Los Cerritos Rancho

We went here for the first time. I've seen special event flyers for it many times and always wanted to visit. I finally took the middle-not-so-littles. It fit in well with the CA History we are studying this year. It is a lovely historic adobe. It also has a nice garden.  It was fun to walk through the garden and recognize many of the same herbs we have growing in our own garden, here at home.  There were also many antique artifacts to view.

It's amazing to imagine that the city we live in and our parents live in, were all once owned by ONE family.  Their cattle grazed upon this land stretching all the way to the beach. So hard to believe. The adobe also emphasized the merging of Yankee and Mexican cultures in our Californian history.

This field trip not only emphasized CA History for us, but also science and nature, with it's assortment of various plant life in the garden.

I will post some pictures once I get them uploaded.

Field Trips on the Gooooooo!

We took a road trip, up the CA coast, to OR & even WA.

It was really cool & we saw a few really neat places.

We camped the first night in Northern Ca. It was odd for us to see forest right next to the beach...lots of cows, the cows even have beach front property! We camped @ the Reef Campground in the Fort Ross State park. For some reason I thought the campsite had electricity & showers--it did not. But it did have nice & clean toilets, one of the nicest, cleanest public/camping restrooms we've ever encountered. Hey---priorities, ya know? :D

This is a pic of some animal tracks we saw the next morning near the creek that ran along side our campsite.

After camping...we stopped @ a picnic area along the way. The Redwood trees were the main feature....there was a nature trail that we shallowly ventured into....maybe we can hike the complete trail 'next time'.

In WA we took time to visit the Mt. St. Helens visitor center. It is really inexpensive ($3 per person OVER 16 yo & free for under 16) &; informative. You can watch a video about volcanoes & one specefically about the Mt. St. Helens eruption. It even has a model of the inside of a volcano you can walk down into. I wish we could have spent more time & gone farther up to the other Mt. St. Helens 'attractions'.

On our way home, but before we reached CA again...we saw a sign for a 'Pioneer Museum'. We ventured off the highway to take a look. THIS was the highlight. This tiny museum was filled to the rim w/ pioneer artifacts, store fronts, odds & ends of rich historical value. I must admit the wall of human hair was creepy, regretfully, by orders of the 'Meanest sheriff in town' we were not allowed to take any pictures while inside. The Linn County Museum contains one of the last 3 remaining original pioneer wagons actually used in the westward migration of America.

Since we've gotten home, we are working on making books about our trip; recording, drawing pictures & writing about our wonderful 'field trips'....which will also evolve into another book about the Pioneers.