When I was a child my parents would go on many trips bringing the family. One trip I remember fondly to this day. One warm summer with my younger brother in tow (I was 14, he was 11) We all loaded into the 1971 Ford F-250 with a cabover camper, and headed to Devil’s Postpile National Monument in California.
I remember my mom making Kool-Aid (black cherry) with the carbonated water from Soda Springs. It was so weird that this water came out of the ground already carbonated. It resembled black cherry champagne. I still remember the favor to this day. Pretty Cool!
To get to the Postpile we had to go through one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen on this or any trip since. It was driving through the giant Sequoia tree (in Sequoia National Park) in a cab over camper. This tree was hollowed out and you could drive right thru it! That was so impressive to a young boy, you just can’t believe how giant these trees are until you’ve seen them in person.
On the way, we stopped at an Indian burial ground where no one’s camera would work. There were 5 different cameras in the group, mine was a disposable all mechanical 35mm camera right out of the package that I had taken several pictures with on the way up the mountain, and even it stopped working just before we got the grave site and started working again halfway down the mountain, as did everyone else’s. The Devils Postpile is rock formation of hexagon shaped pillars of columnar basalt, and to a child it is huge and strange thing that it could form naturally.
There was lots of trout fishing in lots of streams and lakes on this trip. There was one called rainbow falls the water was so blue and glowing and around the corner down from the falls I remember the river cut into the far side so you could let your baited hook flow with the water under the ledge an hook a good size trout every time until I caught my limit for the day or my mom went for a swim in the freezing cold water trying to convince others to join her being a kid of course I did and boy was that water cold but clean. It was dinner time after I cleaned the fish, of course that was one of the first things my father taught me, we would rap the fish in tinfoil with a little butter and slices of lemon and place them on the campfire grating till the tinfoil ballooned up like the paned popcorn used to, we would then eat the fish right from the tinfoil. I still cook my trout that same way today and it’s always great. I have not been back to the post pile sense I was a kid but tried to go in 2017 but the weather was terrible so hot we never made it up that far, instead we went south to the beach, Disneyland, Knott’s Berry farm, and Universal studios maybe next time?
