"From the Mountains...to the Oceans White with Foam..."

God certainly did bless our travels this summer!  The time off has gone lightning fast and I think back on some of the cool stuff we got to see: canyons and crevices in New Mexico, Redwood forests in Mount Hermon, snow-capped mountains in Mammoth, and a churning ocean, home to wildlife galore this past week on the Central Coast.  It was a wonderful decision to conclude our summer with one last getaway, just the 4 of us, to soak in some epitome-of-summer activities.

  

We visited a string of 4 different beaches at Moss Landing, Aptos, Capitola and Santa Cruz, finding different treasures at each: jaw-dropping wildlife, fun beach play, scenery, surfers, etc.

We attempted to get this year's Christmas card picture one night.  Above and below are some shots to tease you.

We strolled along the Boardwalk WITH Dave for a change!  Since we already did rides at the beginning of summer at Mount Hermon, we just took in the sights and sounds this time.  And ate corn dogs and ice cream for lunch!

The girls were most excited to just play, so we spent one afternoon jumping waves and getting buried in sand holes.

A church friend was kind enough to let us borrow her boogie boards for this little trip, so we could test out if this was a summer ocean activity we wanted to invest in.  Dave went first, making it look so cool and fun.

But, when Delia went to try with him she was "tackled" (to use her word) by this huge wave.  She came out looking like a swamp creature-- covered in sand and tiny shells and with a bit of kelp even hanging off of her.  She was scared and wouldn't go back in the ocean after this.  Ella understandably wouldn't try either.  We will not be buying our own boogie boards.

A little snack and some snuggling fixed everything!

We also had to make a visit to our favorite ice cream place.  We tested the behind-the-counter girl's patience as we slowly made our choice from a board of 50 options.  We all went pretty classic, though flavors like cantalope, lavender, pina-colata, salted caramel, and s'mores were sampled or considered!

We did head back to Santa Cruz a second time.  The girls got to play on the obstacles that were left from an adventure race that was run the day before.

  

Then we tried out the neatest mini-golf course ever on the Boardwalk.  Delia called it "pirate golf" for all the cannons that kept going off and animated pirate guys.  We especially liked the 3 holes that were "underwater" and lit with black lights.

One last thing that made this little getaway really nice was the great hotel we stayed in.  It had gorgeous grounds and gardens and a great pool that the kids loved nestled in the middle of them.  Breakfast was included and we ate each morning outside by the waterfall and koi pond.

We are down to less than one week of summer left and most of those days are full of teacher inservice for me.  I think this time to relax on the beach and soak in 3 full days of quality time with each other was just what we all needed to bid farewell to another stellar summer and start our school year fully charged.

Whale of a Tale

I planned this trip with a very different vision than what we ended up experiencing.  I wanted a last summer vacation that had no hiking, no outings, no plans.  I wanted to just sit at either a beach or a pool for 3 days straight and rest up.  When the first beach we drove up to on the first day offered us this amazing treat of a lifetime, our plans kind of changed.

We were told to check out the Moss Landing State Beach because, if we were lucky, we could see the Humpback Whales that have been on an anchovy feeding frenzy there for the past 2 months.  The below map shows how the Soquel Canyon, where these gazillion anchovies swim around, has a long finger that reaches right to Moss Landing.  In fact, this deep, nutrient-rich canyon ends just 60 feet from the shore!  

We walked up and immediately saw tons of spouts on the horizon line.  About a dozen whale watching tour boats were trolling the area too.  The abundant spouts were cool enough to make us excited and plop down in the sand to keep watching.  Well, as we watched for the next several hours, we saw that the Humpbacks were EVERYWHERE in the water!  And they were close enough that we could watch them breaching, tail slapping, and lunge feeding with the naked eye (though the binoculars and camera zoom did make the viewing even cooler)!  The following pictures were taken from shore.  With my non-fancy little Cannon.  And with my hands trembling from the thrill of this incredible sight!

Humpbacks are baleen whales.  They don't have teeth.  They just scoop up their fish food by the ton and let the water sift back out.  One way the whales do this is by lunge feeding.  When they rise the font half of their bodies out of the ocean to eat fish on the surface, the water they just gulped runs out of these special gills under their mouths.  You can actually see it in the above 2 pictures.

