Camping in the Calaveras Big Trees

Carol Field, our volunteer coordinator , took former residents a camping trip last weekend and she lived to tell us about it:

Three Raphael House staff members and three AfterCare families set off for a 2-night camping trip over Labor Day weekend at Calaveras Big Trees State Park in the California Gold Country. Our twelve-person van was loaded from top to bottom and back to front with all the food and gear and it still wasn’t enough for this all-boy trip, fishing included. We walked the trail through the grove of giant sequoias and spent one afternoon at the river, where two of the boys learned how to pan for gold. They each collected a vial of black sand, which one of the seven-year-olds said he was keeping to give to his grandchildren. He also told his father that the trip was the most fun he had ever had in his life. One of the mothers heard a bear outside her tent, but how can you have a camping trip without a taste of the wild?