Hard to believe 8 years have gone by since I posted this thread. My Dad passed a couple days after Christmas and I was thinking about our trip up to the Navarro and how much I miss him. It's truly a gift to have your parents thru your adult life and to have them as involved and active as mine have been. The Mendocino cabin was built because they recognized way back in 1966 that they couldn't afford big vacations for a family that grew to 7 kids off in some hotel in some nameless city. We had a little slice of heaven for two weeks every year under the north coast redwoods where there were only 2 rules. Play as hard as you can and always be back for dinner. That's it. We chopped wood, cleared brush, cooked, cleaned paddled kayaks and canoes to the beach, played ditch, tag, rode bikes and built forts.
In 2004 they fell in love with Montana, purchased 11 acres north of Polebridge and built another cabin. Even in their 70's they were thinking about family and giving the next generation the same memories of raising a structure from the ground and having a place to gather, to cook and eat together, to make music together and to just play. My son learned to fly fish on the North Fork of the Flathead River at 6, build forts in Red Meadow Creek and ride motorcycles. His encounter with a grizzly bear on his XR400 is something we still laugh about.