The knowledge of this daily Whale Show changed my "lay in the sun on the beach and do nothing for 3 days" plan.  This beach was cold and because of the huge waves and currents, not safe to swim in.  We still made it to different beaches for a bit of play, but the majority of our time was spent here, watching the whales, with no regrets.  We've seen some cool stuff, but Dave and I totally agreed that this was the best wildlife sighting of our lives.

Oh yeah, besides whales at this beach, there were also millions of birds, hundreds of seals (happy to share the schools of anchovy the whales were herding), and huge rafts of sea otters in the estuary connected to this piece of shore.

A morning in Santa Cruz gave us more wildlife views.  We got up close and personal with the entertaining and noisy sea lions on the wharf, and we watched dolphins jumping around this cove for a long time.

Being in this area, the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, had Delia asking why we haven't gone to the aquarium in a while.  By the end of our vacation time we could tell her, "We don't need the aquarium!  Look at all the exciting ocean life you saw for free in just 3 days!!"

Pinecrest 2014

Once again, we leave our annual camping trip in Pinecrest tired and dirty, but full of good memories and already with anticipation for next summer's adventure.  This year we had a wonderful, huge camp site with, oddly, 4 empty sites around us-- unheard of at super-popular Pinecrest!  This means our nights were quiet and we had lots of space to spread out.  So, here are a few glimpses of life around the camp this summer...

Playing card games by lantern light.

Tent snuggles.

Dave, campfire chef extraordinaire!

The girls making their own little house with a kitchen in the clump of trees that was on our site.  Totally remember playing this as a kid myself!

Family Frisbee game.

Giving huge thumbs up to a new discovery this year-- REECES PEANUT BUTTER CUP S'MORES!!

And here are some of the activities that filled our time...

On our first night we went to a Park Ranger presentation about bats.  It was really interesting!  The girls liked seeing some of the rescued bats up close in their box ("Awww, they're SO CUTE!!" Delia declared).  Dave and I loved when the presenter turned on her high-frequency noise detector at sunset and we could hear all the bats in the area come out and start echo-locating!

Last summer we discovered this nearby pack station that let you lead their horses around the trails for just $10!  This was such a highlight of our camping trip last year, we had to return.

Ella rode Petey, who was fiesty and not all that interested in obeying Dave tugging at his halter.  Delia rode Gretel, who was sweet and gentle.

This is such a lovely morning!  As we let the horses graze around this beautiful wild-flower pasture for half the time, I think it's as much a treat for them as us!

After lunch we headed down to the beach for a few hours.  When it comes to Pinecrest, we take whatever reservation we can get, but I am realizing that end of July is the ideal time to go.  We don't freeze at night and the lake is warm enough to get in and swim for long periods of time.

After kayaking on Lake Mary at Mammoth, Dave and I were excited to rent some double kayaks again.  Alas, we were outvoted by the younger half of the family and the paddle boat it was, once again!

No complaints, though!  The day couldn't have been prettier for a peaceful paddle boat ride and that mountain scenery we always enjoy at Pinecrest was only enhanced by all the colorful sailboats out on the water.

The nice thing about the paddle boat is that the kids are pumped to help paddle it.  I enjoyed plenty of time with my legs trailing off the back!

When our hour was up and it was time to get the boat back to the dock, the girls were oh-so-helpful kicking off the back, allowing us to get some "real speed"!

The last notable thing we did during this year's camping trip was pay a visit to the geocache we hid last summer.  We have gotten SO much pleasure out of this!  Each time a family finds it and takes the time to register their finding on the geocache website, we get an email.  And we've gotten tons of emails!  People have left nice comments like, "This was my young son's first geocache and he found it all by himself!" or "Thank you for leading us to the beautiful meadow, we would have never hiked this way otherwise!"  Not everyone registers, so along with the emails we've been getting all year, it was super fun to read the pages and pages of names and dates from all over our state that people signed and left inside the small container-- many of them kids and some including artwork.  This is exactly what we had in mind when we put this geocache into play last summer: it being easy enough for kids to find and scenic enough to give families a small hiking activity to participate in together.

Sure the sleep is not perfect, so the sibling squabbles are inevitable.  And sure, living in that dirt starts driving me crazy around Day 3.  But, our camping trips have always been a real high point of summer and, especially as the kids get older, these trips do seem to just keep getting better and better!