I have been on a few guided white-water trips in the past. By that I mean the kind where there are six passengers in the boat and an experienced guide who is doing the steering. Everyone wears helmets and life jackets, and paddles like crazy when you come to a class-III or class-IV rapid. It is terrifying in a fun way, but you have five other new best friends in the boat screaming with you. I was excited about our upcoming trip until my husband pointed out one major difference at this place… there are no guides. That’s right, the rapids are smaller, but you are on your own.

Cache Creek is the outflow of Clearlake, Ca. and flows into the Sacramento River. It rarely dries when many other rivers in the area do, and drops about 20 feet per mile, making it a really fun run. Because most of the rapids are categorized class-II with one class-III, the two commercial companies of the area do not offer guides in the boats. They give you a 30-minute talk before you head out on how to get unstuck should your boat lodge on some rocks and what to do if you find yourself in the water. Then you are provided with a boat (either a raft that accommodates 3-5 people or a two-man inflatable kayak), a paddle, a life-jacket, lunch, and a smile. During the safety talk you are warned of where the hardest rapid is, and told that a staff person will be pointing to where your boat ought to be to approach that rapid (as pictured). Staff are also stationed at the bottom of the two trickiest runs to pull out swimmers who may need assistance. You are given about six hours to complete the run (which took us three hours including stops) before food is provided and later, some nightly activities.

We pulled up to the parking lot on Saturday morning to learn of  another big difference. Unlike past rafting trips I have been on where you get to know the other 18-24 rafters pretty well, here there were about 500 “new best friends” joining us on this trip. It was a light weekend, according to the guy directing traffic. Often there are up to 800 people. I do give props to the staff, they were efficient at managing such a large crowd. After signing your living will – I mean your waiver – and loading your camping gear onto a truck, five or six buses shuttle folks to the drop off point where you receive some saftey instructions and your equipment. 

The website says not to bring alcohol, as “booze and rapids don’t mix”. Common sense says neither does alcohol and the nearly hundred degree weather that we had.  Regardless, this was closer to a rave in the woods than the trip of  “solitude and serenity” as described on the website. I should have guessed with descriptions of night activities such as ”dancing at the camp disco with bubbles, foggers, lasers, spinner strobes and cages”.  They also list volleyball and horseshoe as activities, but I never saw any of that. I don’t mind a party, but there were people who could barely stand up before dinner. I later learned that the ambulance siren I heard while on the river was called because someone from our group had passed out along the run. 

I mention this for a few reasons. First, if you are bringing your family here (under 12 not permitted) you may want to know ahead of time what the scene is like.

Secondly are my concerns about safety. Having several bus loads of drunken rafters heading into the water at the same time was pretty sketchy at the first few rapids. My husband and I tried to put in early, but still had rafts piled on top of us as we tried to free ourselves on the first set of rocks we encountered. I think had the staff got involved in spacing out the boats as they launched, there wouldn’t have been so many problems right out of the gate.  (The congestion seemed to work itself out further down the river, but with two businesses running about 500 rafters each, there were more than a few pileups.)

I rarely saw or got any directions from guides along the route.  Knowing that a large percentage of their clientele are inebriated and/or inexperienced at maneuvering a boat, I would have felt better knowing that at least someone was  nearby to assist when needed, aside from those points nearest the two toughest rapids.  Twice I saw rafters, floating without their boats, who needed help getting situated again. No staff person was around. At the end of the run I got caught in a current that pulled me under the water for a much longer amount of time than I am comfortable with. This scared me so much that I opted to go home before the second day’s repeat of the same run. There were plenty of boats that dumped at that spot, but still no staff nearby.

I acknowledge that I am not someone who enjoys the thrill of being scared all that much. As I stood at the beach after returning our boat, I heard more than a few people talk about one part of the run or another that scared them; getting trapped under a boat, getting caught in a fast current, etc. Maybe this is what brings them back year after year. Not me.

This run is supposed to be easy and interesting enough to be approachable for novice rafters. This may make it an attractive idea for a fun weekend. For the price you get quite a deal;  boating equipment, staff to shlep your stuff to a campsite, meals and entertainment. I can see how coming with a group of friends can make for a really good time. My advice is to be sure you have some good (sober) swimmers with you.  Maybe even make some friends on the bus and go down the river together. At least with another boat nearby you will have a direction to swim.

