Check back tomorrow! I’m planning to upload photos of 17 mile drive, a scenic route that hugs the coast from Pacific Grove to Carmel! Or maybe I’ll do the seal pup photos next…

The post 42 Beautiful Photos of Monterey, California appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

We’re having Field Trip Week at Pacific Christian School.

See, Alan is out on Fall break, so the timing is perfect for maximum family fun.

First, let me tell you about Abalonetti! This place has an exciting local’s menu, food that every single one of my children like (as in yes, they have pizza), and delicious sea food.

I’m the kind of person that picks a favorite restaurant and then stops going to all other places. I have now picked my place. Every time I get to eat out in Monterey, this is where I will be.

But you didn’t come here to read about where to find the best calamari, so let me show you what else we’ve found.

We had the sweetest family evening. After eating at Abalonetti, we walked around the wharf gawking at seals and sea lions. John David was so delighted with it all. I didn’t think we’d get him home without a struggle. However, we managed to just stand around and soak it in long enough to satisfy even J.D.

It is a pet peeve of mine for people to call seals “sea lions,” and vice versa, so let’s review:

The plain brown ones with long flippers and ear flaps are sea lions.

The multi-colored (mostly gray) ones with short flippers and no ear flaps are harbor seals.

Now that we have that settled, I have so much more to show you!

JD was so cute about it. One seal popped up, and he pointed and said, “Mama”, then he pointed at the next one and said, “Daddy”, and then the next one, “Baby.”

Now onto our day at sea! This was a different day, and we left the two small boys with Nonna.

Monterey Bay is eaten up with humpback whales right now. I’ve never seen so many in one place. Everywhere we would turn around, there was another couple of whales either nearby or in the distance. We probably saw 20 different humpbacks.

We boarded in Monterey, but then we had to ride the boat 45 minutes (ish) to the water off Moss Landing, where all the whales are.

There was a mega-pod of long-beaked common dolphins out in force, and watching them made my day. I have never seen so many dolphins at one time, literally over 100.

Good-bye dear Pacific!! In the spring, Daniel will turn five, and we will be back out there for another ride.

The post A Day at Sea with the Dolphins and the Whales appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Can you guess who is coming to visit us?

As soon as I get back from my Alabama and Florida trip, we have company arriving!!  We LOVE hosting our friends and taking them sight-seeing. When we lived in DC, we hosted about 7 families/year. California is so far off from most of our friends and family that this happens a lot less.

We are all so pumped to have friends come! Joshua has a countdown going.

There are endless things to do, right here within two hours of my house. That’s what I’m going to focus on here. For everyone who wants to come visit, allow me to give you some excursion suggestions. Then you can pick and plan which activities you’d like to do!

So without further ado:

*All blue words will take you to blog posts that I wrote, complete with photos, on that topic.

Point Lobos

1. Point Lobos Wildlife Reserve

This one is non-negotiable. I have a state park pass, so if you come visit, we will definitely take you to this beautiful place.

What to do here:

hiking, bird watching, spotting seals and sea lions, climbing rocks, getting wet if you want, and looking for crabs

Posts I’ve written about Point Lobos:

I love Point Lobos State Park!

Sea Lions vs Harbor Seals: I finally figured out the difference.

“A World Without Friends, I Don’t Think I Could Bear It”

So we took away the video games and computer fun again.  REALLY GREAT PHOTOS on that one.

Obviously, We heart Point Lobos.

I took so many pictures of these cardboard people in the fields. I’ve only seen that in California.

I love that I took all these pictures of The Farm, as we drove into California a year ago. In fact, it’s a family run farm. As it turned out, one member of that family was Joshua’s tutor this year. The part of California that I live in is highly agricultural. Not only is it part of wine country, it’s also The Salad Bowl of the U.S.

San Francisco

2. San Francisco

You really can’t talk about this area without it. It’s a beautiful, clean city, full of amazing hills. Our friends that are visiting us in July have family there, so we won’t get to show them San Fran, but here are a few posts I wrote about it.

No more desert pictures. I promise.

Thank you. Merry Christmas. Excuse Me. I’m sorry. (our flight through San Fran)

A God We Can Depend On

Be a friend to your environment. Ride the cable car.

