Lugmere & Divora

Every year, around the middle of summer, we depart for the quiet campground of Butano, and then the noisy beach house in Santa Cruz to end up at the world-famous Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk! Our camping trip usually consists of hiking, biking, and playing! But the boardwalk is the HIT of it all! This first picture is of me, my sister, my cousin, and my uncle on the Double Shot, an 125 feet tall free fall! Wheeeee! Next, my papa always lets us get a souvenir, which this time mine was Sushi Socks from a wharf shop!  On the last day, we went to some small but mighty tide pools. We found two sea stars, one immense, one so wee, it was barely the size of your palm! So much to do, so little time to spend with cousins!    

Our yearly trip to Lake Utica, an attractive yet amazingly large lake near Arnold, always excites us as much as our trip to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Our favorite attraction, an impressive rock jutting out from the surface of the clear lake, is at the most 12 feet tall. I always feel confident to do it, but when I finish "hiking" to the top, my legs instantly turn to rubber. But I always manage to hurl myself off before I run back down.        The other half of our group is a large family that lives nearby. We always paddle our kayaks and canoes to one of the many small uninhabited islands in the lake. For the rest of the day, we talk and eat and play in the sand, and kayak to other islands to jump off certain rocks or to swim. The island is quite round, and so we often swim or kayak around it, but this time, my papa brought his stand up paddle-board, and everyone was swarming around it.                When the ...

          On a sultry Wednesday in June, we planned to go to White Pines Lake. For those of you who do not know where or what that is, it is a GORGEOUS lake in the middle of Calaveras County. My best friend's family came plus another family who was camping nearby. After everything was said and done, we whipped out the kayaks and goggles and sunscreen and started to make the most of our day at the lake. Me and my bestie rowed around the lake pretending we were lovely maidens proving our braveness in return for the hand in marriage of a young man whom we loved. We sang songs and recited poetry to each other, but the thing we noticed most was people asking us where we got our kayaks. We got them at Walmart, of course! One adorable detail to our lake day was a mother duck, with a train of ducklings swirling along behind her. One of the things that always stands out at White Pines Lake is the ROPE SWING! When we all got to the lake, one of the first things we did ...