Long Weekend In the Redwoods

Hard to believe, but our idea of taking a vacation from the woods was...to travel to a different kind of woods. We traveled across California to the Redwoods. They are spectacular, and the boys had never seen them. Nothing deflates your ego like the majesty of nature at its most gigantic.  When people unfamiliar with the diversity of California think of Cali, they think of So Cal beaches or the high desert riddled with joshua trees. But California, especially Northern California, is so much more.

This is my youngest posing by the root cluster of a downed redwood on the Avenue of the Giants.  They truly are enormous, with most tall AND  wide.

The light is very eery in the redwood forests. It has that damp, ancient quality that calls to mind Bigfoot or dinosaurs. You can find both here, as towns celebrating the Bigfoot legend proliferate and one of the Jurassic Park movies was partially filmed in Fern Canyon.

I wish I had taken a picture of the road condition sign we passed, because it was hysterical. In the Sierras, we have a short range broadcast on 1610 am for snow closures. In Humboldt county, they tune to the same station for elk reports. These stately, and LARGE, creatures know they're protected here. They dallied in the roadway for several minutes before ambling over to their rest area.

This is Battery Point Lighthouse in Crescent City, CA. I was surprised by the size of Crescent City, because I'd always heard it was "quaint." It's significantly bigger than our town, though, and smack in the damage zone for tsunamis, having been hit twice before.

The boys were great. No one got carsick, although my youngest did complain that he had a case of terminal travel butt. California is a big, big state, but I'm glad we were able to make the trek to the ocean. Camping, alas, holds no appeal when we live in the woods.

Did you go anywhere on over Memorial Day?

Review: The Importance of Being Wicked by Victoria Alexander

Format: mass market paperback
Publisher: Kensington
Pub Date: February
Length: 358 pages
FTC: Review copy courtesy of the publisher

I used to love Victoria Alexander's books, but something has changed in the last few years. She's changed publishers, for one. And many of her books have been released in hardcover first. Not something I'm a fan of. The Importance of Being Wicked is a mass market original, though. Even if the title is ripping off the classic one The Importance of Being Earnest. (Romance community, I am BEGGING you to stop borrowing titles and tweaking them for your use. I hate hate hate it.)

The last few books she's put out just haven't worked for me. Which is sad, because the The Marriage Lesson and The Wedding Bargain are two of my favorite romance books. But I couldn't even finish this book's predecessor, What Happens At Christmas, after requesting it from Netgalley. I hate abandoning books midway through, but when I do, it's because I've lost interest.  I'd almost rather a truly bad book to one that leaves me indifferent.

Gone Fishin'

It's that time of year. Still cool enough to be outdoors, not warm enough for the bugs to eat you alive. Perfect fishing weather. And by that I mean watching the Hubs and the boys fish while I a) read or b) take pictures.

It's an unusually warm spring here. We normally are still getting snow into May. But the fish seem pretty sure that the warm weather is here to stay. They're a full month early on where they're being caught. At least according to our local newspaper. At this rate, we'll be out of wildflower season by early June. *sad face* Usually we can count on all kinds of flowers straight through until the snow hits in October. I even like the flowery weeds.

While my youngest and I sat quietly waiting for a fish to nibble on the worm-filled hook on his fishing pole, a family of geese swam by. I admit, I'm a little jealous of his sense of wonder. He got nearly as much enjoyment out of watching the geese as he did from catching two small rainbow trout.

TBR Challenge Review: The Spymaster's Lady by Joanna Bourne

Format: Mass market paperback
Pub Date: January 2008
Publisher: Berkley (Penguin)
Length: 373 pages
FTC: Purchased at a library booksale years and years ago
Why was it in the TBR?: One of the most recommended romances of the last 5 years.

This month's TBR Challenge theme was "More Than One (An author who has more than one book in your TBR pile)." I had several likely candidates for this one. And it took me a long time to settle on which one to read. Since I've had this particular book sitting on my nightstand for about six months, I decided to find out what all of the fuss was about.