Road Trip to the Pacific Northwest

July 29, 2017 Elizabeth Boegel

the Kalama River, perhaps our favorite river of all

We arrived home last night after almost two weeks on the road, on a wonderful journey defined mostly by rivers and mountains. Both Tom and I had been to Oregon and Washington before, but it's been 20-30 years, so it was as if it was new to us. Plus, we saw new areas we hadn't seen before. And, it was fun to have our two teenagers in tow, both of whom had never been to either state.

As with so many California journeys, our trip started with us heading out on I-5. It was fun to drive by a very snowy Mt. Shasta and a very full Shasta reservoir. We stopped briefly in McCloud, a town Tom and I fell in love with 15 years ago, when I was pregnant with Adam and we traveled there for a short vacation. The town looks rather downtrodden at the moment, but the scenery really makes up for it. We also stopped to hike in Castle Crags State Park, where we looked way, way up at spires where the Pacific Crest Trail goes by, and we were all secretly thankful we weren't hiking on THAT trail. We continued up I-5 and ended our first day's travels in the Klamath National Forest, camped by the Klamath River in a campground called 'Tree of Heaven.' The campground was small and private, and we enjoyed a swim in the river before dinner.

Swimming in the Klamath, not too cold (65 degrees maybe? the warmest water we swam in the entire trip)

The next morning, Day 2, we packed up and drove over the mountains and into Oregon, shortly coming into Ashland, where the Shakespeare Festival was in full swing. We spent the day exploring Lithia Park and the town of Ashland (I had visited 25 years ago and found it much the same, though clearly weathier), drove down the road a bit to visit both the Rogue River and Emigrant Lake, plus the Dagoba chocolate factory (which is now owned by Hershey, darn it). We checked in to a hotel (Adam was annoyed by the fact that every hotel and store had a Shakespeare-themed name, giving the town a slightly Disneyland feel) and got ready for our theater experience. We saw "The Odyssey" at the Allen Elizabethan theater, and it was 3-1/2 hours of pure brilliance. The kids were riveted and we all loved it.

Inside of the theater. Later, we learned we weren't supposed to take pictures. However, the doors were wide open so we went in and took a look!

On day 3, we packed up early and headed up to Crater Lake National Park. Tom had been here as a 14 year old; the rest of us had never seen it, and I was really looking forward to exploring it. We stopped in the visitor's center, picked up a sandwich, and ate our lunch looking out at the lake. Then we joined a Ranger Walk up to the rim and along it, trekking through snow piles all the way. All through Oregon, and especially at this location, we were amazed by all the wildflowers that ringed every roadside. Wildflower season in our part of CA is late winter to early spring, so it was fun to see so much vegetation in bloom in late July. Of course the flowers and vegetation at Crater Lake are subalpine, as snow stays around here through the year. We enjoyed hearing the ranger talk about the history and ecology of the lake, and we enjoyed throwing snowballs, and we enjoyed the walk and the beauty of the place. Afterward, we traveled down the north side of the park to Diamond Lake, where our reserved campsite was waiting, right on the edge of the water, with snow-capped peaks all around us.

Swimming in the lake ringed by snowy peaks

On Day 4, we headed up to the capital city of Oregon, Salem. We have friends who live in Monmouth and teach at Western Oregon University; we were planning to have dinner with them and see their alpaca ranch and home. First we explored a little of Salem, which we didn't find all that pretty; we did enjoy a walk on the Willamette river and some hand-churned ice cream downtown. We much rather preferred the little towns to the west of Salem - like Monmouth, and Independence, both cute mid-1800's towns surrounded by farmland. We saw blueberry farm after blueberry farm, the bushes so laden with fruit that it put our bushes to shame. We had a great dinner with our friends, Charles and Maren Anderson and their two delightful daughters. Charles and Tom were in grad school together at Cal; Maren and Charles got married about the same time we did, and moved to Oregon around the time we had Adam. Their kids are younger then ours, and fun to follow around as they showed us around their farm, chasing chickens and the donkeys and the alpacas, which in their newly-shorn summer coats looked for all the world like Ewoks.

