I don't come round here to meet nice people, anyway

...come go to Church with poor me.



You know we're Black and we're Evil. Evil as a clan can be.

It's a whole lotta camping to reach Day 3. Lots of laying about, lots of chores that somehow seem less a chore where it is harder to accomplish than at home (ex. cooking, dishes, etc.), lots of buggy flies (no biting, but a lot of buzzing eyes/ears/arms/legs), lots of shooting empty beer cans (with the requisite emptying of said cans- er, targets), lots of messing about in the river.


We got around to setting the rope swang up after breakfast. After the "can we just read books for a while". No one was in any hurry. The shoes were still drying on the boulder in the meadow from Day2's hike to the narrows. There were plenty of things to shoot out with a Red Rider BB rifle. There was pancakes, there was coffee. There was birdsong and river mumbling.


We caught a garter snake who'd made the mistake of curling up in the warm sun where kids could see him. He knows better now. That was one glad-handed snake.

Speaking of, N eyeballed a snake of indeterminate species on the hike upriver on Day 2. It was in the water when we came upon it, and in fleeing us it swam (well) to the bottom where it briefly stopped among some rocks before continuing on and up into a thicket. According to this computer, there are no water snakes native to CA, so I am at a loss as to it's provenance. It was dark with black patterning. NO rattle.


Guess who else showed up? Ski_, whom we had seen roughly a year prior at the very same spot, and some more horsey folk. One of the gals' horses rolled an ankle on the round river stones and took her for a tumble. That was exciting.


Eventually we built another camp____ at water's edge and roasted ears of corn. J loves mac'n'cheese, so we soaked some pasta until it was hydrated- covered it with cheese, fresh garlic and onions, wrapped it in foil and buried it amongst the coals. Then we got down to some serious crawdad hassling to pass the time...



Dinner was right on time. If you already didn't know, marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate make s'mores. I don't like those, but the kids more than make up for that. We balance by them not liking corn liquor solo in a camp chair 'neath the Full Hunter's Moon.

These are things.