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North and South Forks of the River

north fork with the foresthill bridge
One of our Spring Break days was filled with a delightful hike in the river canyon. The weather could not have been better for this trip. You can see at the top of the photo the really tall bridge that they built when they thought they were going to dam this area and fill the whole canyon with water. This area would have been flooded with water and this beautiful stretch of the river would have been gone forever. I know there are reasons for dams but for now, I am really glad that they haven’t built it so we all can enjoy this natural beauty.

The boys opted to ride bikes this day and my hubby and I walked. I am just now feeling confident to give the boys the freedom to take off on their own. I know we live in a different world than I grew up in, and it seems sad that I have to think twice about allowing them to have an adventure on their without worrying that something bad might happen. It feels better to allow a little more freedom gradually and build up my confidence and trust that they will make good decisions.

This particular hike along the confluence and then the North Fork of the American River starts off fairly level. It is then what we like to refer to the up, down, up, down kind of trail.


You hike up out of the canyon to the top of a small dam that holds back water to form a lake. You actually hike above the dam and then you hike back down again. This means when you turn around to go back you repeat the up, down, up, down process over again in reverse.


Here the trail comes out of the woods and out into the open at the spillway. If you look closely, you will see a rainbow above the mist.


This shows the lake behind the dam. This lake is a beautiful lake that we have spent quite a bit of time boating on as well as camping up at the upper end. You have to boat in all your stuff since there is no road access. It is quiet and peaceful and in the summertime the water is cool and clear. The boys made it up to the lake quite a bit faster than we did since they were on bikes. They spent some time exploring the boat ramp and the little marina.


They got tired of waiting at one point and here is where we met them on the road to the dam. We met only one other couple hiking and one other bike rider so we felt like we had the trail to ourselves which is nice.


The hike back down from the lake was very enjoyable and the trail meanders along the side of the river. The wildflowers were blooming in masses and we would take a break every now and then to just enjoy the experience quietly.

The sound of the river was pleasant and we heard lots of birds as well.

You might not believe me but we live about 30 minutes from this place and we have never hiked here before. I am always amazed that we have missed out on so many beautiful places just because I am too lazy to research new areas to hike.

I found a book that includes local hikes of all types and I am determined to find new and interesting places to try more frequently.

Here is a place we took a picnic lunch to this past Monday. We had rain all weekend but when the rain stopped late Monday morning, I prepared some sandwiches and drinks and loaded the car. It is the first time we hiked down to the river here although we drive by many times a week. We never knew there was a trail alongside the river, but now that we know about it, we will be here frequently to enjoy the water.

We took a short hike and found a great place on the shore that had rocks perfect for sitting on and watching the water flow by. This is a shot from my rock as I enjoyed my sandwich.


The river was really high and normally you can walk out to these rocks but not today. 🙂

This is a prime place for kayakers and in the summertime they boat this stretch of the river en masse.

If anyone is interested, this is the South Fork of the American River. The hike at the beginning of the post is the North Fork. Both hikes are on the same river but above where they meet at Folsom Lake.

I think I have one more hike to catch up on from our Spring Break romps but then I will have a treat for you next week…..Yosemite again. Can you hardly wait?

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Wednesday Flower Study #7: Mullein

Wednesday Flower Study Mullein
Mullein-Handbook of Nature Study page 537-539

“This felt on the mullein is beautiful when looked at through the microscope; it consists of a fretwork of little, white, sharp spikes…..I soon discovered another means by which the mullein resists drought, when I tried to dig up the plant with a stick; I followed its taproot down far enough to understand that it was a subsoiler and reached below most other plants for moisture and food.”
HNS, page 537

This is the first time I have left the mullein in the flower bed. I am curious to see just how large it will get and I am anxious for the boys to study the flower stalk once it starts to blossom.

I think I am beginning to see the value of learning about a plant *before* it blooms so we will be vigilantly watching its progress. We read through the information in the Handbook of Nature Study. We had already experienced the long tap root when we were pulling it out of the pathway a few days ago. I would say that the root was about two feet long and at the top it looked like the shape of a carrot. The plants we left in the bed are growing like crazy!

