10 Reasons You Should Take Your Kids to Henry W. Coe State Park

Fording creeks at Henry W. Coe. Photo by Frog Mom

The second largest California state park, Henry W. Coe State Park is also largely ignored from the general public. At 87,000 acres, it is twice the size of the District of Columbia, could be a national park in other parts of the US, and yet only saw 38,000 visitors in 2010. We camped there with three other families over this Memorial Day weekend and I want to show you what you could do with your kids there, so you can enjoy this gem of wilderness and ranch lands.

Here are 10 reasons why you should bring your kids to this incredible park before school starts again.

Oak hills and grassy meadows. Photo by C.G.

1. Support your parks! Henry W. Coe is a park on life support. Generating only $100,000 in revenue last year with car and camping fees, Henry W Coe. is on the chopping block of the California state 2011 budget. Unless a solution is found, it will close in September 2011 together with 69 other state parks. if you don't think that's a good reason, read items 2 through 10 and think about what would be lost if the park closed. To support the park, you can also sign a petition on the website of the California State Parks Foundation.

Even in wet weather, great site! Photo by Frog Mom

2. Camp at Manzanita Point. Forget camping at the park's headquarters. The views may be nice but you are missing out on a great opportunity to feel like you're backpacking - with a car. We camped at the Manzanita Point group site #9, 2.5 miles from the park's headquarters. The reason it feels so remote is you're only allowed 1 to 2 vehicles per site, and only one trip in and one out. Of course, this requires some planning with your friends but a flatbed pick up truck does the trick for 3 families. Four of us adults hiked in, the rest drove. Once you're there, imagine this: no RV engines humming next to you, no cars driving in circles late at night, no trucks banging metal while collecting dumpsters in the wee hours. Just listen to the sounds of nature - and possibly your neighbors partying but sites are fairly spread out so it shouldn't be a problem.

3. Hike on beautiful trails. With its large size and four entry points on the borders, very little of Henry W. Coe's wilderness is accessible for day hikes, even more so with kids. This park means some serious hills! However if you're already 2.5 miles in at the Manzanita Point campground, you open up access to lesser known spots and awesome views.

On Sunday, we all hiked to China Hole, one of the best swim holes in the Bay Area. The total hike was a 6.6-mile loop from the campground, starting on Cougar Trail continuing on Creekside trail, Poverty Flat Road and ending on Manzanita Point Road. Total elevation gain: 1,300 feet. All kids from age 4 to 7 walked it. Not too shabby, according to my friend Jason who recorded the itinerary on his Garmin Forerunner 305.

Frog Mom swimming at China Hole. Photo by C.G.

4. Swim and splash at China Hole. Fed by an underground spring, China Hole is the most popular swim spot in the park. No wonder. This lovely lush spot on Coyote Creek offers a string of wading and swimming opportunities for all cold-water endeavors.

Playing in Coyote Creek. Photo by C.G.

Located just a few hundred feet downstream from the confluence of the Middle and East forks of Coyote Creek and the gateway to the Narrows, China Hole is where we laid down our backpacks, changed into swim suits and let the kids play on the sandy beach or jump in 3-feet deep pools, while two adults went swimming in deeper parts of the creek.

A balancing act. Photo by Frog Mom

While all the kids dipped their feet in the creek, only half of them decided to play with the water. Others started making "rock paint" by crushing two pebbles against each other, adding water and painting arms and faces. A couple played in the warm sand and even made sand angels. Good thing there was water nearby to rinse it all off!

5. Ford a creek on rocks. Finding the exact spot where your shoes won't get wet while crossing a creek is intensely satisfying for hikers. For kids, crossing creeks is an even bigger deal as it involves combining good balance with sizing up skipping stones as potential bridges to the other side. We forded Coyote Creek on two occasions and both times the kids did great.

How many kids can fit? Photo by C.G.

6. Swing in a hammock at the campground. Ever since we received a travel hammock as a Christmas gift 6 years ago, it's been part of our camping set. Wherever you camp in wooded areas, you can always find two trees roughly 8 to 10 feet apart to hang this hammock. The kids will love you for it.

REI and Amazon.com carry a nice selection of ultralight travel hammocks made of parachute material, such as this Eagles Nest Outfitters Double Nest Hammock that weighs only a pound and can carry up to 400 pounds. It's so light I might even take it on a day hike!