San Francisco

I know they aren’t known for their churches, but I thought this one was beautiful.

sea lion

3. Monterey

Monterey has so much to do, it’s ridiculous. We will do a ton of it. I promise.

Monterey Bay

Moss Landing

Monterey Bay stretches from Monterey all the way up to Santa Cruz. We’ll talk more about Santa Cruz in a minute.

Moss Landing is amazing because the water is a sea otter haven, and whales are often spotted there, even from the beach.

Moss Landing

Sometimes the beach is very COLD.

whale tour in Monterey Bay

You can take a whale watching tour boat from any of the wharfs on the bay. We loved ours and highly recommend it. Children must be at least 5 years old. We saw tons of sea lions and humpback whales, and I felt good about calling that a field trip!

My parents even saw killer whales on their tour!

sea otter in Monterey Bay

spotting humpback whales in Monterey Bay

sea lions everywhere!

Monterey

If we’re lucky, maybe the lady that sells turns in the bubbles will be out!

Monterey

There are excellent climbing trees all over the place! Just look out for poison oak!

The grass is green in the late fall and winter. It’s all dead and brown in the summer.

Beautiful beaches everywhere you look!

So, in Monterey, you have all of this:

Beaches

Whale watching tours

kayaking

more kayaking

Walking paths

Daniel, at Cannery Row

Cannery Row, full of shops and restaurants

Fisherman’s Wharf, lots of restaurants, a fair-like atmosphere, and well…homeless people. : /

There are museums, but I haven’t made it to any of them yet!

But best of all….is….

We love this place.

4. Monterey Aquarium (Click on it for my blog post on the aquarium.)

On our first visit, we didn’t give it enough time. We spent 3 and a half hours there the second time. There is so much to see. This one ranks right up there with Point Lobos.

Big Sur

5. Big Sur

This stretch of highway goes on for an hour. It’s a beautiful meeting of ocean and mountains. There are gobs of places to stop and take photos, as well as several state parks to go hiking in.

Carmel by the Sea, a name that comes from the Bible actually

6. Carmel by the Sea

This little town is beautiful, and it has great beaches, shopping, and food too.

7. Santa Cruz

There’s a boardwalk!!!  I haven’t gone to it yet, but it has the whole amusement park thing going on, and if you are interested, it’d be a fun first for us too!

Redwoods!

8. Also in Santa Cruz: Henry Cowell State Park: You have to go there and see the big Redwood trees!

Henry Cowell with Kids

9. Other ideas:

There’s a great outlet mall nearby that I still haven’t made it to, and there are several of those wine tour places. If you want to visit one, I could ask around about that.

Also, if Sean wants to get his camp on, we know some camping spots too! Of course, you know I don’t camp.

Yes, there are 2 Calebs and 2 Joshuas in this photo at Fisherman’s Wharf. Pretty weird, huh?

We also offer lots of trampoline time and silliness! 😉 Can’t wait!

The post Visiting Northern California, Our ‘Neck of the Woods appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

This boy loved being in a bubble.

Alan and I herded all the boys together and ventured over to Monterey this past weekend.

The boys said things like this:

“I don’t want to go.”

“Can’t we just stay home?”

Until we got there. Once we got there, they had a ball and didn’t want to leave. In fact, Joshua developed a sudden interest in film production. He made movie after movie and “News Story” after news story.

Sorry, I am under strict gag orders to not share his movie on the blog. 🙁

He also decided not to release his movie in theatres. We asked him what he was naming his movie. He replied, “Hmmm I’ll have to think about that.”

Alan suggested, “How about The Best Movie Ever!?”

Joshua said, “What! NO! Why would we name it that? It’s not even good.”

I got a good laugh out of that one.

It was such a pleasure just to stroll along Cannery Row, Fisherman’s Wharf, and the Monterey beaches with this adorable crew of little men.

Caleb took lots of pictures for us:

We spotted this sea otter, peacefully back-stroking around the boats.

Oops…okay this next photo isn’t from our walk. But I had to share it. Caleb has been “training” Daniel, in I don’t know what, in the garage. He awards his young apprentice with copious amounts of merit badges:

Caleb’s apprentice. Check out all those badges. Maybe I should find out what he’s been training him to do…  😉

Ahem….as I was saying. Monterey:

Joshua in a bubble.