Today is Spotlight Thursday at Trekaroo. Check out their site for more travel highlights.

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For more delicious travel photos, stop by Delicious Baby.

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Robert Arneson created sculptures of eggs with faces on them that are each about the size of a person. They are incredibly expressive and often appear to look like they have been into some mischief. A total of seven eggheads are located in five areas of the UC Davis campus. Each location is not all that far from the previous one, and so together they make for a great art walking tour. The tour ends near the campus coffee house.  If you happen to take this walk during the school year, you can stop in there when you’ve finished for a snack for the way home. The kids opted instead to play a round of good guy/bad guy using the eggs as shields.  I settled for snacking on some graham crackers that I had packed earlier. Don’t you just love those days when new doors open up, and moving from one place to the next gets a little easier.

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My motivations for today’s visit were not entirely pure. It was “Where to Wednesday” and I needed a spot to check out that was close to home. Also, I have had in mind to later on go to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and figured that by buying a membership at Explorit I could both support a local business and save on admission to several SF museums. If our visit to Explorit only lasted an hour, I could at least consider it an investment into other spots later. So let me speak to all the parents who would not consider it fun to chase your child from one brilliant but unpronounceable invention to the next… this place is fun!  I’ll give you more details, but let me mention first off that the space is well designed. You can be in one area with one child while other kids are exploring different things and still be able to keep tabs on everyone.  I think this was a key benefit for us, and can make taking kids of different ages a more pleasant adventure.

Here are a few highlights of our trip. When we first arrived a staff member was giving demonstrations of forces in motion. She had adults and children both participating as volunteers, and everyone in the room was focused on her questions and answers. The same room also held bug terrariums, puppet toys, and things for pre-verbal kids to explore while the demonstrations were going on. When she had finished with the forces in motion part, she brought out the resident blue-tongued skink for the kids to touch. Here again she engaged the kids in talking about habitat, camouflage, skeletal characteristics, etc. Presentations such as these are scheduled for noon and 3pm each day. Its worthwhile to time your visit to catch at least one.

Other parts of the museum both kids loved included a metal wheel that spins. You can balance objects on the spinning part and watch them roll around or fly off the wheel, depending on how they are placed.

In another location there is a small wind tunnel where you can place objects and see how well they float, depending on their design and weight.

The place my boys spent most of their time was at the sand trough. The base of the container that held the sand was tilted downward on one end, to allow the water coming from the faucet at the top to flow downward. With sand, rocks and play trees in the trough, one can’t resist building dams and water canals, observing erosion in action.

There were plenty of other great things to play with, but those were the ones that best captured my kids’ attention. In addition to the standing exhibitions, there is a second floor with rotating exhibitions. The next, “Wild Planet” runs from March 6 – May 23rd. Following that will be “Take Matter Into Your Own Hands.”

Admission to the museum is only $4 per person (ages 3 and under are free). You can enter for free on the fourth Friday of every month. Even if you’re a science-museumphobe like me, Explorit is worth checking out. I know we will be back. (I had to promise the kids we would in order to get them to leave.)  If you live anywhere in the area (Sacramento and bay area folks, this includes you) consider investing in a membership. The list of museums that offer free admission to card-carrying Explorit members is significant.

Lead photo credit: cabayareakids.blogspot.com/

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Much of the department’s collection is secured in locked racks which are not visable. There is a nice variety on display, and truth be told the kids were mostly interested in the live critters. The department’s staff will come out and answer questions for anyone coming in between 8:30am and 5pm (aside from the lunch hour).  A special thank you to Tabitha for her patience and assistance in letting us hold some bugs. If you’d like to have a group tour you need to make a reservation in advance and the charge is $2 per child, adults are free. They have also set aside special weekend hours from 1pm – 5pm on 3/21, 4/17, and 5/8.

If the words, “hold some bugs”  haven’t enticed you, here are a few stick bug facts that may persuade you to come out and learn more:

• There are over 3000 varieties of walking sticks worldwide. Several examples of species exist at the Bohart Museum and show how much variation there is within this single insect.
• They can produce without mating. Only one in one thousand Indian Sticks are males.
• Stick bugs can regenerate legs if they become damaged or lost. They shed their skin and eat their own molt.
• Adulthood is achieved after five or six months. Adults generally live another six months.
• Some walking sticks can change colors.