There were logging trucks and trains everywhere in the PNW

The next morning, we opened the curtains to our hotel and looked down at the parking lot and discovered a crime scene. Hoards of police cars, trucks, police tape everywhere, news crews, and a dead body loosely covered by a sheet, all two floors underneath our window. Later we found out a 25-year-old man was shot and killed at 3:30 in the morning. We heard nothing, thankfully, but it was shocking to wake up to this. We packed up as soon as we could and got moving, very subdued and sad about this turn of events. Luckily we were planning to meet the Andersons at a local farmers' market, so we had something to look forward to and to put our minds on. We enjoyed not one but two markets a block away from each other, and bought all the berries our car could hold. We also found one young farmer selling tomatoes and peppers that he grows in a greenhouse (it's not hot enough for long enough, otherwise) and we bought all he had, for our dinners the next two nights. Tom and I couldn't get enough berries, we ate a pint every chance we could. We found all kinds of new (to us) berries - Josta, red huckleberry, red currants. Marionberries might have been our favorite, though the farmers in Oregon seemed to find them too common to care much about. We loved them. After saying goodbye to our friends, we drove up to Portland (marveling at Mt Hood in the distance the entire way), and had lunch and walked by the Willamette. You know how sometimes you feel a little out-of-place in a new city? Well, it was the opposite for us in Portland. Everywhere you look, there's a beard like Tom's, or hair like Adam's. We felt right at home and enjoyed a fabulous farm-to-table lunch with local coffee and beer. Then we drove out to the Columbia Gorge, hoping to hike waterfalls, but the traffic was so bad that we ditched that idea and went on up into Washington and to Kalama, where our friends the Hoffmans have both a home in town and on the Kalama river. They generously offered us their river house for two nights, and words cannot express how much we loved this place. Right on the Kalama river, which sung us to sleep each night, in a perfectly appointed and lovingly decorated home, where we could do five loads of laundry and cook some meals on a real stove instead of a camp stove. It was just the respite we needed.

The next day, the Hoffmans arrived to entertain us, Kalama style. April and I first met when we were both singing in the choir at First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley back in the mid-1990's. She and her husband Greg were like kindred spirits and we enjoyed spending time with them so much. April and I were part of a book club and enjoyed cooking for each other and hanging out with a group of friends we knew from church. The Hoffmans lived for a time in Seattle, and then back near us in the Bay Area for a short time, and now they are back in Kalama for good. April is in the process of renovating a historic building in downtown Kalama, which will be a showcase for the furniture that she rescues and reupholsters, as well as her artwork and those of other local artists. April has the most innate sense of style of anyone I've ever met, and everything she touches becomes gorgeous and creative, hand crafted in the most high-end way possible. Her storefront, which is called Ella Gray, will be open by the autumn, and if you're ever in Kalama, I highly recommend a visit. Anyway, April and Greg and their two sons, as well as some neighbors and family friends, came up to the river house to take us tubing down the river. What a fabulous day we had! I was personally terrible at tubing, as my arms are too short to reach the water and direct my tube the way I wanted it to go, but I managed to make it over some rapids without bailing and meandered the rest of the way down the 52 degree river, while Tom and the men drank cold beer as they floated and the kids practically raced down. Adam jumped off a 40-foot bridge into the water (after watching the Hoffman boys do it). We had a wonderful evening meal, made from the farmers market produce we bought the day before, and then spent the evening by an outdoor fireplace, catching up. It was a perfect day.

I took this right after we came back, all of us and all these tubes, in one truck. It was the clown car of river rats.

From the deck of April's house in town. The light is wrong, but the Columbia River is in the background.

