The weekly trek

We would go up to the gulch every weekend from Mt. Diablo and then stay up there all summer long every summer.  It was exciting at first but it was a four hour drive one way and it quickly became the two times of the week I hated most.  Going and coming.  A four hour trip to a child can seem like a lifetime although my brother and I would fall to sleep after about two hours of driving.  I'm sure my parents heard the age old question thousands of times through the years, "Are we there yet?"  I can remember, when my brother got older, teaching him the words to 100 bottles of beer on the wall.  That song was the reason my brother knew how to count to 100, forwards and backwards, before he ever started kindergarten.  We would sing it using the words beer, cats, dogs, horses and we would sing it until my parents flat out told us, "No more, thats enough, sing something else!"   The real bummer was when we finally did get to the gulch and when we got back home to Mt. Diablo.  Usually when we were going to the gulch, we didn't leave until Bob got home from work which was, I'm guessing, around seven o'clock.  Then he and my Mom would load Bob's VW van with all the food, clothes and animals which meant we probably didn't leave till eight or nine and then drive four hours.  When we got to the gulch, it wasn't like we could hit the remote control and the garage door opened, park the van and we all went in and went to bed.  In those days we couldn't drive up to the cabin, we had to park across the river and unload everything, carry it down to the trolly, take everything across the river on the trolly.   We did have an old WWII army jeep that stayed at the cabin and my dad would have to go up, start the jeep, drive it down to the trolly, load it up with all the stuff and take it to the cabin and carry everything in.  When we went into the cabin, we didn't just flick on a light switch, we had to light the lanterns and in the winter time we had to light a fire because the cabin was freezing.  Speaking of winter, that even added to the misery of getting there.  If it was raining, we were all soaked to the bone by the time we got up to the cabin.  The trolly wheels would throw water as they turned and rolled along the cable and there was no way to stop it and if you had five loads to take across, you were sprayed with cable water as well as rained on.  It wasn't fun, especially for a kid who was just woke up cranky and tired.  My job in the earliest days was to watch my Brother while my parents did all the work, so I would sit in a dark van with my baby brother until it was our turn to go across the river.   By the time we got to the cabin, my brother had been woke up and would be crying right along with me and feeling just as miserable as I was. 
If it was winter, we would all huddle around the wood stove trying to get warm, taking our wet clothes off and putting our pajamas on for bed.  My Mother would be heating milk on the stove to feed my brother his bottle.  We had a gas refrigerator which Bob would have to light so that they could put all the perishable food in, before we went to bed, then put the non-perishable food in big cans so the mice didn't get into it. One other thing I can remember my parents doing in the summer, was checking everywhere in the cabin for rattlesnakes which included in and under the beds.  I of course could have gone to bed while they did this but as a young kid I was too afraid to go into the bedroom that had no lights.  I would hear the dogs barking outside at something and the thought of being alone in a totally dark room was just something I didn't want to do.  What if there was a rattlesnake under the bed that my parents missed seeing and where were all those mice at right now they talked about and sometimes we could hear coyotes howling in the distance.  It was just not something I was going to do.  I didn't even want to sleep in my own bed alone when we were all in the same room.  When everyone finally went to bed I would pull the covers over my head and try to tuck every loose end of the covers under me so nothing could get me and I would wish that I was my baby brother who usually got to sleep with my parents or right next to their bed.

Summer day with Puco and Ginger's puppies
and our Collie named shane.

At the end of the weekend my parents would usually try to leave early on Sunday night.  I was taught young how to haul wood in to build a fire when we came back and I would have to fill all the lanterns so they were ready for the late night drill next week.  Bob would fill all the water cans, turn off the refrigerator and start packing everything back across the river.  Many, many times though, we wouldn't get out of there till around eight or nine and get back to Mt. Diablo around twelve or one A.M.  I usually wasn't singing on the way home.  I would be one tuckered out little boy and would fall right to sleep and wake up finding my parents unloading everything and carrying me into bed.  Later, when I started school, I would just be exhausted at school on Monday morning. 
Usually though, the last thing we would do before leaving the gulch in the summer, was go down to the river and take a last swim before heading home.  I can still feel the warm afternoon breeze blowing through the canyon, the smells of the river, watching the dragonflies hover around the willows, seeing the fish lazily float in one spot gulping water and the sound of the rapids down stream.  It's one of the many memories of the gulch that I wish I could experience again!
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