That was our flower this week, now you can pick your flower and see if you can be prepared for your next flower study. 🙂 We have three more flowers we want to study before we finish with Wednesday Flower Study day. You can join us any time you want to, with any flower you want to. You do not need to study the same flower we are if you don’t want to.

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New Beginnings: Square Foot Garden Updates


Our garden has always been grown in raised garden boxes using the square foot gardening techniques but this year we replaced all of our string grids with wooden grids. Wow! It looks great and I am anxious to get started on this year’s garden.

You knew it was coming…the transition from wildflowers to garden talk. I’m so predictable. Now that we think our last frost is past, we will be spending more time in the yard with our hands in the dirt. We have a few things sprouting in pots on the deck but not much. My dad has been busy sprouting seeds in his garage for a few weeks and he always shares so I’m not worried.

My son had a zucchini seedling from his grandpa that he wanted to put into his box and I asked him if he would show us how to plant a seedling. I thought some of you might enjoy viewing a little video with your children to inspire them to get out and garden.

This guy has been my gardening partner since he was able to toddle around the garden. 🙂 He was a little nervous on the video but he is a very confident gardener. His favorite things to grow? Zucchini and pumpkins.

Here are some other views of our new grids on our old boxes. The second box in the photo does not have a grid…it is almost all filled in with strawberries at the moment. It will have dahlias as the summer progresses.

This is my box and it has been totally wiped clean and freshly composted. We are going to try some different veggies in here this year and we will see how it goes. I still need to fill in with a little more soil to level it out but we are all exhausted and it will have to wait until the weekend now…..I would rather play in the garden but my hubby has to go back to work tomorrow. He will haul some soil up from the other side of the yard where we are composting and building up some mulch in a stash.


Here is a view from the other side. The closest box is Amanda’s box and she grows mostly flowers in her garden. You also can see my new bird bath which the dog thinks is a doggie drinking fountain.


We added a new section along the fence for some more veggies. What do you think? How about pole beans in the back and something shorter planted in front? This area gets about 6-7 hours of sun in the summertime.


I also noticed that over the last week, I have a whole crop of sunflowers that have volunteered in this garden bed. I am not surprised at all because this is where we had the really tall sunflowers last year and I left them in pretty much all fall for the birds to eat from. We shall see how many plants we have as time goes on. I had quite a crop of sunflower seeds to save for the birds which was really nice. The boys enjoy harvesting the seeds for me and it is an easy job.


This is my flower section from last year that I started from seed. Read this entry to see how we did it and I encourage you to give it a try.

We are going to be adding two more sections of veggies this year along the other fence so we should have quite a bit to harvest once we get going. It is all on an drip irrigation system so it makes my life easier. The kids help with the little bit of weeding and the upkeep of the boxes. I give them ownership of their own box and that helps keep them interested. I also let them pick what goes in their box as well as let them decide how to plant the squares.

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Hummingbird Study: Our Outdoor Hour Challenge

This week we were on the lookout for hummingbirds as part of the Outdoor Hour Challenge: Hummingbirds nature study. We haven’t had too many hummingbirds yet in our feeders, a few here and there that we have noticed. Summertime is hummingbird time in our backyard and we have several hummingbirds that perch on the tree behind our picnic table and in the evenings we see them sitting there watching us eat our dinner. There isn’t much information in the Handbook of Nature Study on hummingbirds but it is enough to answer a few of our questions.

The hummingbirds we have in our yard are Anna’s Hummingbirds and they are very pretty. They are green and pink and very fast flyers. They will soar way up high in the air and then suddenly swoop down.

The Handbook of Nature Study says, “Hummingbirds are not supposed to sing, but to use their voices for squeaking when angry or frightened.” We often hear the male Anna’s Hummingbird before we see him. He will fly up high in the air and then swoop down and make a chirping sound. They also make a sound as they sit on the branches of the tree…cuing us to look for his distinctive silhouette.