We reluctantly left Kalama and our friends to travel up into the heart of Washington, knowing that the area we really wanted to explore was up north, in the Skagit Valley. We drove up trusty I-5, openmouthed past views of Mt St Helens and Mt Rainier (completely covered in snow), past Seattle, up into farm country until we reached our campsite, in Larrabee State Park, on the Samish Bay, just south of Bellingham. This campground was large, and FULL, but our reserved site was actually a walk in, and we were perhaps the length of a football field up a hill, to a perfect private nook. It was an ideal spot, despite the walk to the bathrooms, and we were thrilled until we saw the train tracks, not 200 yards below our campsite. We could only hope that the trains did not run at night. We drove into Bellingham and saw the Spiderman movie with popcorn for dinner, before returning to the park and watching the sun set over the San Juan Islands. It was gorgeous. We got ready for bed, perfectly happy. And then the trains started. Every half hour, long long freight trains, until about 2 am. It was not a very nice night.

That's actually Lummi Island in the distance

We had planned to camp here two nights, but we just couldn't face the trains again. So quickly I found another campsite on a sheep farm and creamery on Whidbey Island. We wanted to explore that area anyway, so it worked out perfectly. I found this campsite on Hipcamp, which I joined back when I was planning this trip. Hipcamp shows you all kinds of alternative camping areas all over the US, as well as state parks. It's a neat service and fun to see what kinds of places you can find near you. Anyway, as soon as we knew we'd be camping elsewhere, we packed up and headed south through the little towns of Edison and Bow, which completely charmed us. This area is in a flat valley, ringed to the east with the North Cascade range (long and snowy), and the west with the bay and islands, and further on, by views of the Olympic Peninsula range (craggy and snowy). The cropland is rich and fertile, and we saw the most idyllic farms surrounded by fields of diverse crops. Edison boasts a wonderful breakfast spot called The Breadfarm, which was a yeasty heaven on earth. We fell in love with these tiny, sleepy farm towns with the majestic views. We realize we were visiting their perfect summer window (which is SHORT), and we should probably go back in February to see how it really feels to live there. But on this visit, the weather was sunny and cool and everything was green and there was water everywhere and the people were friendly and we just loved it. We drove onto Whidbey Island via the Deception Pass bridge, and we stopped and ranged around the state park there, exploring the waterways underneath the impressive structure. We continued south down the island, stopping at farm stands to get eggs, raw milk and cream, fresh peas, and grass-fed beef for our camp meals. We stopped in Coupeville, a tiny fishing village, to have lunch, and explored a military fort and lighthouse at the south end of the island. We reached the sheep farm by late afternoon. We set up camp next to another couple who are traveling the US with their Airstream trailer and dog; they have been on the road since 2015! The sheep camp had an outdoor shower and kitchen, and a very adventurous walk down to the bay and the beach; we watched bunnies in the lawns and enjoyed the adolescent turkeys cooped up with the chickens, learning how to gobble. We smiled at the sound of ewes going in for milking and wished for a chance to taste the cheese, but the shop was closed. We got the best tent-sleep of our lives on that farm, that night.

Day 9, we packed up and set off for the ferry that would take us from the south end of Whidbey Island to the mainland. We had to wait a bit, but what an exciting thing, to drive our car onto a huge boat, and then get out and watch our trip across the bay. Then we drove into Seattle to spend the day. Seattle was Kate's favorite place of the whole trip, and I can see why - it's a charming big city set on the side of a hill that slopes down to a bay, and it has interesting people and good food and plenty to look at. Sound familiar? We decided Seattle was a lot like San Francisco, and kept expecting to see a trolley laboring up a nearby hill. We decided to play tourists and spend the bulk of our time in Pike's Place Market and the surrounding wharf. The market is huge, nine acres or something, and was crammed full of people. We enjoyed looking at all the fish available for purchase, and all the local produce, and we bought some handmade pasta and some veg. We talked to some locals who recommended that we eat lunch at the original Ivar's, down by the water, so we walked down there and had fish n' chips. Then we rode the huge ferris wheel that would give us better views, we were told, than the Space Needle. That was fun. We wanted to see the Chihuly installation but decided that we'd had enough of crowds and cities and headed back out of town. It's funny how much we didn't want to be in cities on this trip (Kate excluded, she would have loved more time in Seattle and Portland). After camping in so many wonderful wild places, it just seemed weird to be in crowds. We anticipated staying in the city longer so I had booked a hotel there. We cancelled that reservation and decided to head out to the Washington coast (just beautiful) and then back down to Oregon. We managed to get a hotel room in Astoria so we stayed the night there. Adam and I went out and explored the town a bit, and I had last been there when I was about 24, and I have to say it looked shabbier than I remembered it. But the bridge across the Columbia from Washington to Astoria was spectacular and was the longest bridge we crossed on our trip.

