Moonshine Junkyard

"This is my lake country."  I quote Thoreau, who references Wordsworth. "They are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light." I posted about our trip to Twin Lakes last year , which doesn't even seem that long ago, and was only about six posts ago given the irregularity of my presence here. But it truly is something that brings me bliss, and it seems that around the seventh week of the school semester I start to crave it desperately.  "Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth."  It was Addie's idea this time to go again, and maybe make it a yearly tradition, and we went in July, right before Lucy's birthday again: Pops, Joey, Scout, Addie, Art, Utah, me and the girls. Darin couldn't come, and I'm more confident now; I think I did a pretty great job with the girls and our gear, driving and camping together. Course I always have Pops and Fofe to back me up. "This was an airy and unplastered c

It was all Joey's idea, as soon as school was out for summer. And I'm so glad he had it, because later it turned out he and Scout had to miss most of the big Beatty family trip, and he was super bummed about that. Luckily by that point we had made a hundred extraordinary summer memories already.   "How about we plan a trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium?" Joey suggested in late May. He made the camping arrangements at Manresa State Beach  for the third week of June. At first Darin was going to come along, but then it turned out he had to work. Luckily by this point I've become quite confident about taking the girls camping on my own, setting up our own gear and being solo road trip mom. And it quickly became a family affair as everybody else started jumping on the bandwagon: Addie, Art and Utah were ready for a getaway, and Pops is always up for anything.  Stopped for an early dinner at an old fave in Santa Cruz. Herding these energetic kids a