Rope + tree = swing. Photo by Frog Mom

7. Improvise a swing. If you don't carry a hammock or a swing in your car (I know, I know, they are such essentials), make sure you always carry 50 feet of solid climbing rope with you. Rope is a lifesaver on camping trips, working equally well as clothes line, jump rope or knot rope. You can also find a sturdy tree branch, loop the rope around (tie a rock at the end if you can't get the rope past the branch) and hang a big stick on a noose at the bottom. Tie a few knots. Swing problem solved! Now kids, get in line and behave. The adults are busy relaxing!

A fort for the fairies. Photo by C.G.

8. Build a fort for the fairies. This has got to be one of my favorite activities for kids because it makes them figure out the basics of 3D construction with natural materials. My 2nd grader started building a fort with sticks and was joined by two friends.

Three forts and a little parental help later, they had a solid structure that could withstand a light breeze and kids running dangerously close around it.

Fairy. Photo by C.G.

The younger kids got interested and thanks to a fairy-making and a tea light/ping pong ball activity, turned the fort into a place where  the fairies could come and  play at night.

Playing with glow sticks later that evening on a backdrop of ping pong balls illuminated by the flickering light of battery-operated tea light candles, it was a magical sight.

Campfire. Photo by C.G.

9. Enjoy a campfire. The first night we camped, rain fell pretty steadily on us and almost none of us was prepared for the wet weather. Lighting up a fire proved the best antidote to keep spirits up and warming up the kids who were running around like mad gnomes.

The second night was glorious and the kids were hell bent on marshmallow roasting until the marshmallow supplies dried out. This they achieved, as well as some smeared white goo all over their hands, faces and clothes. Because you know, what better way to wipe off melted marshmallow than using your own sweater?

Checkerspot caterpillar. Photo by C.G.

10. See some wildlife. I've come to the conclusion that a trip to Henry W. Coe has to include wildlife sightings. There's just wild animals everywhere if you keep your eyes peeled.

On the way to Manzanita Point, we saw two wild turkeys wandering around the campground. They were the first of 4 wild turkey sightings over 2 days. At the campsite, we saw three big black hairy caterpillars with orange dots that turned out to be future checkerspot butterflies. Hair-rising cool because we didn't know if they were venomous.

Scorpion. Photo by C.G.

After I lifted a log in the fort building process, one of the kids identified a big animal that lived inside the log and was attempting an exit: a scorpion! I put the log down (you bet) and we all got close, trying to see it from a safe distance.

This blurry photo was taken by my husband who was trying to wrangle the scorpion out of the log with a stick (without harming the beast) while pushing on the camera's button and focusing.

Over the weekend we also had a deer visit us on our campsite, saw a couple more on the hills, my 2nd grader held a darkling beetle for fun and we heard a great horned owl call at night.

Now, will you believe me if say that you need to take your family to Henry W. Coe state park?

Boonville to Fort Bragg

Inclement weather can influence many a well crafted plan. Last weekend we visited Boonville (our third time in 2008) heart of the Anderson Valley, three hours north of San Francisco west of the Sonoma Valley.

The sole purpose of our visit was to stay at the Boonville Hotel, a remodeled 1900s establishment praised by Sunset Magazine and others. On our two previous camping trips in Anderson Valley, wine touring and the county fair and rodeo had kept us busy.

This time, our hiking endeavors were literally drowned by the weather. Rather than inflicting more boring wine tasting stops to our poor girls, we headed for the coast.

The road is windy for many stretches so we reached Fort Bragg - only 49 miles away - in roughly 1h20 minutes.

Our first stop was at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens, a former nursery created in 1961 that displays wonderful heathers, roses and rhododendrons, as well as other plants. The biggest advantage of the gardens is that they sit directly on the Pacific Ocean, offering visitors an opportunity to combine a passion for horticulture, gentle strolling, bird watching and even whale spotting for binocular-holders.

Thanks to the mild and wet climate, the gardens offer all shades of green in non-blooming seasons like late fall. As we arrived under heavy clouds, we borrowed an umbrella at the front desk and hit the trail.