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How it works: Several large tables are full of bowls of beads, roughly divided by color. Each bowl is labeled with the price of the bead it contains. When you walk into the store there is a muffin tin that you can use as your shopping cart. The cups of the tin are also labeled by price: .05, .10, .15, etc.  You can select beads from the table and put them into your tin cup of the corresponding price. Using a sheet that resembles a scorecard, you then track the price of each bead as you string it.  At the counter the staff will assist you with the amount of material  you want to string the beads with, and with tips and tricks to get you the effect you are looking for.

How it went: Collecting the beads was a bit tricky as the tables were just a little too high for the kids to see over. I had to lift and carry one child in one arm so he could pick out some beads, hold the muffin tin with the other, leaving the other child to freely dip his fingers into what bowls he could reach despite being told there was a “muffin tin system” to keeping the beads straight. Once at the table with our beads it was equally impossible to keep track of the price of the beads as they were being grabbed out of the muffin tin by both boys. That being said, each of the kids LOVED the whole idea of picking out their favorite beads, stringing them together, and creating something unique and beautiful. The oldest one needed (and wanted) no assistance from me from start to finish. The youngest one and I worked together, but as you can see he really worked hard at putting his string through the bead holes. The staff was incredibly helpful (and patient) as I tried to relocate each bead (and corresponding price) on the finished products to come up with the final cost. Tables are equipped with tools that one might need (probably for more advanced projects than ours) including foam to put your beads on so they don’t roll away.

What I’d do differently: This is definately a trip I would recommend, even for young kids. For us, I think if I had picked out a selection of beads that were all the same price and then let the kids pick and choose from the tin at the table, there would have been far less worry about trying to keep track of who was using which bead from which tin cup. All I would have to do is count the number of beads used and could easily come up with the price of the finished product. Another mom with two girls joined us, and for them keeping beads separated did not seem to be an issue.

Even for my young and fidgety kids, this was a trip that kept their interest and creative juices going for a good solid hour. Obviously if your kids are likely to put things into their mouth you need to be very cautious. At this store there was a great selection of beads that can fit even a tight budget. So if you are still looking for gifts that can come from your kids, consider finding a local bead store. If none exists, you can even create gifts in your own home using materials available at craft stores or from bead kits at toy stores. I was lucky to find A Better Place to Bead; it gave the kids a rainy day activity and gave me a check on my Christmas gift list.

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I have been looking for a place that really screams fall to me, and I think I couldn’t get any better than here. A mass of  running kindergarteners shedding their jackets to enjoy the late morning sun, brilliant colors being reflected off of a small fish pond near the lake, and toddlers collecting acorns for their stuffed animals back home. How does an autumn morning get any better?

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I am lucky to live in a town that that is both small enough to be missed on most travel destinations, yet big enough to have lots of local gems for kids. One town feature worth bragging about is our farmer’s market. Two days of the week, Saturday morning and Wednesday afternoon, a large downtown park lines its walkways with local farmers, artists, non-profit agencies, local politicians, and even animal shelter representatives (the four-legged kind).

When they were younger, I often took my kids to our farmers market even if our fridge was full, just to snack on some kettle corn and listen to whatever musical group happened to come out and play that day. The hustle and bustle of merchants and the smells of fresh fruits and vegetables proved a dependable distraction. If not, the sounds of  the musicians spaced throughout the market gave the kids pause, no matter how fussy.  

Now the kids have grown beyond babyhood we aren’t looking so much for eye candy. As a toddler boy and (almost) school aged boy, their needs are to run around in circles as fast as possible. Still our farmers market comes through. Since it is located at a park, there are lots of kids and play areas around and a big square of grass in the middle. Often on Wednesday evenings vendors set up bounce houses, pony rides, and even a rock climbing wall you can try (for a small fee). Also on Wed evenings, organizers of the market have booked local bands to play. Sometimes packs of kids gravitate to the area right near the band and form a mosh pit of 3-year olds, jumping and spinning to a beat. (Could be the band’s beat or one in their head, who knows!)

Bottom line, regardless of whether you decide to pick up your groceries here or not, the farmers market can be a great day out. Even if your city doesn’t turn farmers market days into an event as our city does, most offer unique vendors not to mention free samples everywhere.  Follow this link if you aren’t sure where to find one in your area.

For more fun travel photos, see the Photo Friday gallery at delicious baby!

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