Visiting Lassen Peak and the Lake Shasta Caverns in Northern California with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Lassen Peak and the Lake Shasta Caverns in California with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget



As part of a unit on volcanoes and tectonic plates, my daughter Florence's Waldorf School-inspired charter school planned a several night camping trip to Lassen Peak (Mount Lassen) and the Lake Shasta Caverns in Northern California near the Oregon and Nevada borders.

I was scheduled to ride up in SUV with one of the mothers who is a veteran of Boy Scout Outing Trips; her son was an Eagle Scout, the highest rank and badge you can attain.

My husband and I had obtained multi-sleeper tents, but I was going alone on the trip.  The tents went in the SUV along with the camping stoves, soup-making supplies for arrival, sleeping bags and mattresses, flashlights, and clandestine blueberry muffins.  (The muffins we were supposed to bring were bran, but kids and I do not really like those.)

The driver's daughter, Florence, and one of their school friends piled into the back seat.   They took out Brain Quest games and began quizzing each other.  I put a case of water between the driver and me.

Our SUV was the first to leave, and I was working as navigator in the pre-GPS days with the maps.  I also knew my way around San Francisco's highways from trips there.  I had a flashlight by me for when it got dark, so I could read the map.  We had walkie-talkies to communicate and the kids were in charge of those.  Driver-mom and I were laughing about the important information being communicated like who still had not packed their SUV, who had left, and who had taken the camp stoves.

Our first destination was the Geology Department at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.  We tramped up stairs and walked through corridor after corridor to arrive at the office of Dr. Elizabeth Miller.  We waited for everyone to arrive.  When they did, their teacher handed out the geology workbooks and drawings they had made at school.  Dr. Miller inspected all of them and made comments about them.  (Drawing is part of every theme at Waldorf Schools.)

Dr. Miller logistically placed all the children around the lab and had them look microscopes at slides of crystal formations.  I helped focus the microscopes and asked the kids to describe what they saw.  We all watched a film on plate tectonics, looked at a fault line map, and played with the department’s dogs.

Next we tramped through corridors, down stairs, and out to Stanford’s main quadrangle.  We visited Stanford’s Memorial Church.  I wondered if they held graduation ceremonies there.

Florence’s teacher took us to the geology library, so we could examine the crystal specimens there.  For me, the most interesting stone was varisite.  It looked like a geode with green sport drink crystals in the center.  Rhodocrosite with red-orange crystals shooting out from its sides was neat, too.

From Stanford, we drove into San Francisco and north to the Lassen National Park area.  Florence’s teacher and his son had arrived before us.  He knew the way, but our SUV had the tents and the arrival food.  Driver-mom got the arrival soup started.  Florence’s teacher and I got the tents pitched with help from the kids.

The soup was ready as people began arriving.  No one argued about lights out.  I did not sleep in a tent.  I put my sleeping bag and pillow out in the middle of the campsite.  I had no plans for sleeping too much, because I was stargazing. 

The clear mountain air lets you see things that you cannot see in a city like shooting stars.  I saw seven of them that night.  I also saw a flashing galaxy.  I had never seen stars truly twinkle before.  I felt like I could see different layers in the universe or was it just lack of sleep?

I helped the mom who was organizing breakfast with potato peeling and potato chopping for American fries.  The American fries tasted great with fried bacon, scrambled eggs, and coffee in the thin, mountain air.  Lassen Peak is 2,000 feet above sea level.

The first place we visited that day was the Lassen Volcanic National Park Center.  Four Native American groups had summer camps at Lassen Peak for hunting – the Atsugewi, the Yana, the Yahi, and the Maidu. 

The last of the Yahi Indian Tribe named Ishi (1860 - 1916) lived at Lassen and finished his days living at the anthropological museum at what is now the University of California – San Francisco.  The anthropologist Alfred Kroeber (1876 - 1960) studied Ishi.  All of the Native American groups represented at Lassen were basket weaving cultures rather than pottery-making ones.

From the Visitor Center, we set out for Mount Lassen.  I discovered that I could not hike to the top of Mount Lassen, because I had not brought the correct shoes.  Poor planning – oh my!  I fell down just getting on the trail.  I was glad I fell at the bottom of Mount Lassen and not going up.  It is a bald peak with no trees.  You could roll down the entire mountain without stopping.

I volunteered to make lunch and dinner for everyone, since I could not hike.  Driver-mom did the same and laughed about disrupting her schedule.  Our kids plus their friend said they were going with us. 

We went back to the SUV and did our own tour around the park.  We went back to the Visitor Center to more fully examine the exhibits and went to the sulfur springs.  Bubbling boo that smells is how I qualified them.  Driver-mom took the kids on a nature walk like a Boy Scout mom could while I worked on salads, sandwiches, and cleaned fruit for dessert back at camp.

Lunch hour passed with no SUVs arriving.  I had the salads and sandwiches in coolers with ice, so they would be ready whenever everyone else came back.  I had brought some geology books and a book called The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander along with me that the girls read.

Driver-mom and I got worried when dinner hour rolled around with no kids in sight.  We made soup again and were happy we had two meals ready when the other SUVs showed up in camp.  The kids had hiked to top of Lassen Peak.  They ate everything and we broke out the wild boar sausage and made that for the kids, too.  (We lived in wine country Monterey County, so wild boar sausage is an item you can get donated for field trips, if you know whom to ask.)

I told driver-mom to go have fun while I cleaned up.  The kids were eating roasted marshmallows and doing skits.  One of the mothers had a Japanese exchange student staying with her who did Japanese clown acts and was teaching the kids how to count and sing in Japanese.  The kids already knew some Japanese, because they had Japanese class at school. 

I slept under the stars again.  I was almost asleep when I heard snorting and grunting and bushes rustling beside me.  A wild boar had come into camp.

I jumped out of my sleeping bag and slapped it on the ground next to me and hit the picnic table, saying, “Scat!”

I succeeded in scaring away the boar and ran to our SUV to go to sleep.  Once I was inside the vehicle, I said to myself, “Where’s the pasodobles music?”  (Pasodobles is the music they play before bullfights in Spain.)

Saturday we set out for the Lake Shasta Caverns in Shasta, California.  The caverns were my favorite part of the trip.  Their website has a virtual tour to get an idea of what the place is like.  The Shasta Caverns are limestone caverns with the mineral calcite making formations, which are 250 million years old.

It was interesting to see where stalactites and stalagmite had grown together.  Some of the caves had what is known as cave coral in them.  Water used to be in these caves.  The water level has changed over the course of millions of years.

For me, the most interesting features of the caves were the helictite formations.  These look like crystal spaghetti formations.  Karst formations were there, too.  These are cracks in the rocks that let water through and form rock formations.

After this visit, we took the kids swimming in nearby pool.  They had mud baths at the pool, too.  I thought the kids would be in Never, Never Land mud bath forever. 

The next day, we broke down camp.  The boys all asked me about the wild boar. 

“It’s maybe better to sleep in a tent or cabin,” I said.

Driver-mom and I stopped and bought the kids in our SUV bear claw sticky buns and orange soda on the way home.  I enjoyed reliving the trip through the girls’ wrap-up conversation and commentary.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


Monterey, California’s biggest tourist draw is its aquarium.  Lines queue up to get in, which is one of the reasons why I became a field trip chaperone when my daughter Florence’s Waldorf School went for a visit.  Going to the Monterey Bay Aquarium with a class of nine- and ten-year-olds allows you to fully appreciate the Aquarium I think.

We all started our trip to the Aquarium by walking from the Pacific Grove Gate to Pebble Beach where the school was located to walk downhill to Cannery Row in Monterey.  The kids were bouncing along and talking loudly all the way there.  By the time we arrived, they had all slowed down to adult speed and were quiet at the entrance to the sardine-canneries-turned-aquarium on breezy Monterey Bay.

The fifth graders split into two groups – the sea otters and the octopae.  I was in charge of the octopus group.  The octopus kids were not happy.