On top of the ferry looking down at the cars

Adam looking out toward the Northern Cascades

We bought tomatoes, basil, and garlic here

near the Willapa Bay, south of Aberdeen WA, a place I must go back to and spend some time, it was gorgeous

We packed up the next morning early and headed for the Lewis and Clark National Park. This is where the explorers spent the winter before heading back across the country again. The park is a gorgeous place with interesting buildings and with well-labeled plants (which I appreciated very much) on our walk down to the Netul River, eating some wild salal and red huckleberry fruits on the way. We then drove to Tillamook and had a grilled cheese and ice cream cone at the factory there, an intensely crowded spot - interesting in this day and age, where artisan cheesemakers are everywhere, but oh well, we liked our mainstream ice cream anyway. Our reserved camping spot was at Bullard's Beach state park, but we decided to drive further than that and hope to find camping closer to the CA state border. Highway 101 on the Oregon coast is a spectacular drive, one that both Tom and I have done before, but was new to the kids. There are all sorts of little towns and villages along the way, and all the while this amazing coastline to look at. It takes a while but it sure is scenic. We started to get a little nervous about finding another camping spot however, as everything seemed full, and we had little cell phone service to research our options. (I was continually marveling that our mothers used to plan trips like these without the internet. HOW???) It got later and later, and all of us were tired of driving, when we finally spotted a small sign that led to a campground about 10 miles off 101 up the Rogue River (here we were seeing this river again, but now on the ocean side!) and we were able to set up camp, cook the Pike's Place Market produce and pasta that we'd been holding onto, and even get in some stone-skipping on the river before bed.

maybe a little windy? but a nice lighthouse behind us

Our last day consisted of driving back into California and the long 10 hour slog home. When you first cross the border from OR into CA on 101, it doesn't look that different - winding roads through woods and fog. Then the magnificent redwoods start to dominate the landscape and you think, ahhhh. THIS is California. Then you travel through weird and wonderful little towns like Arcata (I'll be back to visit you again one day Arcata, I loved you!) and then finally you reach valley, where the temps start to rise and the hills are crispy and brown and dominated by grapevines. Before long you're back into wall-to-wall traffic and big cities and rush hour. It does get a little depressing. After the clear skies, tall trees, and moderate temperatures of the PNW, not to mention the sight of water everywhere, it's hard to rest your eyes on hazy brown hills and freeways. But we were of course glad to get home, glad to get laundry started, glad to have our own bathroom and beds. We found our water heater broken (bummer) and a bumper crop of tomatoes needing to be harvested (exciting) so today has been busy. The repair guy has come, I've harvested and roasted peppers for the freezer, plus canned five pints of salsa using our tomatoes and peppers. Tom harvested cucumbers and is in the process of making bread 'n butter pickles. The air conditioning is on, blech, but the cat is happy and sleeping on our bed - apparently she was disconsolate the entire time we were gone. We've aired out the tents and sleeping bags and transferred all the rocks we collected from all the rivers and lakes we visited into a special place in the garden. Kate's back on her computer, and Adam's back hanging out with friends. The washing machine is going non-stop. Back to reality.

We traveled a distance of just under 2500 miles.

