Friday, September 16th, 2011: We arrived on Friday at 9:00AM. The gate was locked and the code had not yet been changed to 5050. So I hiked in to see if anyone could open it for us. After the gate was opened, we unloaded our jeep and tried unsuccessfully to get out of area 5 and into the park because the upper gate still had not been changed either, of course. So we had to drive to the main gate to request that one of the rangers come and change the codes. After getting the old code, Robert and I were able to get into the park to pre run the trails to make sure the ravine was behaving this season. Around 11:15AM we got Ed, Darryl, and Greg to help us set up red trail. We returned from red trail set up, and had lunch. After, we got Bob, Jared (Bob’s guest), Rebecca, and Michael (our guests) to help Robert and I set up the blue trail. When we got back we set up camp and made up the maps for the trail drivers. By then, it was about time to start cooking dinner. Around 6 we started getting together for our Friday night potluck. My sister and her friend realized they had forgotten milk, so they headed into town in their very capable 4x4 Mercedes sedan. On the way to town their car got a flat tire; and since they were already riding on a spare, they had to get back to camp another way. Luckily, they were able to hitchhike back to camp because of the kindness of a nice lady in a pickup truck. We enjoyed a great dinner with an amazing 3 varieties of meatballs, some yummy strawberry shortcake, and Mike’s wonderful cobbler which I vote gets on the dessert menu for next clinic.
Saturday, September 17th, 2011: Clinic happened, no one died, and nothing blew up. Dinner was yummy as always. We were able to get a nice slide show going of the photos taken earlier that day. We also enjoyed a campfire with several students in attendance. We finally called it quits at around 2AM when the final 9 of us decided we should probably get to bed.
Sunday, September 18th, 2011: After “sleeping in” until 8AM thanks to the very boisterous pond fauna and the fact that one has to hike 200 yards to use the restroom, we packed up and took off. We enjoyed a good breakfast at Jerry’s on the way out of Hollister.
All in all, it seemed to be a very smooth clinic, and Robert and I would like to thank all of those that helped make it so.