We found this video and now we are anxious to observe our hummingbirds to see if we think it is their tail that chirps.

There is always something new to learn.

I am fascinated with hummingbirds and our last trip to the desert was memorable because we visited a hummingbird aviary at the museum. I posted then about the hummingbirds.

Isn’t he gorgeous?

This one was not shy at all and we spent a long time watching him fly and sip.

Here is a hummingbird nest that we collected a number of years ago. I am in awe whenever I look at the way it is constructed.

Can you imagine how small the eggs are inside this miniature sized nest? Amazing stuff.

One last thing to share from this week’s Outdoor Hour time with the boys. We came across a very bold Spotted Towhee that let me come up fairly close and take a video of him singing his song. Enjoy.

Hope you enjoyed reading about our Outdoor Hour this week and our continued study of hummingbirds as well as any other bird that crosses our path.

https://naturestudyhomeschool.com/2009/04/outdoor-hour-challenge-birds_24.html

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Gold Country: Some Random Things to Share

Our part of the world is best known for being the place that gold was discovered in California back in 1848. We live very close to the South Fork of the American River and in fact, we spend much of our outdoor time in or around the water of this river. My parents live even closer to the actual gold discovery spot and have remains of an old town where the Chinese workers came to work in the mines and along the river.

The river was used for hydraulic mining which destroyed much of the habitat and you can still see remains of ditches dug for diverting water and piles of river rock where the soil was washed away looking for gold. The scars remain even today.

So much history left behind for us to explore and experience today.

This is an abandoned mine that we discovered on our regular hiking trail. This was taken a month or so ago and we were just there yesterday and it looks very different. The water level has dropped inside the mine and you can step inside a little to check it out. The water is not raining down inside as heavily either. The plants around the opening are getting green and somewhat covering up the entrance.

We took a hike to a different part of the river two weeks ago and it had lots of rocks that looked like this with the quartz encased in the other rocks.

This short video gives you an idea of what the rock and the river is like where we are. In the beginning of the video you will hear my husband’s narrative….please know he was trying to be silly. Don’t miss me almost falling into the river at one point… the rocks are hard to walk on especially when you are taking a video.


We had packed along our gold pans and the boys tried their hand at finding some gold. No luck this day.

The water was really cold and they decided there is a definite skill to panning. We wondered about the gold miners back in the 1800’s and how they must have remained motivated by either their success or the success of others around them. It is back breaking work.

On another hike, we saw this guy alongside the river on the North Fork getting ready to start using his sluice box for gold mining. Here is an easy explanation of how a sluice box works. My husband has used one before and he says it just is an easier way to sift through the gravel looking for flakes of gold. He took a geology class where they actually did gold dredging in this river and he was surprised that there still is quite a bit of gold if you take the time to look for it.


I bet you don’t see this very often. We have one place that we like to hike to along the river because it has a perfect spot for skipping rocks when the water is low. We went there the other day and for the first time we saw these signs posted everywhere. I have to do some research because as far as I know, this place is on Bureau of Land Management land which seems like an unlikely place for someone to post a mining claim. Anyone know how that works?
Edit: Here is a link to answer my questions: BLM FAQ

Well, I hope you enjoyed my little glimpse into the gold country around our house. It is something that interests my boys so we might just need to tackle a geology course and use mining as the basis for our study. We already have a ton of rocks that we have collected over the years to study and identify. I should look at it as a project.

Quartz samples

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Walk into the Woods and a Picnic at the River

I am so far behind in recording our hikes. I haven’t even touched the photos from two weeks ago when we did twenty-six miles of hiking. I am sort of in a slump about posting for some reason.

Here are a few photos from today’s hike with the two older boys.

The trail in this section has grown over with greenery. You can still find a narrow path through the woods but it is just about covered up with grasses and flowers. Now that spring is here the trail is a whole different world.

