Our second full day in California started bright and early, at the crack of dawn you could say. Since we were all sharing a room, once one person started rustling around, the rest of us woke up. In normal life, Zac and I stay up 2-3 hours after the kids go to bed, and on weekends the kids get up two hours before we do. But on this trip we went to bed with the kids and woke with the kids. This system worked well for the trip since we got going for the day sooner and had more time for all our adventures, and there wasn't anything to do after dark anyway. On this particular day, we woke up at 6:30 am and got to enjoy beautiful morning views of the Santa Cruz beach right from our hotel room balcony.
Once we all had some food, we headed out for a morning walk on the wharf. Alice and I wanted to show Zac and Simon the seals we'd discovered last night. Sure enough, they were sunning themselves under the pier and on the remnants of old docks.
On our way back to our room, we noticed that the restaurant right outside our hotel was open for breakfast. We decided it would be fun to eat outside while watching the beach community come to life. Unfortunately, the kids didn't care for their ham and egg croissants that looked like giant sea shells with the ham and cheese baked inside. Zac and I shared a breakfast burrito and tried to help the kids finish their food. So far, eating out with the kids wasn't going very well. For our supper yesterday, Alice ordered a bacon cheeseburger but then didn't want it because it came with mustard on it, so I had to eat it (yuck) and traded her my nice healthy chicken salad pita. Anyway, it was a struggle for them as food that sounded good on the menu turned out to be quite different in reality.
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After second breakfast, we packed up and drove to the nearby UC Santa Cruz Arboretum and Botanic Garden. It was filled with really cool flowers and trees, but the kids struggled. They don't really like to just look at things -- they want to climb and trample. Having to stay on paths and not being able to climb trees is torture for them, which means they torture us with their whining as we constantly reprimand them to get out of the tree, stay on the path, stop picking things.... We ended up walking around fairly quickly, and then eating our lunch sandwiches under a tree at like 10:30 am.
Our next stop was nearby Natural Bridges State Park Beach. Now this was more like it. The kids could climb, run around, and play as they pleased. The rocky ledge had tide pools with creatures for Simon to find, the beach had sand for the kids to dig in, and the ocean had water for Alice to run in. Zac and I explored a bit, but mostly just sat around relaxing and enjoying the scenery.
Around 2 pm we needed to head out. Today was a big driving day, 3.5 hours along the scenic coastal highway 1, but first we needed to get gas and more groceries, since our next destination was rather remote. So this part of the story is about how time got away from us. Somehow the gas and groceries took longer than expected (I couldn't find the fruit snacks in the grocery store and kept circling around determined not to be defeated. Turns out they were with the breakfast cereal. Then the checkout line took forever...)
We were finally on our way, and I started trying to figure out where we could get supper. The plan was simple: stop to pick up Chinese take-out at the last real town, about an hour into the drive. Choosing restaurants was a surprisingly difficult task as I toggled between maps and Yelp reviews on my phone, trying to figure out locations and prices and food the kids would actually eat. The restaurant I finally selected, called Tommy's Wok, ended up being tucked away in a trendy part of a trendy town called Carmel-by-Sea, just past Monterey. We had trouble finding the restaurant, and the street parking was limited and full, so we finally pulled into a bank parking lot, exasperated, only to find the door to the restaurant magically right there at the back of the parking lot. I used the restroom, picked up the food I had called in, and jumped back in the car and we zipped off to nearby Point Lobos State Natural Reserve to eat our supper at a picnic table.
Point Lobos turned out to be stunningly beautiful. We could have spent a day or two exploring the entire park, but alas, we just had time to eat our Chinese food and do a quick hike up to look at the incredible views of giant waves smashing into giant rocks.
