Over this break, Dave and I told our girls a lot of stories about what Christmas Vacations looked like for us growing up in the Midwest. Things like snow, sledding, ice skating, ski equipment for Christmas presents, going back to school wearing snow pants and boots, one year not going back to school for a whole extra week because one Snow Day after the next hit, were the norm. Then I realized what kind of stories they might be telling their kids about what breaks from school looked like: hiking, wildlife sighting, National Parks, and the Pacific ocean, being their norm. How awesome!
The Fitzgerald Marine Reserve has been on my list of places to check out for a while and over this break, we were finally able to cross it off. Put it on your list too, friends! It was one of the most unique landscapes we've explored.
We arrived at this piece of the coast around noon and, though I had read that an immense stretch of tide pools was the attraction here, all we found when we strolled up was a narrow strip of beach. We walked down it for a bit, feeling a tad disappointed. We did perk up when a dozen curious seals swam up to check us out and a Google check revealed that it was in fact high tide.
So, we ate our picnic lunch. We watched the Marine Reserve's movie about all the wildlife that lives here, and we took a hike around the top of the bluffs. Delia was not loving this cliff-hugging path, but Dave and I thought the views were amazing. As we both turn 40 this year, we thought it would be cool if we could hike 40 miles as a family. With this scenic path, we got 1 of those miles out of the way.
After just a few hours, the tide was already receding and the piece of coastline we had first walked up to was already looking pretty different. We got to exploring!
We found the standard anemones, hermit crabs, giant crabs, and starfish. And though we did not find the octopuses that the movie said are also somewhat common in this tide pool system, we did find the rare sea lemon (pictured above)! Have you ever seen or heard of this? We had not. It's pretty much a bright yellow sea cucumber and it's super fun to pet!
The collage below shows 3 shots of almost the same area looking drastically different over the course of just 4 hours. As the tide went from high to low, a whole world of underwater life became visible and it all happened right under our feet.
Since we were not far from the city. we went home on a path through it and made a stop at the SF Public Library. I had heard that you only needed to be a CA resident to obtain a library card. And once you held a card, you had access to this system's massive Kindle lending library. All 4 of us got cards on this stop and have already been enjoying the luxury of nearly any book we've been wanting to read able to be delivered immediately to our devices, or put on a waiting list. The SF library was something cool to see all by itself too. With 5 floors, rotunda, and a children's section bigger than our town's entire library, we were amazed. Definitely worth a stop next time you're in the city; just be prepared to see some colorful characters! :)
For our one big outing, we chose well. This day was a real Christmas Break high point!
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