Here is the view at the one end of the trail. The river is really running fast and high. The sound as you round the corner is amazing. Soon there will be whitewater rafters and kayakers on the water. Right now the water temperature is pretty cold. The other day we had a glimpse of a boat full of rafters but they were wearing drysuits.

This is about the only new flower blooming along the trail that I noticed today. I think it is some sort of caterpillar flower.

Monday we went on a picnic lunch…boxed up some sandwiches and bottles of water and took an hour or so to enjoy the opportunity.

The view from my picnic spot on a rock was very peaceful and I soaked up the sun. The sound of the water flowing by was relaxing and I could have sat there for a very long time but the men were anxious to move along. This is the same river that is in the photo above but this time we were down at the shore and down about ten miles.

I gathered a few rocks from my sitting spot and realized when I looked at the photo that the white rock looks like a heart.

The trail here is overgrown too….gorgeous.

Here is a photo I tried to take of the rafters as they floated by. If you look closely, you can see their blue raft behind the bushes.

The fairy lanterns are blooming thickly along this part of the river.

One last photo from yesterday’s hike….lupine like I have never seen it before. It is a banner year for the lupine in our area.

The amazing thing about wildflowers that I have come to appreciate is that although they are randomly planted and grow pretty much wherever the conditions are right, they look just perfect. Better than any garden planting that I have every seen.

What a time of year for getting outdoors every day.

https://naturestudyhomeschool.com/2009/02/announcing-outdoor-hour-challenge-ebook.html

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Buttercups: Wednesday Flower Study

The Common or Field Buttercup-Handbook of Nature Study, pages 516-518

“The buttercups, bright-eyed and bold,
Held up their chalices of gold
To catch the sunshine and the dew.”

“Common buttercups and daisies are always associated in the minds of the children, because they grow in the same fields’ yet the two are so widely different in structure that they may reveal to the child something of the marvelous differences between common flowers; the buttercup is a single flower, while the single daisy is a large group of tiny flowers.”

This sounds like a great way to learn about some common flowers in the garden.

We have a spot that we hike to that has a whole hillside of buttercups.

We didn’t complete an in depth study this week but we did complete our observations and then a journal entry. I know you all must think that we spend oodles of time each week in nature study but in all honesty, some weeks we just *enjoy* getting outdoors without much preparation or follow-up.

I would rather we aim for making our outdoor time as regular as possible, have some focus to start off with, and leave things open and flexible if something happens to catch our attention.

Here is something we found on the trail that caught our eye this week. Butterflies!

I know this one is dead but it did give us an excellent opportunity to examine this creature up close.

The blue is iridescent in this swallowtail…so pretty.

This painted lady let me come very close and get a good photo. She was very busy sipping nectar from the wildflowers in this sunny spot alongside the trail.

We were watching these swallowtails for a very long time. I love to watch them flutter around in the sunshine as they gather their meal. Click to see this one better. 🙂

Our garden is coming alive with colors. I am not sure what we will study for next week yet.

Now is your chance to go outside and pick a flower to study from your yard. It does not have to be a buttercup but something that you can observe from your neighborhood. Pick your flower and then look it up in the Handbook of Nature Study.

https://naturestudyhomeschool.com/2009/02/announcing-outdoor-hour-challenge-ebook.html

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Spring Wildflowers #9: Catch-Up Post

I have been feeling sort of guilty about all the wildflower posts on this blog but after much deliberation, I came to the conclusion that recording things that are important to me is at the heart of why I keep a blog. My goal this spring has been to observe as many of the local wildflowers as I can and try to keep a record of when they started blooming and then identify them as I can with my field guide. This blog is part of my nature journal…a digital version of my paper journal.

In addition to recording my wildflowers on the blog, I have tried to keep current with our Wednesday Flower Study posts and the Outdoor Hour bird challenges. I slipped in a post about our great natural bridge hike last week and I have a backlog of posts to make about our other hikes.

Even though every post doesn’t exactly reference the Handbook of Nature Study, I still feel like I am staying “on topic” and helping to encourage other families to get outdoors and explore their own neighborhood. With the exception of the first photo of me taking photos of flowers, all the other photos are within a 25 minute driving distance from my house.

