Beachcombing, March 22-24

Patrick's Point State Beach in California and Harris Beach State Park in Oregon. Beautiful coastline, awesome tidal pools.

San Francisco!

We drove to our park by way of the Golden Gate Bridge. The next day we all took the ferry into Fisherman's Wharf, getting a great view of the city.

At Pier 39 we watched the sea lions lounging, fighting and swimming around the wharves.
We watched San Francisco bread being made, ate chowder out of bread bowls, rode the cable cars hanging off the outside of them, bought candy, drank Irish coffees and walked around China Town.

Elephant Seals at Ano Neuvo, California

With our New Zealand friends we enjoyed a great afternoon on a ranger-led walk to see the elephant seals. What a great experience! We got very close to these wonderful creatures as they lazed in the sun. Most of the mothers had already left their giant 2-3 month old babies, going back out to sea. The big babies still called for their moms making the girls and I go 'awww!' The babies are about 75 lbs when born and grow to 250-300lbs by the time they're 3 months old. A few males still hung around in the hopes they may still get a date. Apparently the males are much smaller than they were in January, before they had all their fighting over the ladies.

Monteray Bay Aquarium and Turkeys.

This aquarium was awesome! We had a great time here, even seeing wild seals and otters in the bay off the aquarium balcony. We got to watch otters being fed, saw microscopic sea life on a big screen, attended a talk on jelly fish, and loved the touch tanks.

The turkeys? They were wild and were in our campsite at Coyote Lake county park. Very entertaining birds, even giving our girls an 'education'. Yikes.

Sequoia National Park, California

On March 13 we had a beautiful and difficult drive 7000 feet up into the mountains and were rewarded with the giant trees. I was here as a kid but the roads were too slippery then and we never made it to the General Sherman, the largest living tree in the world. Thanks to Kevin's expert driving I finally got to see it! The girls loved the snow that was over our heads in some spots.

The General Sherman is 275 feet tall and is 103 feet around at the base, we could park our motorhome inside it. It is estimated to be 2,200 years old and grows enough new wood every year to make a 60 foot tall tree. One tree species lives longer, one is wider, and three grow taller including the redwood, but the sequoia is the largest in volume of total wood. Impressive!

The Pacific Ocean March 8-10

We travelled to the coast with our New Zealanders and put our feet in the Pacific ocean. It felt like a victory for all of us, making it across the continent from one ocean to another.
The next day our friends went off to see the sights in San Diego while we worked our way up the coast We found a beautiful beach to park on and watched dolphins and seals just off our beach.

California! March 6-8

Finally we've reached the west coast.
We spent our first 2 nights in California with our New Zealand friends camping in the desert. We had so much fun here, the kids could run and be as noisy as they liked, and so could we! We set of fire crackers and watched the dune buggys and dirt bikes race around (from a distance). The stars at night were awesome.