Sophia Day, or how to crash a three-year old’s birthday party

We haven’t been that good at finding kids for Sophia to play with since we set off on September 2nd.
Mainly, this is because most families with young children are at home attending to things like school and work. Thus, we have mainly been meeting full-timer retirees, the occasional weekender and a few others who like to travel off-peak.
Also, we’ve been rushing towards California and away from winter.
So, we decided to celebrate Sophia and her patience with a special event, Sophia Day, which took place on Saturday October 24. In Grass Valley, California.
In honor of this, the whole day was dedicated to her pleasure. Kind of like a birthday, but maybe even better since it came totally out of the blue.

So, she got to choose what to have for breakfast: pancakes, a peanut butter blend, spiced up with fresh pomegranate.
Then, we cut shapes from colored construction paper: triangles, circles and hearts.
Following a quick shower, we ambled over to the duck pond, where we promptly met Two Kids – Hannah and Doug, ages almost 3 and almost 6, who with their parents have recently moved to the Nevada County area from Santa Cruz.
They had a grand old time, feeding a whole box of graham crackers to a pack of about 25 fearless ducks, riding bikes, sharing toys and comparing ages and heights.
Then, it was on to Cornish pasties – yes, Cornish pasties in California. The Cornish were brought here for their hard rock mining skills during the Gold Rush. Daniel, who grew up in Cornwall, said they tasted like the real thing.

On the suggestion of Hannah and Douglas’ mother Tracey, we then stopped by the Condon Park playground. She was right – it was perfect for the 2-5 age group, featuring slides, a mini fire engine, a built-in walkie-talkie like apparatus, swings and the like.
She ran around for ages, with plenty of kids to play with – even some who willingly played round after round of shopkeeper.

What we didn’t expect was to insinuate ourselves into a birthday party.
We think it was a group of firefighter parents, who had gathered with their kids to celebrate someone’s daughter’s third(?) birthday. Anyway, as soon as we saw that Sophia had joined the tug-of-war, we doubted there would be any getting out.
And when the Dora the Explorer piñata came out, there was definitely no escape.
We wondered whether the actual party participants noticed there was a small interloper, the one joining the chorus of “candy, candy, smash it, smash it”. She kept almost getting to the front of the line, as kid after kid took swings at the papier-mâché with a plastic bat.
So, Daniel and I sat innocently on the sidelines, trying to eye each other very, very quietly and suppress any and all giggles, lest anyone ruin Sophia Day.

Finally, we couldn’t take Sophia’s possible rejection any longer. I approached the very athletic lady in charge of blind batting and said something like “Um, we’re totally not supposed to be at this party, but could our daughter please-please-please take a whack at the piñata?” So she eventually did, and then someone managed to break Dora’s neck, and then all the candy came pouring out. The athletic lady gave a gleeful whoop and shook the rest out. All the kids came running and filled up their appointed decorative plastic bags, and all the parents cheered, forgetful for a moment about how bad all that sugar is for one’s teeth.
It was so exciting, almost as good as if it had actually been Sophia’s own birthday party, with her own friends.

Then, we all realized we were at someone else’s party in someone else’s town.

So we went for pizza, lemonade/beer and frozen yoghurt, completing a very successful Sophia Day.

This photo is from Wyoming - it's sunny and warm during the day here - our camera's gone fuzzy, so we have to use stock images.

Lake Tahoe

We couldn’t have been luckier with the weather at Lake Tahoe, a huge, 1,600-foot deep body of water straddling Nevada and California. Despite snow a few days previous and rain forecasted for the following day, we managed to strike a sunny, 75 degree Saturday.
Approaching the lake from sun-baked Carson City to the east, we climbed up and up the Alpine-like Sierra Nevada, cooled by tall pines and imposing granite.
Quickly, we caught our first glimpse of that pristine lake about which we had heard so much.
This place is totally worth a visit, and all the hyperboles are true. Everything is completely clear – the air, the views, the water.
Having chosen to go north and west around the lake, we thought that the Nevada side – which includes the Lake Tahoe State Park – was by far the superior, and the emptier.
So, having scouted out the California side as well, we raced back to Nevada and spent one glorious hour at Sand Harbor. There, we shared the long beach with fewer than ten other people.
Gazing out at perfect snow-topped mountains, inhaling the scent of Ponderosa pine trees, disbelieving the amazing non-stick sand, and admiring the artfully strewn boulders along the water’s edge, all we could scream (quietly) was “Splendid, splendid!”.
We even swam. The water was **absolutely freezing (59 degrees Fahrenheit)**, but we couldn’t even think of missing out on that opportunity.

Would you let alien-spotters look after your baby?

We did, and it was fine. Four or five of Rachel, Nevada’s 99 or so residents were gathered around a picnic bench at the town’s only business, the Little A-le-Inn, and asked whether they could play with Lulu.

The timing was ideal, since we were amidst the never-quick routine of packing up the Airstream for a day in the car. And if they tried to abduct her, there’d be nowhere to go, since Rachel is the only town within 50 miles in any direction.

So off she went in her stroller to the picnic table, in easy view of the trailer’s door.
Twenty minutes later, she was contentedly asleep in the arms of the proprietress’ daughter, having been passed around and cooed over the whole time.

Sophia also came away happy, having been given an stretchy purple and orange alien bracelet resembling a double octopus, as well as three heart-shaped rings containing lipgloss.

We were staying in a $12 per night RV park owned by the A-le-Inn, which also runs a bar, restaurant, motel and alien memorabilia business.

