Merry Christmas from Samuel P Taylor State Park

 

Merry Christmas from Samuel P Taylor State Park!

Happy Hanukah on the eighth night, December 17

    No, we're not actually Jewish, but ever since learning that my maiden name, Gollub, is of Russian Jewish origin 40 years ago, I have made it a practice to light Hanukah candles in the Menorah my mother gave me and each of my sisters the year we discovered that fact about our last name. I love the increasing light through the eight nights of Hanukah. This year Hanukah coincided with the decreasing light leading up to the winter Solstice on December 21.

    This picture is not very well "posed," but it does show some of our "things." Like an indoor/outdoor thermometer, a couple of flashlights, a Sudoku puzzle, and the emergency exit window over our dinette. The thermometer was a birthday gift from daughter Erin and I have really enjoyed seeing just how cold it really is outside in the mornings. The lowest morning temperature so far was 32 degrees Fahrenheit on Wednesday, December 23, and the inside low that morning was 41! We heat up pretty quickly with the propane furnace and electric heater in the morning, but don't like running either during the night.

This is our Advent "Wreath" before lighting the center Christ Candle last night.

    Each morning of Advent (the four weeks prior to Christmas) we have arranged these votive candles on the table during our breakfast and then read an Advent devotion written each day by a different person from Eureka First UMC. It has been a truly wonderful practice to begin each day, and a rich way to remember some of the special folks of Eureka. We will miss this regular practice, so perhaps we need to start something new. Last night on Christmas Eve, with no in person services to attend, we listened to and watched the recorded service from Eureka First UMC. What a beautiful service it was with wonderful music, readings, sermon, candle light and the highlight for me was watching and listening to 5 or 6 year old Israel read a Christmas Story and to hear his little sister Genesis babble in the background. I treasure the memory of officiating at their baptisms not too long ago.

    As I mentioned in my last blog we have been eager to catch glimpses of the spawning Salmon in Lagunitas Creek. A little over a week ago two people wearing tall waders walked by our campsite carrying long sticks. Rob said to them that they looked like they were going fishing. Well, not exactly, they told us, but they were looking for and counting fish as part of their jobs with the Department of Fish and Wildlife. And yes, they had seen many spawning Salmon that afternoon and they gave us hints on where to find them. When we told them about our sighting of the fish the rangers identified as a juvenile Leopard Shark they asked to see the picture. Nope, they were sure it was a salmon - oh well. The next day with our new knowledge Rob and I walked along the trails by the creek and saw many spawning Salmon  and their Redds, the place they dig out to deposit their eggs. We continue to be amazed and awed by the life cycle of these very endangered fish and have become very protective of "our" Salmon, making sure visitors to the park know to keep their distance.

Rob looking down toward the creek at a Salmon Redd

You can spot the Salmon Redd by the lighter color of the creek rocks where the Salmon have worked to "brush" away the silt.

In this picture are a male Salmon (the red colored fish near the upper center of the picture), and the harder to spot grey female on the righthand side just below center.

    Monday and Tuesday of this week, our days off, we headed to Colfax for medical appointments and to celebrate Christmas with Ruth and Avienda on Winter Solstice. I was eager to see the highly touted conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the western sky so we drove up to the Blue Canyon airfield (5,280 ft. elevation) about a half hour drive from our Colfax home. It was a beautiful clear sky, and a good sighting of the conjunction - Beautiful, but a bit under whelming. 7 year old Avi had not been real happy at the prospect of the drive to see the sky, but she was very happy to find snow and ice to slip and slide on.

Can you see Jupiter and Saturn?

A more close up view - as good as my phone camera can do.

    On Tuesday morning we celebrated early Christmas with Ruth and Avi, including a waffle breakfast and the opening of gifts. To me it was the traditional waffle breakfast I always made for my family on Christmas morning, but alas, Ruth had no memory of that.

Avi playing Santa, distributing the gifts

Can you see Ruth up in the tree preparing to hang Avi's new swing?

Avi on the swing in the oak woodland behind the Colfax house.

    Our original assignment here at Samuel P Taylor State Park was to end in January, but with the uncertainty of travel the rest of this winter we asked if there might be an open volunteer site in February. The rangers were very happy to have us offer to stay as they have no Campground Host scheduled to arrive until May. They said we could certainly stay in February, and even March and April if we wanted. We have accepted, so instead of 3 months we will be here for 6 months and get to experience the ending of fall, the whole of winter and the beginning of spring. I am told that my beloved Trillium flowers bloom amongst these redwoods as a harbinger to spring just as they do in Humboldt County, so I look forward to that and to all the changes we will get to experience. I continue to be amazed at how I see things I haven't noticed before in the same places I've walked by numerous times, and I am more committed than ever to learning to identify the plants and especially the birds. My blogs will probably be containing much of what looks like the same old trees, but I can't help it.

