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.

My whole life I have heard of these trees and wanted to see them. I was stoked, a couple of weekends ago, when we finally got to go hiking among them!

There’s a state park in Santa Cruz called Henry Cowell State Park that has mega redwoods galore. Did you know that there would be even more of them in this area, but beginning in 1850, an estimated 95% of these sequoias were cut down?  It takes hundreds of years for them to become the size you can drive a car through, though. Those are found on the Avenue of the Giants, further to the north.

The redwoods in Santa Cruz were still enormous, so I feel like I can happily check that off my list.

There was one historical, and seriously gigantic, tree that we all climbed into and stood around inside. Apparently, there was an explorer who spent the night in said tree and wrote about it in a book. Caleb was so excited about getting to go inside a redwood. He kept trying to go into the tree with all the other hiking groups. He also kept asking to “be the one to hold the flashlight.” That boy has zero inhibitions whatsoever.

That was really neat, but it was super dark inside the tree, so I didn’t get any pictures of that one.

We could see the pure glee on Caleb’s face. These trees can be found from Monterey County on up into Oregon.

A sweet park tour guide saw our struggle to take photos and helped us out. After she took our picture, she talked to us for a while. Alan said to her, “Oh,you’ll like our boys’ names: Joshua, Caleb, Daniel, and John David!”

I was thinking, “Huh? Why in the world would she care about that?” Then I noticed that she was, indeed, wearing a menorah necklace. “Oh,” I thought, but I don’t really know if she appreciated that reference to her faith/heritage or not. She didn’t really make much reply to Alan’s comment, but she was extremely helpful. So thank you, tour guide!

Do you see all those bush -like trees growing off the base of the trunk? This is how the redwood trees reproduce.

Because of the strong bark of these trees, they can survive forrest fires and lightning!

This is my kind of man.

John David gets the award for “grumpiest hiker,” but then, does that really surprise anyone? Next time, we’ll take the jogging stroller.

This is a vertical panoramic shot of the candelabra tree, taken by Alan. It was much taller than it appears here.

JD *said (by crying)*, “My mama. My cup. Must reach past Daddy and get to my mama and my cup.”

What hiking with 4 little boys was really like:

It was fun, but it was work. That applies to pretty much everything we do, though. Hopefully, we’ll get to do this again soon. A stroller-friendly hiking trail is a rare find!

The park also has a Thomas the Train ride that goes around the perimeter. We were trying to avoid the hassle and expense of the train and food vendors. We wanted to just make it about hiking. That wasn’t easy.

We fielded quite a few “Aren’t we going to ride the train? Can we ride the train now?” questions. Why didn’t we? 1. We are….um…thrifty.  We didn’t even check to see how much the train costs.  #2. We didn’t have all the time in the world. Alan has enough homework to fill up the entire weekend and then some.

The kids handled the no train thing way better than I thought they would.

So that only left a couple of hitches.

The tour guide told us not to let the boys behind the fence because the poison oak leaves have fallen off and the woods are eaten up in it, so you can be standing in poison oak twigs and not know it. : ( She also told us not to let them sit on the fence because they have splinters that burn.

I guess I’m glad she told us because I would not have thought of splinters or poison oak. I’m not a big worrier. However, with those worries introduced, we were like the Caleb police.

To say Caleb has ants in his pants and a great sense of adventure is putting it lightly.

“Caleb! Don’t go behind the fence!”

“Caleb! Remember! Don’t go behind the fence!”

“Boys, don’t sit on the fence. Remember the splinters.”

The fence. The poison oak. The fence. The splinters. The poison oak. The train tracks.

There are also signs, letting you know that climbing the trees is prohibited.  So many rules.

“Caleb! No! They don’t want you to climb the trees here.”

“Yeah, I know, but he’s a grown up, and he isn’t supposed to either…..” or as the grown- man- that-was- trying- to- climb- the redwood’s friend said, “Yeah, but honey, he’s crazy.”

“Caleb, get down.”

“Don’t go behind the fence.”

“Alan, we’d better keep moving.”  Babies in backpacks cry less if you keep walking. This we know well.

The boys also tend to run way ahead of us, but we are pretty laid back and that doesn’t really bother us anymore. They stop periodically and wait for us to catch up.

At least if they were running ON the trail, that meant we didn’t have to remind Caleb to stay inside the fence.

