Sequoias, shark teeth, and sad news

Memorial Day Weekend. Over the years, Zach and I have gotten into the habit of discussing plans for this holiday weekend starting in February or March. Somehow, though, we never seem to nail anything down, and then a couple of weeks prior to the weekend, we find ourselves racing to make reservations somewhere. Usually in a hotel near a beach with warm water and white sand, but this year was a bit different.

Let me also say that both of our birthdays are in May, and so is our anniversary. (My birthday, our anniversary, and Mother's Day all fall within a week of each other.) This year I turned 40, Zach and I have been married for 15 years, and it was my first adult birthday, my first wedding anniversary, and my first Mother's Day without Hannah. So we wanted to do something unique that would make us all happy, and help soothe the bitterness of her loss on those milestone days. Emma also flew in the day before Mother's Day, so we've been busy packing in memories with her, too.

We live near the beach. The sand isn't the same, there are no triangular, shiny black teeth waiting to be found on the beaches, and the water is both rougher than we are comfortable with and a whole lot colder. So, we decided the beach was out this year. Additionally, we've decided to gift ourselves experiences as birthday gifts in place of presents, since we are trying to cut down on the stuff we accumulate prior to moving overseas.

I found a place near Bakersfield where you can visit a privately owned quarry and dig for teeth from a fossil bed roughly 15 million years old. You can visit their website here, but be warned that the site does not have built-in security. Anyway, I wanted to take Emma and go dig for teeth. Zach and the littles enjoy camping, so we decided on a joint birthday/anniversary gift of a two-day camping trip to Sequoia National Forest combined with a trip for Em and me to the quarry.

So how did the trip go? Ha. We had planned to take my Explorer with the cargo carrier on top of it. We loaded up the back of the Explorer, and then we couldn't find the key to the carrier. So we moved everything into the truck. That's when I found the key. On my key ring. In my car. I felt like a genius. But we got everything ready, loaded up five humans of various size, and a cranky old man of an 80 pound dog and trekked out. It was about a five hour drive to the site, and we were all super relieved to make it.

The site itself was... interesting. Our idea of camping tends to be somewhere near water we can get into, with a functioning grill, a campfire ring, and room for the tent. Ideally, it should also be co-located with trailheads, space to throw a ball around, so on and so forth. What we got was a rather large site in the campground on the side of the Kern River, which is a class IV rapids. Not usable water. Room to toss a ball around, sure, but no trailheads nearby, and it was right in between the river and a mountain road. Anything we wanted to do or see would be a drive, so that took some getting used to. The scenery at the site was beautiful, but limited because the river and road were down in a canyon.

We got set up, then early Friday morning, Emma and I headed out to the quarry. We got tot he staging area way too early, so we cat-napped in the truck while we waited for the other customers and the host to show up. Then we convoyed up to the dig site, had a 45 minute orientation, then we dug in the ground for a couple of hours. I won't lie, part of me had hope to find a Meg tooth, but we did not. We did find a couple of really nice Mako teeth, a bunch of smaller teeth, some mammalian bone fossils, and one conglomerate that contained bones, more teeth, and what I believe is a dolphin tooth. Theoretically, the bones belonged to a dolphin that was eaten by sharks. But that's just my theory. We also found some petrified sea animal poop, and Taylor thought that was hilarious.

After Em and I made our way back to the camp site, we decided to head an hour or so in the opposite direction with everyone in the truck. Not too terribly far from where we were camped was the trailhead for the Trail of 100 Giants, a paved trail through giant sequoias and Ponderosa pines. This is the oldest forest I have ever walked in, some of those giants are 1,500 years old. If you've never walked through an old-growth forest, you are seriously missing out.

I took tons of pictures on the trail. But we had a bit of a difficult time with Odin. He was really struggling to keep up, and we've been worried about him for a while. He's getting older and has been slowing down quite a bit. The next day, as we were driving home, Odin's vet called. We had taken some biopsies two weeks ago, and the results came in. My four-legged boy has mast cell tumors, and it is very advanced and very aggressive. He won't make it much longer. So that's my sad news for the time being.

It was, for the most part, a weekend of good memories, and it was nice to be unplugged for a couple of days. We want to try the Redwoods next. Here's to family fun, memories that are more sweet than bitter, and spoiling my fur baby a bit more.