    We will have less than a month of travel time in May before reporting to duty at our next Campground Host site. We were delighted, and a bit surprised, to be offered the summer at Eagle Point Campground at Emerald Bay Lake Tahoe from training the week before Memorial Day through Labor Day. We had previously said yes to August and September at Humboldt Redwoods State Park, but have since declined that, not sure we'll get a chance at the whole summer at Tahoe again.

Some of the beauty of looking up

More beauty

An oddity I noticed for the first time at "my" daily bench

A view into the forest from the bench I walk to each morning 

Another view into the forest from the bench

A close up view of the trees in the previous picture - notice the green moss, that wasn't there just a short time ago.

I am noticing more and more green as we get more rain.

    I love the time leading up to solstice as the days get shorter and shorter and the dark descends so early, and I love the beginning of increasing light as the days begin to lengthen. It seems curious to me that solstice is the first day of winter when it would seem more logical to be the middle of winter, and with all the greening happening and the new growth, even though it is cold and today is raining, it almost seems more like the beginning of spring. I have been reading an historical novel, This Road We Traveled by Jane Kirkpatrick, about a family moving to Oregon from Missouri in 1846. I loved this statement on page 244: "The landscape promised spring even in December..." Indeed it does!

Some beautiful lush sword ferns

Can you make out the little ferns growing right out of the moss on this rock?

I want to keep track of how these miniatures that were not there a short time ago progress!

A buck I encountered Sunday morning on the Cross Marin Trail.

Living in rural Colfax we saw deer almost every day in the front yard, but we still marvel at seeing them.

    Since the campers have been absent with the closure of all public campgrounds we have sometimes had to work hard to find "work" to do. I have kidded that we need to do one good deed each day to earn our hours. Sometimes that has been picking up litter - there's really very little of it as people are pretty careful, sometimes it's giving directions to folks here for day use, and sometimes it's some form of minor trail maintenance as pictured below.

A new obstacle across my morning trail last week.

Rob removing the obstacle.

    There are three onsite volunteer positions at Samuel P Taylor State Park, a Cabin Host, a Park Host and a Campground Host. The Cabin Host is situated by the four rental cabins  a quarter mile down the highway from the camp entrance. We have yet to meet the current host at that site, though we have walked by his RV a few times. The Park Host site is right next to the entrance kiosk, and we really enjoyed the couple that were in that position until a week ago when they headed to southern California. We have now taken over their duty of locking the day use bathrooms each evening and occasionally staffing the entrance kiosk as we did yesterday and today. We really enjoy greeting folks, helping them register for the day and answering questions. Yesterday, Christmas Eve, we were just about to close our time in the kiosk about 2:45 when a man parked in the 15 minute parking, exited his car,  and came over to speak to us at the kiosk. He said he was in the area and he just stopped by to thank us a for the work we were doing, and that he was the Director of California State Parks. I said, "THE director?" "Yes," he replied. We had a very interesting and pleasant conversation with Armando Quintero, the director since September 1, 2020. He has a very impressive resume and a healthy and hopeful vision for California's State Parks. That was a treat to meet the "big boss" who says he makes it a habit to stop by any park he is nearby. He lives nearby in San Rafael and the rangers tell us he stops here about once a month.

Rob sitting down on the job in the entrance kiosk this morning, Christmas day.

    We tried using a shade canopy in our campsite for a rain shelter, but it leaked. Doing campground check before the campground closed in early December we saw a couple sitting in screened in shelter and asked if they were warm since it was quite cold out. They said they were toasty warm because they had a small propane heater under the table. We asked more about the shelter and felt compelled to order it and a small heater so that we could have an outside "room." These items were our Christmas gifts to ourselves and we have already enjoyed playing a couple of games out there in the afternoon and I sat inside in it, protected from the rain this morning with my journal and cup of tea. Thank you Santa!

Our new "Clam" tent.

Our new little propane heater

Looking out from inside the "Clam"

My view of sunrise on Christmas Day - we don't see a lot of sky from our campsite!

    Elsie and Straus continue to thrive in their new RV lifestyle. Straus who has historically been quite the hider is almost always somewhere easy to find now, and these 10 1/2 year old kitties continue to chase each other and wrestle on occasion. Neither seems the least bit interested in venturing out into the cold, damp world outside LesThora.

An interesting pose by Elsie

An interesting pose by Straus

Straus and Elsie together

Elsie and Straus and a big "bump" on the bed.