We visited eight national and state parks: Castle Crags State Park (CA), Klamath National Forest (CA), Umpqua National Forest (OR), Crater Lake National Park (OR), Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area (OR & WA), Larrabee State Park (WA), Deception Pass State Park (WA), Fort Clatsop Lewis and Clark National Park (OR). We drove through many, many more, and wished we had the time to explore them, especially Mt Rainier and Mt Baker.

The highest altitude we reached was over 7100 feet on the rim of Crater Lake (OR).

We crossed 39 named bridges and hundreds of unnamed ones. The longest bridge we crossed was the Astoria Megler Bridge between Washington and Oregon, over the Columbia River, at four miles long.

We spotted a license plate for every state EXCEPT these ten: Hawaii, Rhode Island, Delaware, new Jersey, Vermont, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Alabama, and North Dakota.

We wished we had tracked how many cannabis storefronts we saw. There was at least one in every town in Oregon, often two, and similar amounts in Washington, very much like the old liquor store on every corner. Marijuana is legal recreationally in both states. We saw what California is going to look like now that it is legal here, too. I have to say, not terribly attractive, honestly.

Crops we saw actually growing: sunflowers, olives, grapes, hay, corn, hazelnuts, almonds, raspberries, blueberries, silage corn, rice, peaches, grass seed, walnuts, onions, Christmas trees, marionberries, blackberries, ornamental trees, turf, lilies, dahlias, timber, broccoli, potatoes, alfalfa, and strawberries.

We also saw beef cattle, milk cows, goats, sheep, alpacas, and chickens, on farms throughout our trip.

We all agreed that the River House in Kalama was the most beautiful spot; I think because not only was it physically beautiful, but it was also full of love and there was respite for us there in the middle of our trip and we were cared for so graciously by the Hoffmans.

The other places that we listed as most beautiful: Mt. Shasta, Crater Lake, the Umpqua River, Chuckanut Bay with a view of the San Juan Islands (south of Bellingham), the agricultural plains of the Skagit Valley ringed by snowy mountains, the Willapa Bay south of Aberdeen, the Oregon coastline (the southern portion in particular), and Seattle.

Next possible road trip adventure: the Baja peninsula in Mexico?

How to Sidestep Blossom End Rot: My Plan for the Future

July 13, 2017 Elizabeth Boegel

Italian Heirloom and Hungarian Heart tomatoes, in various stages of ripening

Blossom End Rot is the bane of my summer tomato garden. I am picking and composting at least a dozen tomatoes a day, all suffering from a brown, rotted bottom. It's incredibly discouraging.

So, so many people believe that BER is caused by calcium deficiency in the soil. As you will soon see, the problem is not that simple. However, I went ahead and tested my soil. It has plenty of calcium, probably because I add our own crushed eggshells from the compost bin into my beds every year; and though it takes a long time to break down, it does eventually become available to the plants. Just to be sure, this year, I also buried two Tums tablets at the base of each plant, under the drip line holes, so they'd dissolve and add extra calcium to the soil. This was recommended procedure in one of my college courses, so I proceeded, even though I was doubtful.

I've also read time and time again that BER is also a water problem, with the way calcium moves through the plant, and that water stress can cause BER. We are watering every day, since it's been hot - the beds get 20 minutes of drip each morning.

SO: The beds have even, consistent moisture. The calcium is there in the soil. I even tried some hybrid tomatoes this year in the hope that they would be resistant. To no avail, it turns out - they have just as many affected fruits as the heirlooms.

BUT all is not lost. I've noticed something interesting this year.

I only get BER on the long, thin paste tomato varieties. Not on the ones like those pictured here, that are chunky and full.

Almost a pound of delicious tomato goodness

So, noticing that, I started typing different sorts of queries in to Google, with altered words and phrases. And I found the most excellent article from our very own UC division of agriculture and natural resources (UCANR). This article spells it OUT, my friends. Here's some of what I learned, though I recommend reading the entire article if BER is a problem in your garden, too:

It turns out that BER is more common in fast growing varieties with extensive leaf systems. It does affect the more narrow fruits like Roma, and it also tends to affect determinate tomatoes more, as there is pressure in the plant to ripen all the fruit at once.