The gardens now offer a "follow Quincy the quail" kid route that takes you to the main spots of interest in the garden through clues and asks junior naturalists to exercise their senses at various landmarks.

When our girls learned that there was a fairy garden on the way, they doubled the pace until we got there. Right after the neatly-tended vegetable garden, make a left towards the Old Parrish Cemetery and keep going towards the dahlia garden.

The fairy garden is not a glitter-pastel-Disney fairy garden (as I half expected). It is an actual enclosure made of broken branches and twigs where children can pick up anything on the ground to build a fairy house.

The gardeners probably got the idea from one of the books they sell at the store, Fairy Houses...Everywhere by Barry and Tracy Kane. Whereas the book features top notch photographs of whimsical fairy houses, the ones that surrounded us definitely veered on the rustic DIY side. However, pixie dust was in the air and despite the lack of glitter around us, our girls got really involved in the building activity.

Half an hour later we ended up with a nice nook on a tree stump with bark roof, leaf fence and acorn furniture. Classy.

I love the idea of returning fairies where they belong to an all-natural environment rather than in rosy flowers jingling like crazy in PC-bimbo-style Tinkerbell. As if fairies needed an official web site... Nearing lunch time, our growling stomachs hurdled us back to the exit.

On the way, we met a charming dog-walking couple who recommended that we eat at Silver's on the wharf. The real name is actually Silver's at the Wharf and this has got to be one of the few coastal restaurants whose main view consists of giant pillars of a tall concrete bridge.

Granted, water runs underneath the bridge and it leads to the ocean. It'd be unfair to complain though. We had a bridge/ocean view table. Sipping an Amber Ale beer, my husband and I spent a lot of time detailing boats coming back from fishing expeditions, pointing out throngs of flying seagulls as signs of successful outings.

At one point, we even got treated to a seal swimming underneath our eyes and the children loved it. The food was not fancy but the fish tacos and fried cod plate worked wonders on hungry stomachs (they even came with real vegetables and perfectly edible rice).

As we got into the car, it started pouring cats and dogs. We decided to stop in Mendocino for a cup of tea/coffee.

Had it not been for a small sign on Highway 1, I would never have turned right to see the Point Cabrillo Light Station. What a lovely place and what a hidden gem! We parked by the visitor center and hiked the half mile to the light station buildings at a brisk pace. Rain - which had stopped minutes before- resumed and we opened the girls' umbrellas.

As we arrived next to a bunch of buildings, more rain forced us inside the Lighthouse Keeper's Museum. It is a darling little house that has been restored to its 1909 authenticity down to the gramophone, kids play kitchens and building blocks. We pretend played a lot, looked out occasionally and waited for dryer clouds.

As it kept raining and we still hadn't reached the inside of the lighthouse (few hundred yards away), we made a run for the house next door. It had lights and I assumed it was the docent lounge and shop.

What a surprise when we were gently shooed away because it's a B&B. A B&B in a state park? Yes, the Point Cabrillo Lighthouse Inn is a unique Bed and Breakfast in that it finances the daily operations of the entire park.

With only 60,000 visitors a year, the lighthouse has nowhere near enough trafic to pay for the costs of repainting the buildings washed by salty waves, maintain the lighthouse lens or more lighthouse business. However, we're not going to sleep there anytime soon. It's off limits to children under 15. Ahem, that's pretty steep.

Before the sun set behind the golden horizon, we stopped in Mendocino for a cup of espresso, green tea and hot milk. Our dinner reservation in the dining room of the Boonville Hotel was not til 8.30pm so we enjoyed the last half hour of the local toy store, a magical place for tired children who want to play castles and fairies with the real plastic stuff.

Boonville, gateway to the north coast. Who would have known?

Fairy Tales: Fact or Fiction?

"Mom, did Cinderella really happen?" asks the five-year-old on her way to school.

I could have brushed it off with a few words and simultaneously crushed five years of patient fairy tales brainwashing. "Sweetie, it's about time I told you the truth." Of course, that would have led Santa to the dump of adult lies together with leprechauns, lutins, elves and unicorns, and I'm not even mentioning the Tooth Fairy. Sadness and bitter tears would have ensued and I would have lost all my bedtime allies.

