It's hard to believe that summer is over - tomorrow, the girls go back to school! They were allowed to pick what they wanted to do for their last two days of freedom...
Monday, we headed off to
Riley's Farm to pick fresh raspberries off the bush. They are delectable! What's really nice about this working farm is... you can check the website to see what fruit they have available for picking - that day! This was the first time this summer we'd been able to get over there... but hopefully it's not the last. You can pile high a half-pint container of raspberries for only $2.50! The only downer was getting bitten by weird biting flies. It's fine if you're a fast picker (like me) but painful if you're waiting for others to finish because they keep eating off the bush...
Today, the girls opted to head off to Forest Falls, where the tallest waterfall in southern California is located. The girls have become stronger, so hiking to the falls didn't take longer than 10 minutes. Fording the stream was a different story... I ended up having to carry them both over and the water was cold enough that after carrying the second child, my feet started to go numb. After we hiked up to the vista point to see the tip of the waterfall (bottom left pix), the girls played around the stream area for a couple of hours. I love going here, because it's so quiet and peaceful.
The highlight for me, though, was getting these photos! The photo on the left was taken at 5.8x while the one on the right was a macro shot of the underside of a rock that had been submerged in water. If you click on the the picture, you'll see something in the very center that looks like a flat cricket (it's actually a
larval stonefly; life cycle info can be found
here) and to the right, you'll see this worm-like black thing - that's a
larval black fly, which you can read about
here. You'll note some pictures (like
this) in which the larva appears to have these fan-like appendages on their head - they actually help catch food particles for the larva. I wish I could have found
dragonfly nymphs or
crane fly larvae for Marika to see, but I guess this stream didn't have the right conditions (water temperature and water speed are very important).
Crane flies, by the way, are those weird fluttery things that look like giant mosquitoes.
Monday, we headed off to Riley's Farm to pick fresh raspberries off the bush. They are delectable! What's really nice about this working farm is... you can check the website to see what fruit they have available for picking - that day! This was the first time this summer we'd been able to get over there... but hopefully it's not the last. You can pile high a half-pint container of raspberries for only $2.50! The only downer was getting bitten by weird biting flies. It's fine if you're a fast picker (like me) but painful if you're waiting for others to finish because they keep eating off the bush...
Today, the girls opted to head off to Forest Falls, where the tallest waterfall in southern California is located. The girls have become stronger, so hiking to the falls didn't take longer than 10 minutes. Fording the stream was a different story... I ended up having to carry them both over and the water was cold enough that after carrying the second child, my feet started to go numb. After we hiked up to the vista point to see the tip of the waterfall (bottom left pix), the girls played around the stream area for a couple of hours. I love going here, because it's so quiet and peaceful.
The highlight for me, though, was getting these photos! The photo on the left was taken at 5.8x while the one on the right was a macro shot of the underside of a rock that had been submerged in water. If you click on the the picture, you'll see something in the very center that looks like a flat cricket (it's actually a larval stonefly; life cycle info can be found here) and to the right, you'll see this worm-like black thing - that's a larval black fly, which you can read about here. You'll note some pictures (like this) in which the larva appears to have these fan-like appendages on their head - they actually help catch food particles for the larva. I wish I could have found dragonfly nymphs or crane fly larvae for Marika to see, but I guess this stream didn't have the right conditions (water temperature and water speed are very important). Crane flies, by the way, are those weird fluttery things that look like giant mosquitoes.
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