While BER is a calcium issue, it's not as simple as just adding calcium to the soil. And while at heart BER management is a water issue, it's not a simple as keeping an even amount of moisture in the soil. Here's how it works. Calcium is dissolved in the soil (by all those little critters in the microbiome - fungi, especially) and is taken up by the plant root and is transported in the xylem in the plant stem (the 'tubes' that transport water; remember your 9th grade biology? Phloem transports the nutrients. But calcium is mobile in water and goes through the xylem only). And then: "Under conditions of high evaporative demand, i.e. low relative humidity and high temperature, water moves rapidly to the leaves, where most transpiration occurs. The calcium is carried along with the water, so most calcium absorbed by the plant ends up in the leaves. Fruit do not transpire as much as leaves; therefore less calcium reaches the fruit, which can cause a localized calcium deficiency." Um, low relative humidity and high temperature? This sentence may as well have a map with a pin in it in Walnut Creek, CA.

And not only that, once the fruit develops its waxy cuticle (when the fruit is between 1/2 - 3/4" in diameter), the transpiration rate in the fruit is FURTHER reduced. And get this, transpiration can also be restricted in cool or cloudy weather because the atmospheric demand for moisture is low. So that's why we shouldn't be planting our tomatoes too early, especially when the soil is too cold!

Meaty, juicy without being watery, fleshy. Yeah, baby.

Now, we had an extraordinarily chilly May. Which actually often happens, especially the first half of the month. And it happens after a heat wave in April, which gets us all anxious to get tomatoes in the ground. And then it turns cold again. Then we had several blasts of very hot weather, which makes everything transpire even more. So the leaves are transpiring like crazy, but the fruit is of a certain size now and can't transpire. So no calcium to the fruit. WHICH EXPLAINS why the fruit on the side of the garden that is getting mid-day shade isn't having nearly as much BER. It's not transpiring as heavily on those very hot days as the ones on the mid-day full-sun part of the garden!

The article ends with a checklist of things you can do to prevent/manage blossom end rot, like adding organic matter to the soil, mulching heavily, watering on a schedule, etc, all things I already do. What's that definition of crazy again? Doing the same thing over and over and hoping you'll get a different result? Seems to me I need to change things up next year. Like for instance, plant tomatoes in the ground LATER, like mid-May, and maybe even more importantly, avoid planting narrow-fruited varieties! I mean, look at the pictures of those fabulous thick tomatoes all through this post! Both of these varieties (Italian Heirloom and Hungarian Heart) can be used as dual-purpose tomatoes, for both eating fresh and for cooking or canning. So from now on, I'm sticking to the fattest tomatoes I can find.

Roasted Tomato Sauce for the Freezer

July 12, 2017 Elizabeth Boegel

We are harvesting many tomatoes a day. Several get eaten for meals, of course (my latest favorite is scrambled eggs with tomato, shallots, garlic, and basil, served with a slice of my sourdough spread with burrata cheese), but when I get a small bunch that need to be used right away, and it's not enough for a big canning project, I make a roasted sauce for the freezer. You could also pressure-can this sauce, but you can't water-bath can, as the acid is likely not high enough for that. All you need are your tomatoes, some fresh basil, garlic, olive oil, and coarse sea salt (or kosher).

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. You'll spread the chopped tomatoes on baking sheets, adding as much chopped garlic and basil as you like. Then lash everything with a good glug of olive oil and a sprinkling of salt. Roast for 30-40 minutes, moving your sheets around halfway, until the tomatoes have softened and everything smells heavenly. Leave to cool for a bit, then load up your containers for the freezer. Make sure to label them with the date!

This makes a great lunch sometime in the dead of winter, when you're craving some summer flavors. If you're not growing your own tomatoes, there's nothing to stop you going to your local farmers market, and choosing a flat of delicious, multi-colored, delightfully misshapen, heirloom tomatoes from your local farmer. Eat some fresh, and make sauce for the freezer. Do this every weekend, and your cold season will be made just a little bit warmer.