But deep inside, I love fairy tales and flying creatures more than I crave blunt honesty so I just answered. "I don't know Sweetie, I'll need to look into it." And so I did.

So that you know, I don’t drive a mouse-powered carriage. I don’t expect birds to fold my laundry in the basement. And my husband doesn’t return from work on a white stallion with a feather on his head.

Having said that, it was worth taking a closer look at fairy tales. After all, I wondered, why wouldn’t there be some hint of historical facts in them as with many folk tales?

On a GGMG mom’s suggestion, I started my investigation with Hansel and Gretel. “Hansel and Gretel is based on some truth of famine during the dark ages,” she wrote, “Not sure you want to share that with the kid yet.”

I googled it and sure enough, Hansel and Gretel is a crowd-pleasing 19th century German tale referring to the hardships of medieval times when infanticide was common practice during famines. Not sure my five-year-old could stomach that idea, so I moved on to Snow White. Bingo!

Snow White is loosely based on the real (sad) story of Contessa Margarethe van Waldeck.

Born in 1533, Margarethe was a beautiful young woman with fair hair. She grew up in the mining town of Bad Windungen, a town where miners were children commonly called dwarves because of the difformities caused by their back-breaking life. At age 16, Margarethe was sent to the imperial court of Brabant where Prince Philip (the later King Philip II of Spain) fell head over heels for her.

Bad news, the marriage would have caused political turmoil. Like Snow White, Margarethe had a problematic relationship wityh her stepmother who hated her. Margarethe died poisoned at the age of 21.

What about the apple then? Well, it turns out there was a man in Windungen who poisoned children through apples to keep them from stealing them off his trees.

Fast forward a few centuries, mix the two stories and you have a fair young woman dying in the hands of a wicked stepmother with a poisoned apple.

I have long wondered whether the death-like sleep of Snow White (or the Sleeping Beauty for that matter) could be connected to that medieval disease when seemingly dead people were buried alive and later woke up in their coffins, scorching their fingernails trying to escape. However at this point, that's pure speculation.

On with another tale, Cinderella. The earliest version of the theme may be found in the real life of a 6th century BCE Thracian slave turned courtesan called Rhodopis. As explained on Wikipedia, "It is said that as Rhodopis was one day bathing at Naucratis, an eagle took up one of her sandals, flew away with it, and dropt it in the lap of the Egyptian king, as he was administering justice at Memphis. Struck by the strange occurrence and the beauty of the sandal, he did not rest till he had found out the fair owner of the beautiful sandal, and as soon as he had discovered her made her his queen."

That's an exotic substitute for Disney's glass slipper that totally satisfies my quest for historical anecdotes. But Cinderella transcends cultures as different versions can be found in China, Korea, Japan and in the West, France, Italy, Germany and more.

"What about Aladdin then?" asked my five-year-old. The controversy over where the Thousand and One Nights originate is a scholar-stuff brain-twisting discussion but it looks like sadly, Aladdin was not inspired by a real person.

A much less debatable loved thief would be Robin Hood. The Search for the Real Robin Hood is a website entirely dedicated to linking the folkoric icon with existing outlaws having lived in Yorkshire and practiced their art in the Sherwood Forest.

The good news is, there are several Robin Hood candidates to pick from: Robert Hod, Robin of Loxley, the Earl of Huntington, plus other minor thieves. The bad news is: we don't know for sure.

But as my mother says, "Children need pixie dust to dream." So forget the historical anecdotes. They're fun but fairy tales are better bedtime material than "taking the dog out on a rainy day". If we told fairy tales as living history, our children would go to sleep out of boredom. Add a little glitter.

Plus, as Bruno Bettelheim wrote in his book The Psychoanalysis of Fairy Tales, "Fairy tales are psychologically way more convincing than "realistic" tales for children. By guaranteeing the child that he can earn the [fairy] kingdom, fairy tales also teach the child additional values:

to find your kingdom, you'll have to leave your home;

your kingdom is not readily accessible;

you will have to take risks and fight obstacles;

you cannot do it alone and need outside help;

to get outside help, you will need to wield in to their requirements."

Fairy tales are about imagination. What better place to escape the world than your imagination?

Cinderella Puppet Show

Bay Area-based Zanzibar Fairytale Puppet Theater brings puppetry to a higher state of art.

