What happened to Julys like this? Or this July for that matter? We’re packing up our canoe, wool bathing suits, parasols, and all the Judy Boltons and Nancy Drews we can stuff in a suitcase and heading to Camp. With the days already getting shorter and shops all trying to usher us into fall already, we long to slow down and enjoy the summer before it’s gone. To paraphrase the immortal words of Spanky McFarland, don’t rush us, big boy.
This series of photos came from an old album that we picked up somewhere (old photo albums being on the long list of Things We Can’t Resist. We hate to see these broken up, the photos sold individually – a telltale sign is remnants of black paper on the backs. But we digress…) showing a family canoeing and generally cavorting at a resort-camp on California's Russian River between 1925 and 1927. Russian River Valley towns like Monte Rio, Rio Nido, and Guerneville all had rustic summer resorts that became popular with San Francisco and Oakland families in the 1920s and 1930s when better roads made them more accessible. Most camps had a main hotel building with a cluster of little, freestanding cabins or tents that could be rented by the week or the month. Folks usually came to stay a while. Most of the photos will pull up larger by clicking on them.Here’s the original owner of the album (we don’t know her name, but she’s quite a cutup; the captions are hers), and below, “Sis” in the doorway of their tent, and in bathing attire.
"Bathing Beauties" "Me, Catherine, Sis, Monica"
Note the name of the canoe –Vampire. (We're stealing this idea!).
The caption reads “Try to get a big load”
"Loring Me + Elmo"
When not canoeing, there was always "Posing" to do - here in front of a tent cabin
"Catherine, Ma, Me"
Catherine, above, and another girl (sister?), Kate
"Catherine, Ma, Me"
"Mamma" with an unidentified woman, c. 1925
Mamma, Pappa, and the girls in front of a tent, 1925
We have some additional photos of our girl and family from the same time period that we’ll share in a future post. The camp photos, however, don’t continue after 1927 although there are many blank pages left in the album. We hope that she and Sis, and Catherine, and the rest of the bunch went on to have more beautiful, lazy summers like this somewhere else.