I'm still picking our tomatoes just before ripe and keeping them on the piano to ripen further.

With all the creatures we have visiting our garden and night and taking nibbles, this is the only way I am assured a supply! We have so many different kinds and colors, that we have to check for ripeness by feel rather than by color. When they are soft, they are ready to eat. Soon, I'll have enough all at once to do a big batch of crushed tomatoes for the canner, or possibly tomato paste, depending on the variety. Tomato season is exciting!

Fire and Water

July 11, 2017 Elizabeth Boegel

Yesterday, I drove Kate up to Oroville so she could attend camp at Okizu, which is located north of the dam in Berry Creek.

A quick word about Okizu, for you new readers or folks who don't know us well. Okizu is a camp for children with cancer and their immediate families. We started attending family camp after Adam was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia at age 2, in 2003. When the kids turned eight, they each started spending a week up there in the summer time, Adam at 'Oncology' camp and Kate at 'Sibs' camp. We also still attend a family weekend camp every year.

All of this is completely free for us; it is a wonderful service that allows Adam to connect with other kids who have been through what he has been through, and Kate to spend some time reflecting on what it's like to be the sibling of a child with a life-threatening disease. As a family, each year we get a long weekend to remember that time when he was young (Adam had chemo for three and a half years), and offer support to parents who are new to the diagnosis. We also have the chance to honor those who have lost their lives and mourn with their families.

Okizu is located in a beautiful valley, under Bald Rock, in Berry Creek. Berry Creek hosts a Grange Hall and a church, but not much else, and the camp property is vast and encompasses a ropes course, a zip line, two lakes (one for swimming and boating, and one for fishing), an archery course, an arts and crafts pavilion, a dining lodge with a games basement, a huge hill and meadow for frisbee golf, a doctors cottage (there is always a doctor and nurse on premises, many of the children who come are still undergoing treatment), and four large sections of cabins and bathrooms for the campers. It's a wonderful place, and our kids often talk about Okizu being like their second home. They look forward to their time there every summer, and expect to serve as counselors when they age out of the camper program.

Anyway, there is a bus that takes kids there, but instead I drive the kids up, as I enjoy the trip. I like connecting with the counselors and directors, taking in the gorgeous scenery near camp, soaking in the farmland north of Marysville, and perhaps most of all, measuring Lake Oroville with a critical eye each year. The fullness of the dam reflects the health of our water supply here in Northern CA. Many, many people get their drinking water from Lake Oroville, which is a man-made basin and dam. It flows out to the Feather River, which is the principal tributary of the Sacramento River, which flows all the way down into our delta which meets our San Francisco Bay up near the city of Antioch. It's a huge and immensely important watershed.

As you probably know, we had so much rain last winter, such epic amounts, that the dam's spillway was engaged, which had not been tested since the dam was built 50 years ago. The spillway eventually crumbled and failed, which caused the experts to activate an emergency spillway, which also turned out to be inadequate. Many thousands of people living in Oroville were evacuated, under threat of a breach. It was a very tense time for that community, and for all of us in Northern CA watching helplessly. The rain, which we so desperately needed, after having been in severe drought for five years, was now so abundant that it was causing a different kind of crisis.

Eventually, the rain ceased, folks were able to go back home, and repairs ensued immediately on the dam, as everyone involved was concerned about the eventual snowmelt in the Sierra (which is underway now, though there were still skiers at Squaw Valley on July 4; Tioga Pass in Yosemite was just recently opened for thru-traffic; we got a LOT of snow). Oroville, a town perhaps more economically downtrodden than many in CA, breathed a sigh of relief. The city relies on vacation visitors to the lake for much of its income.

So it was with sadness that we heard the news that the Wall Fire was burning across vast acreage near Oroville. More folks had been evacuated. Our hearts went out to the people of Oroville - hadn't they had enough to deal with this year already? The night before Kate was to go to camp, we were told that it would likely be cancelled: The camp itself was not in any danger, but the road leading up the mountain had been closed to allow the fire fighters and trucks clear access to the fire.

