We didn't climb today, but Tricia and I definitely weren't lounging.
We spent the morning in San Rafael. Tricia was one of 49 contestants in the California State Spelling Bee. Yeah, one of 49 kids in the whole state who qualified:
While Tricia cooly spelled word after word, I got sweaty palms (if I'd been a contestant, I may have come in last - some of the words were hard!). Eventually the words got even harder (as in multi-syllable words I'd never heard of). Kid after kid misspelled enough words to be out of the contest. Finally Tricia missed a word. But by then 23 kids were out. Then 25 were out.
Finally, long, long after I would have been booted, she was out. She placed 18th out of 49. But really she placed 18th out of thousands.
Nice result, huh? It's an achievement that might make a wise person hesitant to engage her in spelling games like Bananagrams
Now a normal dad might have rewarded such an accomplishment right? Good, good answer. Yeah, I did reward her. Since one way of coming home might take us past Mount Diablo, a drive-to-the-summit county high point that Tricia hadn't done, I rewarded her with a summit offer. Even though I'd bagged this summit myself before, we drove there again today (she was actually pretty thrilled to get another high point done!). And it's a weird highpoint. An observation deck was built of top of this peak back in the 1930s; they left the actual high point itself exposed, but it's exposed within a building! Weird:
The views from the observation deck were good too (it wasn't all that clear, but it wasn't bad):
And, finally, keeping her favorite geologist in mind, Tricia took these photos of the structure's actual building blocks (made from stone found there on Mount Diablo):
All in all an excellent day