“It may not be practical for every family, but when mothers understand the good that a measure can do, they will often work miracles to provide it. A twenty minute trip with a picnic lunch can make a day in the country accessible to almost anyone, but why do it just one day? Why not do it lots of days? Or even every nice day?”
Charlotte Mason in Modern English, volume one, page 44

So here are April 14th’s flowers from our regular hiking trail.


Sweet fennel


I have decided that yellow sunflower shaped flowers are really hard to identify. I need to start carrying my book with me on hikes and not relying on my photos to help make an identification.


This is something rather beautiful and we only have seen it one place in all our travels. I can’t find a identification for it but it sort of looks like Purple fritillary…not quite sure.


We think this is a Woodland star.

April 15th’s flowers from Cronan Ranch and the American River Confluence
(These are both new hikes to our family and we ended up going back to both places over the next few days to explore some more.)

Lupine. This is the year of lupine in our area. It is glorious and abundant everywhere you go. In a lot of places it is a mix of lupine and poppies and the blue and gold combination is stunning.


White fairy lanterns


Mustard


Purple dead nettle

April 16th at Cronan Ranch again…

Lupines…right alongside the river. Yellow bush lupine and blue pod lupine.


Baby blue eyes

Back to the American River Confluence on 4/17/09

The plant and flower look like Miner’s lettuce but I have never seen the heart shaped buds before. Anyone know what this is?


We think these are Ground iris. We saw quite a few of them along the slope on the river side of the trail.

I think that is all of the outstanding new wildflowers that we observed and enjoyed over the last week’s hikes. I have a few more to share but I will post about those when I write about each individual hike.

I have developed a huge case of spring allergies. I have not been out for my usual walk in three days and I am getting antsy to break out and enjoy the spring. I am hoping that my allergy medicine kicks in soon and I can get out and explore some more of our local area.

 

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Wednesday Flower Study #5-Pink Petunias

Confession: My petunias are from the garden nursery. I don’t really much like petunias but they are a happy spring flower that has brightened up our front and back decks with their cheerful blooms. My eldest son helped me pick the color and I am surprised that he picked pink because he usually picks much richer primary colors in flowers.

I don’t blog much about my oldest son because he is a very busy twenty-one year old young man who has a full-time job as a computer programmer and goes to college in the evenings. When he isn’t working or at school, he is sequestered away working on complicated homework or his various artistic ventures. Usually on the weekends, he spends his Sundays with us and for our family that means worshiping together and then spending some family time at home in the yard or outside hiking or walking the dog. My oldest is always up for a little time on the trail. He lives and works in a very technological world but he is still connected to the outdoors and feels the need to be refreshed by the sky, trees, and birds. We have some of our best talks as we share our outdoor time.

Anyway, back to our weekly flower study.

As always, we found something interesting in the Handbook of Nature Study about our subject. The story of our modern petunias is interesting and we talked about colors of petunias that we have seen in our area. We also learned that petunias are in the nightshade family. The petunia gives off its perfume at nightfall, perhaps to attract the hummingbird moths to feast on its nectar.

“With their long feeding tubes the hummingbird moths have little difficulty in securing the nectar, but bees also will work industriously in the petunias. They will scramble into the blossoms and, apparently complaining with high-pitched buzzing because of the tight fit, rifle the nectar-wells, that seem to be better adapted to insects of quite different build.”
Handbook of Nature Study, page 583


The lesson suggests that each child have their own flower for observation and that they have access to a petunia bed to observe the habits of the plant. We will be adding a few more petunias to our flower garden so we can observe all the interesting tidbits contained in the Handbook of Nature Study.

There are lots of suggestions for sketches in this lesson. We will be adding to our journals as the spring and summer go by. I found a coloring page for petunias if you would like one for your nature journal.