We got a call later that night that camp was on! The director had convinced the CHP to let campers through and up to camp. Kate was relieved, I was relieved. We left Monday morning early and had a non-eventful drive up. The sky above Yuba City was quite hazy with smoke, and we could smell it, but we could not see the fire. Oroville looked like business as usual. But we were stopped on the road leading up to the dam and told to turn back. I explained where we were headed, and that we were told we could go through, but the officer made us turn around. After a few calls to the camp office, we tried again, where the same officer apologized and let us go through.

So Kate's and several hundred other kids' week at camp was saved. I stopped and ate my sandwich on the way back by the lake, where I took these pictures. The lake does look fuller than it has in many years, but it was all the way up to the underside of this bridge, in February:

It's hard to imagine it.

So I got to thinking a lot about our winter, and how everyone expected (or at least us laypeople) that our wildfire situation would be much less this summer. But the truth is, we have more fires burning earlier in the season than we have ever had. How can this be, when the earth had so much saturation just a few months ago?

I found this tidbit in the LA Times: "Didn’t our recent heavy winter rains make trees and brush less flammable? Yes, up to a point. Regardless of rainfall, however, the fire hazard in a specific region is defined by its fire history and the effect it has had on the landscape. That’s because fires preferentially burn old chaparral and conifers. Hence, the oldest stands of trees are always the next in line to burn."

Interesting! I'm no expert, but here's what I think another important culprit is: All that rain allowed a LOT of vegetation to grow. We hadn't had that much growth in years. And while it remained green as long as the rains continued, as soon as they stopped, they dried up like they always do. That left HUGE stands of brown vegetation everywhere. This is just simply tinder.

So I think we're in for a very bad fire season indeed.

It doesn't help much that folks have been told that 'the drought is over.' Just the other night, Tom and I were taking a walk up a nearby street, when we noticed sprinklers in a yard leaking so badly that it was causing a river of runoff, just wasted water running down the street. As we were discussing that we should let the homeowners know they had a leak, or a problem, we heard them on their front porch saying hello. When we pointed out that something was amiss, the owner said, "oh, we know. It always does that. I can't control it."

Tom and I just walked away, and that interchange kept us thinking hard for another mile or so. Folks can't possibly still be ignorant of the importance of saving water in our desert climate. Yes, we're told all the time that the drought is over, does that make people feel safe enough to waste wantonly? Did this gentleman have a well, like many folks in our neighborhood, and therefore since he wasn't paying for the waste, it wasn't a concern? All the houses on our street with wells had them dry up last summer, which had never happened before. The lack of ground water affects all of us. Owning a well does not give anyone a 'pass' from conserving.

Whether or not this water came from a well, we could only come to one conclusion, and that is that the homeowner was willfully wasting water and what's more, couldn't be concerned to correct it. And this, we find incredible and frankly reprehensible.

Just to add insult to injury, the yard in question had nothing in the way of an ecosystem. There was no food garden, no wildlife garden, not even a useless green lawn. This yard had a few stunted bushes and swathes of bare dirt. What was there to nurture with these leaky overhead sprinklers???

The lack of water is not a problem that will ever go away here. It is something that we all have to be aware of, and we have to work together to prevent its loss. How much of our water supply is going to be used this year for fighting wildfires and protecting homes? How much of our water supply needs to go to growing the nation's food? What are we going to spend our water on? Just because we had a great winter does not mean we can be wasteful now. Or ever. Oroville is evidence of that.

Weekly Walkthrough: Nibbles

July 9, 2017 Elizabeth Boegel

Something is nibbling on the tomatoes.... what, we're not sure.

Plus tying up peppers, cucumbers, seeding fall veg, watching the bees, a little of this and a little of that.

Cheers, and thanks for watching.

Oh, and probably no new videos after this, until mid-August. Just too much going on the next few weekends! I'll be posting on the blog, though.