Sitting by the Roadside

San Francisco Bay The wind blew hard as we walked along the trail down to the Golden Gate Bridge (right; not in photo). I was woken up at around 5:15am in the morning.  That meant I had had about seven hours of sleep...not bad compared to 4 the second night from when we had arrived in the States from China.  (Someone had set one of our very loud alarm clocks downstairs to ring at 2 o'clock in the morning.  It rang for an hour, and I couldn't fall back asleep after ordeal.)  I was glad I had prepared my backpack the night before.  It saved me a lot of time as I jumped off the top of my bunk bed and rushed to get ready to go on our annual family road trip. My sisters and I had packed all our clothes into a luggage.  I carried that down the stairs and shoved it into the trunk of our van.  After everyone (excluding my brother, who was still sleeping until two minutes before our departure) had made a few more trips carrying items down into the ga...

The Volcanoes On our way from central California to southern Oregon we stopped by  Lassen Volcanic National Park .  The landscape we viewed on the drive there was interesting. A picture taken from my sister Grace's window I tried to take a photo from my own window, but it turned out like this: Yes, I hadn't had time yet to free my window from stickers a decade old and stickers only a few years old.  (sigh)  The view from my window wasn't exactly the best. The entrance fee to the park was $20.   We passed by a sulfur volcano first.  The mud was tremendously hot —to the boiling point!  I wondered how hot it actually was—probably more than it looked! The warning sign warned visitors not to step off the path.  Oops!  You'd be burned awfully bad. The mud was popping and boiling.  The whole place smelled strongly of the worst batch of rotten eggs anyone ever encountered.  I didn't mind the smell much, thoug...

Sonoma County Beach I absolutely LOVED the beach in Sonoma County that we went to during our stay at Windsor!  We parked the van in an empty space on a cliff overlooking the beach.  A long, sometimes steep , dirt path wound down the cliff.  A few feet above the sand we met several shaky wood steps made up of thin tree trunks bound together with wire rope. At the bottom of the steps, before we reached the sand, was a whole area full of colorful rocks.  Not a single one was alike!  I wondered how God could create all of them.  I sat down on the pebbles and chose a handful to take home with me. My favorite rocks were: a tiny turquoise-colored rock, a forest green pebble shaped like a heart, a marble-colored stone that reminded me of Chinese jade, and a rock half-plum color half-olive green color. I also loved the beautiful rocks I called my "striped" ones: My brother's favorite was a pure white stone he named "the hammerhead": ...

On the Way to Windsor I opened my eyes and checked my watch —5:45am.  July 5, 2016.  Time to get up. Dad had planned a family vacation for all of us.  We'd drive from Orange, CA to Windsor, CA, where we'd stay for two days and three nights.  Then on Friday we'd drive up to Klamath Falls, OR to stay for four days and five nights.  On our return trip we planned to stop for a day at Angels Camp, then take the trip back to Orange on the fifteenth. The plan was to leave home at five or six in the morning and arrive at Windsor in the afternoon.  I had packed our luggage last night (along with my own backpack) and Dad had loaded both onto our silver-colored van. The drive along I-5 North was long and dreary.  We listened to sermons and music along the way (I had the tune and lyrics of "Hava Nagila", a song in Hebrew, ringing in my ears), but it didn't help much to pass the time.  I was lost in thought as we cruised down the traffic-less fr...