As soon as we arrived, Caleb and Joshua spotted a vendor renting out play time in the bubbles. Boy, were they excited when Alan paid the money and they actually got to play in these things!

Yes, Alan just had to join in.

Joshua wasn’t a fan, so he got out and rolled Alan around.

still too young to play in the bubble

But they could still play with each other.

She’s the patron saint of fishermen, or something like that.

checking out all the boats

It was getting dark. Can you see the big ol’ harbor seal on the rock?

Caleb took several pictures of the pictures on the information podiums.

And you gotta hear this. Most adorable snoring ever! The boys and I got such a kick out of this!

You’ll have to click on the link to watch.

JDsnoring(Converted)smaller

The post A Sunset Walk in Monterey appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Yes, I was wearing two pairs of glasses. Contacts and sea water don’t mix.

First off, if you ever get to travel to California, GO TO Monterey Bay.

There is this huge canyon underwater, right off the coast. This thing is even bigger than the Grand Canyon, only it’s underwater. Monterey Bay is also a sea otter sanctuary, and when they say that, they aren’t kidding. You cannot hang out on the beach in Monterey Bay and not see some sort of sea mammal, with your naked eye. There are sea otters, harbor seals, and sea lions GALORE here.

See, Monterey Bay has a kelp forrest, and the sea otters live in it. They even sleep in it. When we were kayaking, we’d see their little noses, asleep, poking out of the water. I was so nervous I was going to not see one and whack it with my paddle. (Don’t worry. I didn’t.)

The quality of these photos isn’t great. We took them with Alan’s cell phone.  We did zoom in on these, so we weren’t as close as it appears in the photos…most of the time.

This one is my favorite. The sea otters are very social, so you find them in groups, or “rafts.” Did you know that these guys are one of the few animals in the world that use objects as tools? They will get a stone and use it as a tool to break open the shells of their yummy sea food.

The sea gulls know what good little fisher-otters they are, so they sometimes harass them for their scraps. We humans know how you feel, dear fuzzy little otters.

There are laws. We aren’t supposed to come within 100 feet of the wildlife. That’s impossible if you are on a kayak. They will come to you. If you sit still too long, they might even hop up and join you! No, that did not happen to us. I would have FREAKED out. I LOVE them, but I respect them.

Actually, I spent a whole lot of my kayaking adventure a little freaked out, and yet I loved it so much. It was thrilling. You are just paddling along, and suddenly *splash* up pops a seal, staring at you. There was one that I’m telling you, was definitely stalking us!

It’s hard to see it in this photo, but look closely in the middle, you might see a little nose poking out of the water. Actually, it’s more like a big face with the nose pointing up. Do you see it? Gray blob. In the middle. We saw several sleeping faces on our adventure.

Monterey also has this long rock wharf that sea lions LIVE on. We paddled over there to get a look, but being close to that many sea lions kind of scared me, and we paddled away.

I did feel like we were invading their privacy.

At one point, two of the sea otters began mating, an activity which took the pair almost all the way to the sand, with the mother sea otter’s previous baby following them all the way, screaming at the top of his lungs…It was all a little unsettling and embarrassing–a real life discovery channel special.

If getting this close doesn’t sound like something you want to do, but you would love to watch the otters and seals, I have another discovery to share: The Fish Hopper Restaurant in Monterey.  It has huge windows overlooking the bay. I saw sea otters, seals, and sea lions all while eating my clam chowder. So much fun!!!

Thank you, Alan, for taking me out to do this! I can’t wait to do it again!!

I love pelicans too!

We were stretching our necks up at each other. They seem to be just as interested in us as we are in them!

A few other photos of Monterey Bay:

My dad took this one. His cell phone camera is way better than Alan’s! Plus: no fog. There’s a fog that hangs around here off and on, every day, especially in the morning and evening.

Daniel and the cutest little wetsuit ever

Whales!

Ninja John David wishes you all a wonderful rest of the week:

I guess turtles are his favorite. Haven’t seen any of those around here yet…

Want to see more of beautiful Monterey? Try these posts:

Monterey: 42 Beautiful photos

Carmel: Photos of Carmel Valley & 17 Mile Drive

California: Our 1st 3 Weeks in California Photoblog

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