Until now my Bay Area-standard for puppetry resided at the Storybook Puppet Theater of Children's Fairyland in Oakland with the seasonal exception of Punch & Judy shows at the Dickens Fair, the hilarious Nick Barone puppet shows at library branches or in a different genre, the Fratello Marionettes.

However, Zanzibar is different. It's full blown Broadway fairy dust applied to rod puppets. I never dreamed puppet shows could involve 7,500 watts of stage lights, two years of production, 22 hand-crafted puppets and tri-dimensional sets.

Honestly, after reading the New Yorker's review of Basil Twist's Petrushka puppet-show-turned-puppet-ballet, I was very jealous that the Bay Area failed to offer such shows. But now I feel much better.

What Zanzibar offers is very different from Basil Twist's but it definitely deserves praise and applause for the professionalism and artistry of the show.

Even before the curtain opened to their production of Cinderella at the Starlight Room of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco, there was a magical buzz in the air. Dark room, purple lights, massive puppet theater stage with velvet and rhinestone curtains, symphonic music from Prokofiev's Cinderella ballet and Gounod's Faust opera.

My two girls wanted to get upclose even though I warned them there might be loud noises and explosions of fairy dust in the room. Throughout the half-hour that the show lasted, they wouldn't take their eyes off the stage. Everything was so well done, the different voices on the puppets, the deep three-level sets with Christmas light curtains, the music, it was just a big treat.

Interestingly enough, I saw quite a few adults without children in the audience. Isn't that a sign?

Fairies in the Bay area

Do you believe in fairies? As a child I did. Now my two girls believe in them too. We have all sorts of fairies and elves around the house and outside the house. There are seasonal fairies like the Halloween Fairy and the Easter Fairy who take away all your candy at night and replace it with a present. There are orderly fairies like the Closet Fairy who takes away your dresses if you've had a tantrum wearing clothes selected by mom. There's the obvious Tooth Fairy but we haven't hit that age yet. On the elf front and apart from the Christmas usual suspects, we have mischievous night elves (we call them lutins in French) who entangle little childen's hair at night and leave it up to mom to fix bedheads.

Then there are winged fairies in the woods under the moonlight, the most interesting in my opinion. Now, wouldn't it be nice to build homes for them? I read the description of a fabulous fairy birthday party on a blog yesterday and it's inspired me for my girls' next birthday party. They'll be three and five, just the right age to build houses for little wood creatures. There was also an article entitled "Fantasy Island" by Rachel Simposon in Wondertime magazine laying down basic rules of building regulations for fairies: no uprooting or disupting of living things.

That spurred my curiosity: where would be good spots in the Bay Area to find fairies and build them houses?

Obviously, a Redwood tree grove would be ideal but any wooded area could be used. The damper, the better as you'll be likely to find moss, a most versatile building material (beds, roofs, gardens). Last thing, a few acorns or berries would be nice additions to fairy's home, if only because children could return and find the berries or acorns are gone, eaten by a squirrel, notoriously good friend of the fairy people.

Now, where do we go? Since Muir Woods, Stern Grove and the Golden Gate Park attract crowds, here are other quieter options.

My friend Sue told me about the Old Mill Park in Mill Valley. Conveniently it's located next to a library, across from a playground and a river creek runs through the bottom with a replica of the old mill. There's redwoods all around so it sounds nice if anybody lives across the bridge or feels like crossing it.

Closer to home, there's a redwood grove at Huddart Park in San Mateo but I wonder how easy it would be to feel isolated in such a popular park. I'll have to give it a try.

San Bruno Mountain County Park at the top of the San Bruno mountains is a lot quieter but from hearsay, weather can be windy and as cold as the coast so it's hard to plan for a day out with a 10 picnic index rating.

All the parks of the Santa Cruz mountains (Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, Big Basin Redwoods State Park, Butano State Park) would be perfect choices but windy roads are not always my cup of tea. Out of the three, I'd select Big Basin, if only I've always been there on cold days and it has an eerie mountain atmosphere.

For an East Bay adventure, the Oakland hills are covered in redwoods and thee are some pretty nice quiet spots over there (the obvious Redwoods Regional Park but several others too).

Time to think a little Bob the Builder workshop in the woods!