This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Vacation Recap 2018, Part 2
Aug
15
2018
Continued from last week
We flew from Phoenix, AZ to San Jose, CA. It was a quick simple flight, but a little later at night. We arrived in the evening, got another rental Dodge minivan, and headed out to Santa Cruz. Since our hotel was to have a fridge, we stopped at the grocery store on the way. Probably about 9pm, so I stayed in the minivan with one sleeping kid and one not-wanting-to-walk-around kid while the others went shopping for the next couple days worth of snacks and lunches. I’m sure I stood out as a non-local, because I was not driving those hilly curvy roads as fast as the other vehicles.
We checked into the Seaway Inn around 10pm. On the plus side, their front office is open 24/7 so check-in was not a problem. On the minus side, they have a small parking lot, so we had to unload and then I had to park around the corner.
In the morning, I took the younger two kids down to breakfast. We were there just after they opened, because we weren’t quite on Pacific time yet. We then went back up to our room, told the others we were going to the ocean, and left.
This is the view from our window: across the street was another hotel, and beyond that hotel was the ocean.
Here are the kids playing at the ocean. It was surprising how fishy it smelled. We are used to the Great Lakes, with no smell and no salt. But the ocean did have much more impressive seaweed.
The others came met us at the ocean a bit later. We then walked to the boardwalk, which is probably the main draw of Santa Cruz. Not many other people were up and about at that time – the one exception was the homeless people. The boardwalk was quiet, since it wasn’t open, so we just walked down halfway then back to the hotel.
The boys were happy to see that the hotel breakfast was still open, so they all grabbed a second breakfast. Then we started packing. The kids were a bit rambunctious, possibly because the extra food energized them or possibly because they were in California for the first time or possibly because they were just being kids. There was some jumping on the bed, some jumping on the floor, and some running around.
The problem with this was that our room was directly above the front office.
Sure enough, the phone rang. “Hello, this is So-and-so at the front desk and we are hearing a lot of noise from your room. Is everything alright?” To which I replied “Yes, we are just packing up.” And then the kids were reminded not to make so much noise. But pretty soon we were packed and then we had to make some noise getting 12 bags down the stairs.
Our drive that day was to Monterey (south of Santa Cruz) via Big Basin Redwoods State Park (north of Santa Cruz). We got out of Santa Cruz and made it to the park with no problems. The redwoods were impressive.
Even more impressive was that the redwoods are hollow all the way up.
We ate our picnic lunch there at the park at some amphitheater-like area.
Then we checked out the gift shop, then piled back in the van for the drive to the next city.
To Be Continued…
Now on the first day you shall take for yourselves the foliage of beautiful trees, palm branches and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days.
Leviticus 23:40
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 6:47 am and has been carefully placed in the Travel category.