Rachel is a hotspot for alien watching, most likely thanks to its proximity to the US government’s top-secret Nellis Air Force Range Complex. It is unclear whether the reported activity is a result of extraterrestrial visits or government weapons testing, or a combination of the two. Sitting atop a mesa and concealed by various mountain ranged, Nellis measures hundreds of square miles and is accessible only by dirt roads angling upwards at rather scary grades.

The high desert town itself is at an altitude of 5,000 feet, surrounded by mountain ranges in all directions. We were told it gets a couple inches per year of precipitation, staying doggedly sunny and warm even when the adjacent mountains are covered in snow.

Tiny – with at least half the population seeming to live in the RV park where we slept - the town has no groceries, drugstore, gas station, fire brigade, medical services (a local girl had gone to a hospital well over 100 miles away in Las Vegas to have a baby) or police force. Asked whether townfolk had to resort to vigilante law enforcement, the response was that EVERYONE had guns, lots of them.

“We all have guns - this place is full of large antelope and deer, carnivorous jackrabbits, tarantulas, coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats, wild horses…” we lost track there.

So don’t mess with the people of Rachel.

That said, they seem to be law-abiding people. The previous night, the bartender wouldn’t let me have a much-needed drink until I showed her an ID (the local customers looked me up and down and decided I didn’t look old enough). With both girls in my arms and Daniel busy setting up the trailer for a night’s sleep, she eventually took pity on me, handing me an icy – and potent – ‘Area 51’ (named for the most secret of the government’s rumored testing areas). Daniel had an even more lethal ‘Beam Me Up, Scotty’, which had bourbon, scotch and Seven-Up.

Cathedral Gorge State Park

This stop, not a famous place at all, was our one of our best ones yet.
We read about Cathedral Gorge State Park, which is on the eastern edge of Nevada just over the border from Utah, in the excellent ‘Road Trip USA: Cross-Country Adventures on America’s Two-Lane Highways’, by Jamie Jensen.

www.roadtripusa.com

When we arrived, the sky was cool, very overcast, moving quickly into evening and filled with Air Force jet fighters practicing their routes. Having driven around the campsite twice to check out the other inhabitants – about four of the twenty or so sites were occupied - we decided that the $14-with-shower price tag made it worth staying.
We invited our tent-residing neighbors – God bless those hardy souls! - over to the trailer for a beer and peanuts – our first night entertaining!
Pam and Phil from Arizona, and Dave from Sacramento, stopped by for a couple of hours, time to tell us a bit about themselves and share some tips on avoiding snow and cold over the winter months.
Happily, it didn’t feel too cramped in the trailer – they all had enough room to sit, Sophia had space for her games, and we were able to squeeze Lulu and her new travel highchair in as well.
Phil divvied out some smoked salmon he had bought in Oregon on to sturdy crackers, also bringing along some Samuel Smith - English beer, in honor of Daniel.

But back to the gorge.

Cathedral Gorge is the remains of a huge, mineral-heavy lake that dried up, leaving its sediment-laden floor exposed to erosion. Paleontologists must have a field day there, reading into the multicolored rings of silt and pebbles lining the formations.

Well within view of the campsite are hundreds of bunches of mudstone spires, all a faded coppery-taupe kind of color, rising up out of the ground and coming together to form caves. Against the backdrop of blonde grasses, papery corn-colored sagebrush flowers, beige sand-soil, and the campsite’s imported silvery Russian olive trees and neatly sienna-d gravel plots – all backlit by faraway tonal blue mountains and the following day’s flawless azure sky, the landscape was a veritable muted symphony.

Following twisting paths among the spire sets, we were led through narrower and narrower passageways terminating in cool, damp, exit-less spaces, from which the only view was a small, towering window straight up into the sky – making us feel like victims in a particularly scenic movie chase-scene. Noticing messes of feathers and droppings in the caves, we wondered whether these birds had been prey or predator.

Having accustomed ourselves to the desert and isolation, we ended up staying two nights, finally dragging ourselves away one mid-afternoon after a fresh-air lunch.

Zion National Park

Bryce Canyon

Star of the show at southeastern Utah’s Bryce Canyon is the hoodoo, a strange formation resembling a chunky finger. Thousands of these rise out of valleys, cliff sides and mountains, like an army of chess pieces.
We did the drive-through version of the park, stopping for a hike and picnic at Mossy Cave, a sweeping view over a 20-mile valley and an entertaining park ranger led hike and lesson in fleeing wild animals, identifying local trees and recognizing fossils.
Because temperatures were dropping to 20 degrees Fahrenheit, we treated ourselves to two nights at the Canyon Lodge in the nearby town of Panguich. The motel did us a nightly cash deal of $50, meaning that we still came up under budget – hurrah!
Photo montage by Daniel.

Tin Can Tamales

Later the same day, we came across two more inspired people – Reta and Michelle, who sell tamales out of a vintage Spartan trailer in a parking lot in Hurricane, Utah.
Instead of cooking tamales, a traditional corn dough-with-filling snack across much of the Americas, in cornhusks or banana leaves, they steam them in cans – the kind soup or beans come in.
These tamales, which weigh a pound apiece, are delicious, healthy and ingenious.
Daniel had the spicy pork one, Sophia the mild pork one, while I had the veggie one.
We all thought they were amazing, and sat on the curb next to our Airstream devouring our yummy lunch-in-cans with a side of avocado and tomatillo salsa.
We loved the ladies and their business, and enjoyed seeing new uses for a metal trailer.
With California-based investors already behind them, Reta and Michelle are hoping to move to mass production, with the aim of distributing their product wholesale and setting up franchises.
We think they are on to a winner…

www.tincantamales.com