A Long Post about Fort Bragg

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As part of our adventurous trip to northern California to visit my dad, we drove over to the coast to Fort Bragg. This could also go under my travel advice posts, but seriously Fort Bragg is one of my favorite places. Ever. It’s partly from all the memories of blackberry picking and camping with family as a kid, but the whole rocky coastline nestled in the redwood forest is really gorgeous and peaceful. The kids had a blast at the beach with Grandpa Wunsch, even though (as you can see in the pictures above) Elira got smacked in the face with a bunch of sandy mud when Andrew was flinging it around with his shovel. We had really good luck with the weather again, and unlike its normal cold, foggy and gloominess, Fort Bragg was warm and sunny. The only downside to this was that it disproved my previous theory about catching red tail perch. Actually, the eternal quest for red tail perch is so characteristic of my Fort Bragg experience that I think it should be documented here. Those not in the know of the wonders of red tail perch may want to skip the next three paragraphs.

When my sister Sara and I were growing up, we spent nearly every summer with my dad and we always went camping in Fort Bragg. Every year we went to the same beach to fish, which we call Short Beach, though no one else calls it that. First you have to hike like a quarter mile, climb down the rocky cliff to the tide pool area, pull mussels off the rocks, slice out the lip thing of the mussel to use for bait, search for little pearls in the leftover mussel parts (Yes, there are pearls in mussels. When I was 12 I got in an argument with a man about whether there were pearls in mussels. As I had found them every year as far back as I could remember, I knew he had no grounds to convince me otherwise.), hike back up the rocky cliff, then walk over a ways to the cliff that leads to Short Beach, hike down that cliff, bait your hooks with the mussel lip things and begin.

You cast your line in and then you sit by my dad and wait, and you listen to him tell of the glory days when he and my mom were still married and they would catch 20 fish in just a few hours. He tells you how you would have two or three fish on your line right after casting it out. My dad is really a creature of habit, so you have to listen to the same story every time and how things just aren’t the same and there are no more red tail perch to be caught, since his life has been in shambles since then and he can’t even manage to catch a fish. (His life hasn’t been that bad, but he likes to add drama to the story.) Anyway, you freeze, because like I said, it’s usually cold and gloomy in Fort Bragg. And when your sister can’t take it anymore and has bored herself with torturing the one fish you did manage to catch (by making it fly around out of water and putting “lipstick” i.e. sand on it and making it “kiss” i.e. bang into the side of the bucket) you give up and hike the quarter mile back up the hill and go back to your campsite. We never really caught many fish all the times we went there, but red tail perch are good good eatin’, so it was a celebration when we caught any.

So my previous theory about red tail perch involved it being nice and sunny. The year Sara went to Fort Bragg without me, because I was on my mission, the fabled stories came true. Sara and my dad caught the legal limit of fish in no time. The fish were big and you even could get more than one on your line. At first my dad blamed me for always being bad luck before, but the next year it happened again. We caught more red tail perch than ever before and celebrated by sharing with our whole extended family back at the campsite. So my dad couldn’t blame me any more. I figure if Heavenly Father wanted to bless my family for me serving a mission, the best thing he could do for my dad was let him relive his fishing glory days, and then he couldn’t let me be blamed for our previous misfortune as I was actually the cause of our prosperity.

So anyway, back to the part about my fish theory and it being sunny…it just so happened that both those years in which we caught a ton of fish we happened to be in Fort Bragg on the few days of summer that actually were sunny and warm and nice. When taking the kids this year, it was beautiful, and I had high hopes of proving my sunny weather = lots of fish theory correct. But alas, there were no red tail perch to be had. The scientist in me needs to tell you that it wasn’t the best experimental test of the theory though. We didn’t actually use mussel as bait and we didn’t actually go to the Short Beach. Since I was pregnant and we had three little kids in tow, we just purchased some bait and went to a more accessible beach (granted that beach was only a few hundred yards north of Short Beach, but it wasn’t the exact same).

