My Brother the Drill Sargeant (Part Two)

We took a family trip down memory lane yesterday. And since it involved my brother and his family, there was lots of physical activity involved.  Like almost six hours on the Russian River rowing a canoe. This time it is not my legs that are complaining but my arms and shoulders.

I'm in California visiting family and in the span of 16 hours we managed to:

1. Have a nice freshly made cappuccino at home (my brother's house).
2. Drive about 120 miles north to Walker Apples in Graton and pick up a few boxes of freshly picked Gravenstein apples (some for my dad, some to bring back to Alabama and make into pies and pastries).
3. Visit the farmer's market in nearby Sebastopool for some nice heirloom tomatoes, squash, torpedo onions and string beans (and there were so many other things I would have liked to try).
4. Take a ten-mile -- four-canoe-plus-one-kayak -- trip down the Russian River with six (over 40) adults, three (under 20) adults and three small girls (ages 4,5 and 7).  My sister and sister-in-law expertly organized the drinks, snacks, and a picnic lunch, which we shared briefly with yellow jackets while the girls (guided by their older cousins) learned to skip rocks.
5. Row left, row right, row left and right, and row, rwo, row and row (you get the picture...).
6. Walk the boats over the extremely shallow water and duck under the branches of low hanging trees in the strong currents of the deeper water.
7. See egrets, a baby otter, a turtle, some ducks, and several great blue herons.
8. Have a nice gourmet pizza dinner at the Union Hotel in Occidental.
9. Take a serious detour coming home to get around some extreme traffic on Highway 101 north of San Francisco.
10. Go to sleep in the car and wake up (magic!!) back at my brother's house.

When we were younger, going to the Russian River was an annual trip we all looked forward to.  We'd stay with an old friend of the family, Lorene, who had a house right on the river.  She had a big porch in the redwoods overlooking the bridge at Hacienda Beach and we got to sleep outdoors in sleeping bags.  Her only rules were that we kids were not to make noise until after 7am, and we could not go swimming until after lunch.  The local fog burns off mid-morning so it's cool and quiet, and she had buckets and buckets of toys and books to amuse us.  We also got to eat cereal out of a little box without milk. She bought those little individual cereal boxes by the caseload for us and her own grandkids.

She made the best Gravenstein apple pies and had an old fashioned wood burning stove.  She had a compost pile before it was fashionable to compost and recycle.  All paper goods were burned in the stove.  There was a little store just across the bridge that sold penny candy, and, not too far away, a small supermarket called "Spears" where we could get our favorite lunch of sourdough bread, dry salami and swiss cheese.

We canoed right by that same beach yesterday, quietly enjoying our own favorite memories.  It's funny, but I remember the river and the water, and the trees and the currents, but not the yellow jackets.