Poor kid. He’s just not a beaten path kind of guy.

Lesson of the day: If you take a Caleb-type person to Henry Cowell, make sure they wear pants. 🙂 And no, none of us got poison oak.

Did we all love seeing the redwoods at Henry Cowell State Park?

Yes!!!! We loved it so much. When Alan’s parents came to visit us, we took them to Henry Cowell. Then when my parents came to town, we told them about it. They rented a car and went and saw it and took Daniel with them.

For all of our other trips, we did ride the train. It is a good long ride, and you learn a lot too! We also sometimes would walk around and try the food they have. The train stop has other activities going on around there at peak tourist times.

If you are taking a NoCal road trip, squeeze in Henry Cowell, especially if you don’t have time to go up and see the sequoias.

This is only an hour from Monterey, and it is one of my absolute favorite things we did during our time here. I cannot recommend it highly enough, and don’t worry. Caleb was calmer the second time. They were all happy to get to ride the train!

The post See the Redwoods at Henry Cowell State Park appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

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“I can’t sleep. I’m just so excited about Granddaddy and Nana!”

You might say this was a really big deal! Here is their visit, according to Granddaddy’s phone. Dad let me email myself all the pictures I wanted. Thanks, Dad!!  🙂

Alan took the boys wet suit shopping. Oh my goodness. Have you ever put on a wetsuit? Well, let me tell ya, it’s like putting on full body panty-hose–not an easy accomplishment for little boys! Caleb was having none of it, so we settled for a spring surfer suit.

He didn’t last in the water for as long as the rest of us, but it was thick enough to let him play for a little while. The boys keep calling it their “safety suit.” We finally had to explain that it isn’t exactly a safety suit, lest they develop some sort of false security in their suit. You never know what a little one might believe will make him invincible!!

Now this is Big Sur. Endless miles of land that look like this.

Believe it or not, Daniel was standing INSIDE of a redwood tree. yep.

The wetsuits in action–By the end of the day, Joshua was in up to his neck too. These suits really amazed me. The arms/legs are thinner than the body part. For the body part, you literally cannot even tell you’re getting wet. We can swim all year!

Daniel was sort of a beach sensation, looking so adorable in his little bitty wet suit.

“Mom, you’re so big. To be as deep as me, you need to go further out.”

“No, thanks, Joshua. I do not actually want to swim WITH the seals and the sea lions–kind of freaks me out a little bit.”

This whole area also has a large homelessness problem.

Granted, this is by FAR the most expensive place we’ve ever lived, and we lived in Washington, DC. What makes it so expensive? We’re not just talking real estate. These people hand taxes out like Halloween candy. Our renter’s insurance went up. Car insurance went up for both vehicles. Our gas–oh my goodness the gasoline–the whole state voted itself a tax increase on gasoline.

Oh! Milk seems to have gone down a little, though! That’s a big deal with four children.

For a second I thought, “Ha ha, they won’t get us with that gasoline tax. Alan rides his bike to work, and I’m working at home.”

….Then I realized that that’s exactly what they’re trying to accomplish. Ugh. I did not stick it to the man. Haaaa!

Ya’ll. Not even kidding–I got a mail-out from a local politician that went on and on and on about all the taxes he supports. He supports more sales tax, more property tax, etc. etc.

You can’t make this stuff up. Now anywhere else, they might support the tax hikes, but they’d keep that on the down-low–not brag about it.

So if there is any culture shock, it’s that which is hitting my wallet.

Oh, also they charge you a quarter for plastic bags. But let me tell you. Once you move here, you totally get why they’re so serious about protecting the environment and the ocean. I’d be pretty ticked at anyone that messed this up too. I have no problem at all with the re-use- your- bag movement.

Now wait a minute. Where was I going with all that? I had a point. I said all this to tell a humorous quote from my parents.

Mom mentioned all the beggars–really there are so many–and she said, “One of them had a sign that said,’Not even going to lie. Need money for beer.”

Dad cut in, “So I gave him a dollar!”

heeeeheehhehe Well, we do all appreciate a little honesty.

We had a great visit with my parents. They had never been to California before. Visiting places this new and different from the South is exciting.

We are adjusting well to our gorgeous new environment, even if we do have a little California culture shock.

The post The Truth About Moving to California & Culture Shock appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.