Trip Up the Coast

At the beginning of November, we hopped in the car and took a trip up the California Coast. We had such a great adventure. There was no planning or real schedule involved. We just went with 3 kids and a minivan full of junk. After 5 days of lots of driving, sleeping in different places every night and seeing lots of beautiful things and reconnecting with relatives, we joyfully returned to home sweet home. During our 5 day journey we went to Hearst castle, we saw all the elephant seals that migrated to the coast (the kids loved seeing them so up close), we drove through beautiful Big Sur, went on coastal nature hikes in Point Lobos Park, went to Carmel and Monterey, went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, drove along beautiful 17 mile drive in Pebble Beach, went on a train ride through the redwood forests (the kids loved riding on a real steam engine train), went to Santa Cruz and then passed through San Francisco to give my aunt and uncle in Upper Lake a surprise visit. We had a great visit with them and then headed back down toward Santa Rosa to visit with another aunt and uncle. Kolby loved their house with their huge toy room and real John Deere tractor that he got to drive around the property. It was so much fun for all of us. While in the quaint town of Windsor we stopped in "the" sweet shoppe of all sweet shoppes. It reminded me of something out of Willy Wonka...they had every kind of sweet that you could ever imagine. Not only were the kids in heaven, but I was too. Luckily we exercised some control and only shared a gelato. It was a great trip!