So now it is your turn to pick a garden flower and pull out the Handbook of Nature Study and see what you can learn this week. We will be moving on to buttercups this week. We have been observing them on our hikes for a few weeks now and it is high time that we take a few minutes to really study them. You can pick any flower you have in your yard or that you have access to and can observe up close. Even if you don’t do a formal study…take a few minutes this week to share a flower with your child. After all, it is spring now!

https://naturestudyhomeschool.com/2009/07/new-outdoor-hour-challenge-ebook-garden_27.html

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Spring Wildflowers-Part 8 Natural Bridge

We had the opportunity to take a drive to a new hiking spot. We live in a pretty special area of California and we can drive an hour or so and find the best adventures. We live in what people affectionately call Gold Country……our house is about 8 miles from where they discovered gold in California and the Gold Rush began.

This time though, we headed about fifty miles south of our house to a place in Calaveras County where there is a natural rock bridge over the river. This well-kept secret location was shared with me by a fellow homeschooler. I tried to Google it and came up with very vague directions but we were determined to try to find this spot.

During that Google search, I found this wonderful account of the place from 1862, complete with illustrations.
Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in California

Back to the wildflowers…..

We finally found the parking area for the trail and we filled the backpack up with water and a few snacks. Immediately I knew this was going to be a great wildflower hike because the first stretch bordered a little meadow with this view. Purple/blue flowers are Harvest brodiaea. (click to see the flowers better)

Here is the trail as it cuts across a fairly steep section of the hillside. The trail is the dirt path on the top right of the photo. Do you see my boys on the trail? They left us in the dust in a hurry to see the destination. We could hear the river rushing down below but instead of hurrying, my husband and I took our time and also a few photographs. Well, maybe a lot of photos!

It was a fairly easy three quarters of a mile hike down the hillside to the water and along the way it wound through buckeye, red bud, and oaks. On each sunny hillside, we found an abundance of wildflowers. Breathtaking beauty like this doesn’t come along everyday and we found ourselves marveling at the vivid colors of the flowers. It is at times like these that you feel impelled to stop and say a little prayer of thanks to our loving Creator….what a garden he has made for us to enjoy.

Purple Chinese Houses

Poppies and Goldfields

Once down to the bottom of the ravine, we found what we had come to see….the natural bridge which looked more like a cave or a tunnel.

The boys decided to wade out into the middle of the mouth of the tunnel and see if they could see the light at the other end. The water was really cold and they moved rather quickly through the shallow water.

It is nearly impossible to give you a really good idea of what the natural bridge is like but this photo shows you a little of the stalactite formations on the ceiling of the bridge. There was water raining down inside and in one area it looked like a cascading waterfall inside.

Here is a close-up of the ceiling showing the stalactite formations. All those lessons in geology paid off and we had some great conversation about how we think this bridge was formed. We talked about limestone and calcium carbonate and springs. We talked about erosion and ground water and water tables. We talked about the difference between stalactites and stalagmites.

We made plans to come back this summer with a headlamp and perhaps a little inflatable raft.

My husband and I had a very relaxing time at the river and the boys had fun exploring the limestone/marble pools and trying to jump across the watery stretches. They were already wet from wading in the tunnel so a little more water fun was okay by me.

Here is another pretty flower we found as we hiked back up the trail. I don’t know what it is called yet but I am going to keep on working on identifying it.

Here is one that was blooming along one whole section of the trail. Mustang clover.

Isn’t this the best photo? I love how it shows the shape of the plant growing. I am pretty sure this is Caterpillar scorpionweed….what a name!

This is a white variety of lupine growing at the parking spot.

Okay….this one makes me laugh. It is called Pineapple weed. The description says that this plant is not a native plant to California but I see it just about everywhere right now.

I know….how many wildflowers can I cram into this one post? Believe me, there are plenty more but they will have to wait for another time.

I hope you enjoyed viewing some glimpses into our day. I started this post on Monday….we have had some new adventures since this one and I can’t wait to share those too.

https://naturestudyhomeschool.com/2009/02/announcing-outdoor-hour-challenge-ebook.html