After homeschool, we wandered down to the beach again.

Yup, still foggy:

The kids finished their boat:

A sandy garden:

Contemplating the rage of the sea:

Our daughter charges at the waves:

In our afternoon home school session, our son started his microscopy unit:

Tomorrow we get to see if this RV still rolls, we’ve been here for nearly a week!

Today was “build a tower” day.  My father did it with us when we were kids, so I figure it’s my turn.  We had plenty of driftwood to pick from in the next beach over:

We each grabbed one of the four main poles and dragged them back to our beach:

Binding the main poles together:

Adding the floor supports:

Installing the floor:

Tying down the floor:

I figured I should test it before letting the kids up:

Come on up kids!

Trish gave it a try too:

Our daughter practices her whittling:

We found an elephant seal shoulder blade and forearm.  Leatherman is pictured for scale:

And a pretty big banana slug too:

The kids bolstered a fort someone else had built and left:

They decided to turn it into a seafood restaurant:

Here I am sampling the fare:

The last few days have been pretty oppressive with the fog reducing visibility to 150 feet or so:

Hunting starfish:

We found a silver dollar-sized jellyfish:

One last tower shot:

Trish finished her beautiful beach rock collages:

If we don’t leave here soon, we will never go.

Like the siren’s song of legends old, we have been lured in by the free parking, fantastic WiFi, great solar exposure, beautiful weather, and the onsite water spigot and trash can of the Lucky 7 casino.  We’ve been here three days and counting.  What more could one ask for?

To assuage our guilt, Trish went over last night and put $5 into the slots.  Thanks for taking one for the family, honey.

Trish and our son went to the beach to collect stones for an art project, proving that there’s no such thing as an activity that can’t be made to sound like a legitimate home schooling experience.  On the way back, they spied a snail:

Meanwhile, I was introducing the Scratch programming environment to our daughter.  Beachcombing it wasn’t, but we still had a great time:

After school, we continued working on the art project:

I went for an after-lunch bike ride north to Oregon:

Highway 101 is flat, but I found a couple of 25% grades (that’s seriously steep folks) to climb and get above the fog below:

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our kids continued working on their ship:

In the afternoon, I took them for a walk at low tide and we found a fishing float.  It was encrusted with marine life, so we didn’t take it home:

Reminds me of the housing density along route 306 back home:

Have a great Shabbos, our first in a casino’s RV parking lot!

Today was the first day of LookBeforeYouLive photography school.  We brought along an old DSLR body for both of our kids, and put a 50mm lens on each.  The class was a big hit, and they’re already begging for the next installment.

Today I introduced aperture and its effect on depth of field. I asked them to photograph me at f/8 and f/1.8 and notice how the focus of the background changes:

I then talked about how using high aperture values results in long exposures, which in turn introduces motion blur:

Our son enjoyed experimenting with moving the camera while taking long exposures:

For the last few minutes, they went outside and had “free play” with their new cameras:

Our son did a lot of directing:

School over, we wandered down to the beach.  Oh, the tiresome crowds at the Nothern California coast:

Since it was low tide, we explored amongst the rocks for tidal pool critters:

The kids began a building project…

…While Trish surveyed the north side of the beach.

They built a ship:

Our daugther’s pet kelp, “kelpie”:

When we got down to true low tide, we could see starfish:

When we got back, I went to check in with the casino.  The security fellow said there was no need to check in, and that they have no stay limit.  Hmm, we could get used to “living” here!

Being that Elk Valley Casino has a 2 night stay limit, we packed up today after home school and headed into town to do the laundry.  While Trish was having her quiet time in the Laundromat, I was with the kids at a local park.  The chamber of commerce had a spigot, so I shuttled 16 gallons of fresh water into the RV via 2 trips with our two 4 gallon jerry cans.

Once the clean laundry was loaded into the RV, we stopped at Safeway for groceries and headed 19 miles North to the Lucky 7 Casino.  We’re in a holding pattern until the National Parks open again so we can visit Redwoods national park.

We got to Lucky 7 in time for a great sunset.  The casino is across the street from the beach: