Thursday, October 15, 2009

Save the Redwood Trees!

Hello everyone!
A topic I want kids to know about is the Redwood Trees. Redwood Trees are fascinating plants that grow up to be hundreds of feet high, and sometimes 5 people have to stretch their arms around it, that's how wide they are. These trees have a reddish tint on the outside and red wood on the inside. Better yet, they're right here in California, in a place called Humboldt County, maybe about 13 or 14 hours from Idyllwild. Anyway, many years ago, a small family found these Redwood Trees, hundreds of miles of them. To them it looked never ending. So they started a business they named Pacific Lumber Co. They thought it would never end so they weren't doing the forest much harm. They had a company owned town called Scotia with workers that lived there. They weren't doing the forests to much harm, they were cutting the trees where they would take a few from certain areas, leaving it so they could regrow. But after a while, a big company called Maxxam bought the company and did a thing called "Clear cutting" where they cut down every tree in an area down to the bottom, plus all of the small plants in their way. The http://www.chemistryland.com/CHM107/AirWeBreathe/Comp/RedwoodTree.jpgsad truth is, now there's only 3% of the redwood trees left. Some people acted out, like Julia Butterfly Hill. She sat in a tree named Luna for 2 years. (If you want to know more about her their is a book called "Legacy of Luna".) However, we need more Julias here, working to help save the Redwoods.
Here are a few reasons why the Pacific Lumber might cut down the trees:
They have a family to feed
They need to pay off their rent
There's no other jobs in the area, and they don't know where else to move

I'm not saying this excuses the fact they've been cutting down Redwoods for their own benifits, but does explain it a tiny bit.
This is how the owner of Maxxam can think of it:
I live in Texas, not California, and these are some trees I've never and probably will see. Why would it matter to me?
I hope you can look further into this, if you are interested, and remember, every person counts.

- Zora

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Day trip to Cuyamaca


hello!

Yesterday I went on a trip to Cuyamaca State Park to celebrate my Grandma Crazylady's birthday (yes, she knows we call her that, it's a nickname). So we left at about 10:00 on Saturday morning. Cuyamaca is a nice place, kind of like Idyllwild. A fire went through there a few years ago so it is kind of charred, though still pretty. So, back to the story We had been driving for about an hour and a half when we reached the small town of Santa Ysabel. It is a tiny town. The whole town is about 5 buildings. It is known for a bakery there called Dudleys. The bakery smells the best and has really good fresh bread. We bought five loaves! Then we went into a tiny antiques shop that also sells olives. After that we got back on the road.

The next tiny town we entered is called Wynola. It is about the size of Santa Ysabel with about 7 buildings. In Wynola there is even a one room school house. We also got some fresh apple cider. It is good!! Then we went into a bead shop. In the bead shop there was a gumball machine filled with beads. I put in a quarter expecting a handful, but it only gave me four. Oh well. At least they were pretty.

From Wynola, we continued into Julian. Julian is a town about the size of Pine Cove and Idyllwild put together. It was very old-fashioned. There were horse-drawn carriages, and street fairs. It was also very, very busy, so we didn't stop.

About ten minutes past Julian, we passed Cuyamaca Lake and continued on into the park where my grandparents are camping. We got there but they weren't at their campsite, so we went to the visitor's center to wait for them. They were very surprised to find us there. We hadn't told them we were coming. We went back to their campsite and had lunch, some cheese and the bread we had gotten at Dudley's.

I was eating my cheese when I saw a little ground squirrel nosing around our feet. He was so tame! I put some cheese on my finger and offered it to him. He slowly approached my finger, eyeing the cheese. I held very still as he nibbled the cheese from my finger.... and then bit my finger! I screamed as the blood ran down from under my fingernail. Never again will I feed a squirrel. For the rest of the day, my family kept saying things like "Hey Audrey, there's a rattlesnake! Why don't you feed it some cheese?"

Following the squirrel incident, whenever he popped his head out of his hole, I threw a rock at him. My aim isn't very good, though. We took a hike in the afternoon and found one of his friends dead on the trail. I didn't do it. But it made me feel better.

Along the trail, we found a horny toad no bigger than my pinky. I thought that was pretty cool, because horny toads (horned lizards) are endangered. After the hike, we came back and had the pumpkin pie we had made for a birthday cake. I love having dessert first.

Since grandma wasn't expecting us, she didn't have enough food for dinner. We went to a restaurant in our last small town, Descanso. I had a good meal of fettucini alfredo and we headed home.

Stay tuned for more- Audrey







Sunday, October 4, 2009

The meaning of this Blog

Hi!!!
Welcome to A2Z idykids blog. We are local kids that live in Idyllwild, and thought kids might want a blog to look at for everything. Here are a few reasons why we wanted to make this blog:

1) We think kids should be more educated about global warming and the economy.

2) We have been disturbed about how mean kids can be to other kids, and thought we might give some advice on that, as we have experienced this kind of thing and we KNOW it can be hard.

3) We think kids should have some fun, easy, and short (usually) art projects and cooking recipes.

We also thought it might be nice for kids to have something to look at over the internet they can never get tired of.

Stay tuned for more!