Sorry, that turned out long.

Willows

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In an adventurous mood, I decided to drive the kids and me up to northern California to visit my dad and other relatives there. Scott had to work, so sadly he didn’t get to come. We had fun visiting and generally just hanging out doing fun summer activities. The weather was amazing and there were no bugs. Normally, Willows has a ton and a half of mosquitoes (which my dad insists bite us so much, because they prefer southern California blood) and is really hot, but while we were there it was in the 70s and you could go outside in the evening without being eaten alive.

Last year my grandma had fallen and broken her pelvic bone the day before we were to drive up there, so we only got to see her at the hospital. It wasn’t easy at all trying to keep three little kids happy in a small room, where they were not allowed to touch anything. Her break healed up pretty well though, and she walks with a cane, but is much more active again. It was really nice for her to see the kids playing at her house and just being themselves, and it was much less depressing for me to have her up and doing well than in a hospital and not able to interact with us much due to the pain killers.

Before our trip to Willows that point in the summer, I had been having a bit of a hard time keeping the kids entertained all day and had been getting frustrated with them while in our little apartment with few toys. I think I was also getting spoiled with having Scott or our relatives around to help with the kids. When I was home alone with them, I was wishing someone else was there with me. It was good for me to go on a trip with them by myself, since I knew I was the one who had to take care of them all the time. They are such sweet little kids. Once I got used to planning a little in advance to help them not get too tired or bored or hungry, we were able to have a lot of fun.

In our spare time

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Throughout the summer we had to work pretty hard to keep the kids entertained. That led to a whole bunch of really fun family activities and the occasional desperate trip to Target to play with the toys there. We found an awesome park in Irvine that neither of us had ever heard about: Irvine Regional Park. It had a little train to ride around on, a little zoo that was practically free and bikes and paddle boats to rent. The picture above is when we rented a bike that Scott and I could peddle and the kids sat three-across on the back bench. We took them for a little tour of the park, which had horse and hiking trails, playgrounds and volleyball courts and horseshoe pits. It’s the perfect place to play at and have a barbecue on Memorial Day…except when we actually went on Memorial Day and the whole place filled up and we almost didn’t get in, but it turned out fun in the end.

We also tried really hard to eat enough In N Out cheeseburgers, which is our favorite fast food ever. It’s probably the only burger place that never makes me feel gross after eating. I actually end up thinking, “that was really fresh and actually fairly healthy.” A popular burger chain in from the east coast, Five Guys, is making a play for the west coast market and some new restaurants opened up in Irvine. It gets a lot of hype, but we thought it was really just okay. So don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, In N Out has the best burgers anywhere.

 

Boating and Surfing

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I love how pictures from the beach and lake always turn out really well. These aren’t really the best example of it, but my favorite pictures of our family always seem to be at the beach. So I’m a little bit jealous of Scott this year. Last summer, I wanted to take surf lessons, but never did, because we really wanted to hang out together on Saturdays. This year, Scott’s firm paid for all the summer associates to take a surf lesson, and then some enjoyed it so much that they bought surf boards and meet up several times a week. I guess I could have gone early in the mornings last year like Scott has been, but I didn’t really realize it was an option. Anyway, so Scott’s been surfing a bunch and next year (if we get a job in California, *fingers crossed*, I hope, I hope) I’ll have to go. The wife of one of the other associates wants to learn too, so maybe she and I can be surfing buddies.

When Scott and I were dating I went to the beach with him and his family a couple of times, and was introduced to a tradition of theirs. Every time they go to the beach, they dig a big hole with a wall in front. Not too close to the waves, but close enough that as the tide comes in (after you’ve been working on your hole for over an hour) the waves will start to come in and eventually will destroy even the best-built walls. When we were dating it seemed funny that Scott, his dad and his teenage brothers were working so hard on a hole, but I learned to enjoy it and now the kids are really liking it. They work so hard to make the perfect “swimming pool.”