night walk with their new flashlights.  We stopped at the water tower (which looks like it is brand new) and Nathan climbed up the ladder on the side.  But there was the ladder gate about 8 feet up, so Nathan couldn’t go any farther.  Alex climbed up and was working his way through the cage when he decided there might be an alarm and he didn’t want to go to ‘Juvenile’.  Max scurried on up and slipped right through the cage.  He went to the top of the ladder and let us know that there was a roof on the top of the tank.

Today was a very relaxing day of swimming and boating and napping and eating.  Before heading out to the lake, I took Rich and all the kids on a geocache trek.  We looked and looked, but unfortunately, this was a DNF (did not find) for us.  Bummer.  After we got back from the lake, Rich and I went searching for a couple other geocaches.  I couldn’t let him have his only geocache experience be a DNF.  We quickly found a micro and a regular sized cache.  I spotted the first one and Rich found the second.  I think he likes the idea and may continue when he gets back home. 

After the deputies left, I jokingly said to Toby that we should just head out to Shaver right then.  She gave me one of her withering, sleep deprived looks which told me that I wasn’t being as funny as I thought.

We got back into bed, but due to the adrenaline dump, I lay awake for about an hour.  Even then my sleep was fitful.  I heard Toby get up and then she was talking to me.  “Alright, let’s go.”  It was 3:30a.  That sounded good to me.

We loaded up the rest of the stuff and the kids into the van and were on the road before 5a.  The kids saw their first sunrise during our otherwise uneventful 6 hour drive.  Toby elected to stay at the cabin and take a nap, while Max and Lucy and I went to the beach camp to meet the others.

We had a great time with Yaya, Poppa, Katie, Rich, Abbie, Alex, Jan, Jeff, Emily and Nate.  Max and Lucy and most of the other kids went tubing behind the boat.  Lucy is quite the fearless one (in some things) and she quickly used the hand motion for Uncle Jeff to speed up.

All the cousins had a great time playing on shore and in the water with each other.

We have a plan to head for Shaver Lake for a long weekend.  We packed up the van tonight after the VBS show and plannned to get an early start at 6:30a on Saturday morning.  We were well on schedule when Toby and I went to bed ato 10:30p.  As usual I fell right to sleep.

BOOM! BOOM! “Sheriff’s Department!”.

What a crazy dream.  I must have kicked Toby in my sleep because she was rolling out of bed, gasping.  Maybe not a dream.  Toby was saying something about a fire.

BOOM! BOOM! “Sheriff’s Department!”.

I was fully awake now.  It was 1:30a.  I went downstairs to see what was going on.  Through a stairwell window, I saw a Deputy at the back (alley side) office door.  I barely registered the fact that the back door was wide open.  How did he get that door open?

It turns out he didn’t get the door open.  That was why he was on site.  They were on patrol, driving thru the back alley and noticed that our van had almost all of its doors opened.  When they stopped to investigate, they saw that our back door was wide open too.  They were making sure that the van and house had not been broken into.

After checking things out, I thanked them for doing a good job, and did what should have been done 4 hours earlier : locked things up.