Dear Friends,
I hate to disappoint you, but we didn’t see a single frog at the Frogtown Fair today. Oh, yes, the frogs were there and well promoted, but they were in a building too far away and it was too hot. The allure of the frogs wilted with the heat. In the end we didn’t even want to buy a frog t-shirt or bracelet or bag or frog toy. We went at midday, the exact hottest time, when the crowd was small and slow. It didn’t help that the weather’s been cool, but it’s suddenly summertime hot. In a way it was disappointing, but overall it was neat just to be at the Calaveras County Fair outside the town of Angels Camp in the Sierra Foothills.
Steph, Patrick and I were glad we went, even if we did call Patrick The Curmudgeon at the Fair. (It’s a compliment, Patrick!) It’s the prettiest fairgrounds ever, with the stage area in a little valley so you can view from a blanket on the hillside. That’s where the frogs were — down there near the stage, and the rest of the fair was on top of the hill. In line to get a quesadilla, I talked to a woman wearing a pin that said she’d jumped a frog. She said, “They gave me a frog on a thing like a lily pad and then you let it go and it jumps three times and then they measure how far it went. I was lucky — I had a jumper. Some of the frogs don’t jump. Mine went more than 10 feet in all.” That was as close as we got to a jumping frog. I think there was a major frog event scheduled later in the day, involving trained frogs (yes!) but after an hour or so of wandering we left to cool off on Patrick and Steph’s shady front porch.
It was lovely, and the ride back to Sacramento was peaceful, through rolling hills.
Love,
k
Mark Twain Monument,
with explanation below
(Note that he lived on "nearby Jackass Hill.")
Magnolia at a farm stand on the way back to Sacramento
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