“We don’t want to be an octopus,” they said almost in unison as our Aquarium guide looked on in distress.

“An octopus is one of the smartest animals in the ocean,” I said.  “They squirt ink at their enemies and blind them, so they can away from them without getting hurt,” I continued.  That statement seemed to mollify them, but I noticed that the kids “lost” their badges during the course of our field trip.  I wanted to be in charge of the sharks on the next Aquarium visit.

A retired schoolteacher was our guide.  She was trying not to laugh as I dealt with the octopus issue.  She started our trip by describing an ecosystem and food webs – both relate how nature is related and interlocking in nature.  Disturbing one of the parts has an effect on the others. 

We received this introduction at the Inner Bay Exhibit, which has a towering and twirling kelp forest in its tank.  The kids swiveled as the guide spoke, helping them use more than one sense to retain the information being imparted to them.

I asked about an interesting fish there called a Sheep’s Head fish.  It was black on each end and orange in the middle.  That is what the male fish looks like.  If the male fish is taken out of the vicinity of the female fish, the orange-colored female fish will change into a male.  The Aquarium guide said the workers had discovered this when they took the male fish out of the tank and the female fish began to change into a male fish.

After this explanation, we then tramped up the metal stairs to the exhibits with star fish, which our guide said are also called sea stars.  Sea otters eat sea stars.  Sea stars  liquefy their food before eating it.  The guide gave us a sheet with images of the foods that are in the sea otter’s food web: abalone, crab, sea cucumber, pisaster star, sea urchin, and bat star.  I told the kids I would hold the handouts and give them back to them when we got back to school. 

Next we went into the Outer Bay Exhibit.  Bigger animals live out there as well as jellyfish.  The kids liked the orange jellyfish that bobbed up and down against a blue- lit background.  Our guide told us that sea turtles eat jellyfish.  She said that sea turtles sometimes mistake plastic bags for jellyfish and eat the bags, which “can be fatal.”

“What does ‘fatal’ mean?” one of the octopus kids asked.

“It means turtles die if they eat plastic bags,” I said, sparing the guide from shocking the innocent childhood of Waldorf students.

After that we went into the viewing room with the “tuna tank.”  All the kids lay down on the floor to watch the high stress, Type-A tuna dart about.  They all “oohed and aahed” when they hammerhead shark slowly swam amongst the tuna.

The guide said her tour was over.  I was left with the octopus kids for another two hours.  I suggested that we go see the sea otters being fed.  We went down the metal steps and across exhibit halls to see the sea otters being fed for half an hour until everyone got bored.  (I think they were all happy to be an octopus after that.)

My next suggestion was, “Would you like to pet the manta rays?”

“Yeah!”

“What are those?”

“Don’t manta rays sting”

“Where are they?”

“Follow me,” I said, feeling like the Pied Piper.

We tramped downstairs and back up and around the back of the Aquarium to the huge pool of whirling manta rays.  (My family had a family membership to the Aquarium, so I knew where everything was.)  We all put our hands in the water and let the manta rays flit and slither by them.  The manta rays are slimy, which necessitated hand washing before and after using the bathroom, our next tour stop.

After that I took the fifth-grader octopus group to the Splash Zone.  The Splash Zone was set up for preschoolers.  None were there, which made this a good stop.  The Splash Zone has slides, games, photo-op stands (everyone got photos taken as a penguin), and the penguin exhibit.  The penguins are the monkeys of the Aquarium.  I took the kids there to see the penguins.

I love penguins.  They thrash around when they swim, stand up and flap their flippers to dry off, and bite each other’s behinds when they are angry.

There was a little auditorium in front of the exhibit tank.   The Aquarium did a show to illustrate the differences between a rainforest parrot and a penguin.  My daughter Florence was dressed up as a penguin and her classmate “nemesis” was dressed as a parrot.

They were asked to make up some lines based on what they had learned.

“Penguins are ugly.”

“Parrots smell.”

“Penguins eat turds.”

“Parrots just repeat things.”

I am sure the Aquarium staff had them say some other things, but laughter does increase knowledge retention according to some academic researchers.

The only exhibit we did not visit was the ocean bird exhibit.    The ocean bird exhibit area is small and better suited for families I thought.  The Aquarium’s films about the deep sea creatures it is studying in the Monterey Bay Canyon are best seen as a family I thought, too.  The Monterey Bay Canyon is deeper than the Grand Canyon and is just as interesting as the moon to explore I think.

I have always enjoyed visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Permanent exhibits and took visitors to see them during the thirteen years that I lived in Monterey.  The overall experience of visiting the Aquarium makes you feel as if you have been on a diving trip.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Avignon, France, the City of Dissenting Popes and the Famous Bridge with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Avignon, France, the City of Dissenting Popes and the Famous Bridge with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


Avignon is famous for its summer theatre festival, which uses dramatic lighting on the Porte des Champeaux entrance to the Palais des Papes (Pope’s Palace) as background.

My husband Laurent and I visited Avignon during their equally crowded Christmas festival and market.  We secured the last parking spot in the garage by our hotel for this festivity and did not mind our walk to the hotel in the pedestrian district amidst all the revelry.

Getting to the hotel made us appreciate how the city within the ramparts built during the 12^th to 14^th centuries was set up for defense and secret messengers; narrow, one-way streets abounded with what the French call “ruelles” leading off from the streets.  Ruelles are meant for one or maybe two pedestrians to pass where horses would have had trouble navigating.

Many of the one-way streets were closed due to the Christmas Festival, which had our GPS navigating system going haywire.  We spent a good half hour just trying to reach our hotel.  A call to the hotel outside the ramparts helped us find our way to the garage by the Pont d’Avignon (Avignon Bridge).

The Palais des Papes, which is right behind the Pont d’Avignon, is a Gothic structure that was built in the 14^th century.   It sits on a hilltop and is a multipurpose compound with a residence and church that also served as a fortress.  It was a fort within a walled city.

The Palais des Papes served as the papal see, a type of French Vatican, from 1309 to 1377.  This period in the history of the Catholic Church is referred to as the Avignon Papacy.  During this time, seven French popes held court at Avignon.

The first pope to live and rule from Avignon was Clement V (1264 – 1314), who refused to move to Rome and made Avignon a papal enclave.  Avignon was also the residence of antipopes, who resided there from 1378 to 1408.  Antipopes lived during the time of the Great Schism (1378 to 1417) in the Western Church when two or three different popes ruled in different regions.  Avignon was home to several rivals for control of the Catholic Church.

Today the French remember Avignon for its famous bridge, the Pont d’Avignon, which has been immortalized in a children’s song.  The famous lyrics for the song follow:

Sur le Pont d’Avignon,

On y danse,

On y danse,

Tous en rond.

(On Avignon Bridge,

We dance,

We dance,

Together in a Circle)

(Literal translation by Ruth Paget)

The Pont d’Avignon’s official name is Pont Saint-Bénezet (Saint Benedict in dialect).  Benedict was a shepherd, who left his flock in the care of angels to build this bridge in the 12^th century.  It is huge tourist draw for French families.

The Italian poet Petrarch (1304 – 1374) captured Avignon’s forbidding beauty in his sonnets to the beautiful Laura, whom he saw in church.  He wrote poetry for her in his Rime Sparse.  My souvenir from Avignon is a pledge to myself to read these sonnets in Italian.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Laurent Paget Photography

Laurent Paget Photography

Laurent Paget Photography

Laurent Paget Photography

Laurent Paget Photography

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Visiting Chateau Lafite-Rothschild in Pauillac, France with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Chateau Lafite-Rothschild in Pauillac, France with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


Even though Château Lafite-Rothschild did not advertise visits on their French-language website, I called them to see if I could obtain a visit for my 25^th wedding anniversary.

I am fluent in French and know from previous experience that that can work magic in getting things done in France.  “At the worst, they can say ‘no’ or refer me to another château for a private visit,” I said to myself.   I called, exchanged emails, and secured a tour five months in advance.

On the appointed day, my husband Laurent and I drove to Pauillac and did reconnaissance on where hard-to-find Château Lafite-Rothschild is located.  We also visited the wine store in town and let them know we were visiting Lafite-Rothschild and looked through the stock that they had.  We promised we would be back after the tour.

We still had time left before the tour, so we ate a seafood lunch by the Gironde Estuary with a white Bordeaux Graves wine.  We bought a laguiole knife with a wood handle that is perfect for cutting off wine bottle neck covers the right way.  Then we set out along the Route des Châteaux and took pictures of the showplace châteaux along the way.

Bordeaux is very commercial; it was created to serve foreign trade purposes.  It differs from Burgundy in this aspect, which has a more religious foundation to its winemaking.  This is not a criticism of Bordeaux.  The region has created an incredibly reliable luxury product that is available at several different price levels.

Lafite-Rothschild’s tradition as a luxury good began in the last 3^rd of the 17^th century according to Jancis Robinson in The Oxford Companion to Wine.  Bordeaux wines taste very good, because they are blends.  Each varietal brings something to the whole.  This blending of varietals differentiates Bordeaux wines from a single varietal cabernet sauvignon, for example. 

The Oxford Companion to Wine writes that Lafite-Rothschild wines are made up of:

71% Cabernet Sauvignon

  3%  Cabernet Franc

25%  Merlot

  1%  Petit Verdot

This combination alone does not tell the whole story of Lafite-Rothschild’s success.  I could see on our tour that the Château is hospital clean in almost every cellar and uses very sanitary production techniques to clarify their wines.

When we began our tour with the Château’s sommelier, he confirmed that Lafite-Rothschild is one of the First Growths listed in the 1855 Classification of 60 leading Médoc châteaux.  There are five levels of classification in the 1855 listing, which is still referred to today for quality wines.  The 1855 Classification was established by Emperor Napoleon III (1808 – 1873) to help sell French wines at the Exposition Universelle.

Before we walked down into the cellars, we examine a glass case with a cut of what the vine roots had to go down through.  I suspected it was for cabernet sauvignon as it was full of gravel on one layer and ended with sand.  The sommelier told us that water extended down to the sand, which was about six feet down in the glass case.

There was also a map in this antechamber, which showed the vineyards – first and second growth areas.  1/3 of Lafite-Rothschild’s production is produced by younger vines under the label Carrudes de Lafite according to The Oxford Companion to Wine.

On the tour we went through the spotless cellar rooms where wines are “elaborated.”  Winemaking is like music for me; I do not want to know all the details.  I just want to enjoy a glass or two of red Bordeaux with duck breast.

The one messy room at Château Lafite-Rothschild was the cellar with antique wines.  The Lafite-Rothschild visitor’s book says there are bottles in this cellar dating from 1797, 1798, 1801, 1805, and 1811.  Those must have been good harvest years.  The sommelier assured me that they were not vinegar, but did need decanting to be drunk.

Once past this room, there is the cellar with all the barrels for aging.  The barrels are all made at Lafite-Rothschild.  They are beautiful examples of French craftsmanship.  (The barrels made here also go to Château Rieussec in the Sauternes, which is also a Rothschild family property.)

When we went into the round cellar for aging second-year wine, the sommelier explained that Lafite-Rothschild clarifies wine of debris with egg whites before the second aging.  I remarked that the same technique is used in the sherry region of Spain.  I suggested that Lafite-Rothschild should make and sell Portuguese flan, which uses egg yolks only as a winemaking byproduct.

Dinners are held in this round cellar, and I thought flan would be a good dessert for one.  The room is the work of Catalan architect Riccardo Bofill.  Baron Eric de Rothschild commissioned the room in 1987 according to the Château’s visitor’s book.

We finished our tour with a wine tasting and many thanks for the lovely visit.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Chateau Lafite-Rothschild - Laurent Paget Photography

Route des Chateaux - Laurent Paget Photography

Route des Chateaux - Laurent Paget Photography

Laurent Paget Photography

Laurent Paget Photography

Laurent Paget Photography

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