Snow at Frazier Park

With the winter storms we have been having, the snow level has fallen down to the point that snow was within minutes of the house. The roads were open so we drove up to Frazier Park to let the kids play in the snow.


The road up to Mt. Pinos was closed unless you had chains, so we stopped along side the road at the Flying J truck stop. It seems like half of LA must have had the same idea because the crowds were enormous.

(Click to make the panorama bigger) Here's a panorama of the area where we stopped. The truck stop was swamped. I don't think the truck drivers or truck stop people were too happy about it because they were driving around chasing people out of the no parking zones. Though, it was no use, there were just too many people. Every time they cleared an area, it was filled back up within minutes.


Brandon didn't enjoy the cold very much.


Here's Emily enjoying the snow. I didn't get any pictures of Sarah and Ben since I was spending most of my time with Brandon and Emily.


On the way back, we stopped at "Vista Del Lago" near Pyramid Lake. There is a very nice visitors center with a small museum talking about water usage at the lake. Ah,. a nice warm visitor's center...


The mountains around the lake were snow-capped. This is about 20 minutes from our house.

La Purisima Mission

(Click to see the panorama bigger)
Sarah has to do her standard 4th grade mission project and she chose La Purisima mission near Lompoc. We drove up Saturday to visit the mission. Here's a panorama of the mission grounds.


They have a new visitors center with lots of displays that still need to be built. This one was on how they do restoration work at the mission.


They had a table of things that the kids could play with. One of the things was this doll. You can see an incomplete display in the background that shows what they plan to put there, as well as the estimated cost.


The mission is on the outside of town so it's like stepping back in time. There are a lot of animals. The kids enjoyed feeding and petting them.


Brandon and Emily enjoyed looking at the clothes washing pool. Bradon requested a penny to drop into the water. I gave him one which he dropped in. He then wanted another.

One of the docents showed Sarah how to grind corn. Sarah brought her friend Monique along for the trip. Monique got to grind corn as well.






We then had pizza in Lompoc and got back in the evening. Made for a long, but rather inexpensive and educational adventure.