Monday, July 8, 2013

Family Trip - Day 2

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On Friday, July 5th, we headed out for our second day of adventures!  As I mentioned last post, Violet didn't sleep much the night before, so we were relieved when she went right to sleep as soon as we buckled her into her car seat that morning.  She slept for about an hour while I navigated some pretty scary hairpin turns on the craziest part of the PCH that we encountered on our trip.

After about an hour of driving, we got to Bixby Bridge!  It is beautiful, but you really just get out of the car and take a picture, and then there isn't really anything left to do but get back in the car.  We knew it was going to be a quick stop to just stretch our legs, so we weren't disappointed.
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We went a little crazy with the panorama setting on our camera on the second day of the trip, so I'll try to only post the best of those :)

Our next stop was at Point Lobos, and it was probably my favorite place we saw the whole trip!  It is a big nature preserve where wildlife is abundant.  We hiked about a mile in to get to "Sea-lion cove".  The sea-lions were too far out to see well, but the seals were really close!  They are on that rock behind Violet and I in the next picture.  We continued to hike down, and ended up on that little gray beach you see on the right.
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Violet is thrilled to be getting her picture taken with me, as usual.

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We didn't take any pictures of the next place we stopped: Carmel-by-the-sea.  It is just a really quaint, touristy town, with lots of antique stores and pricey boutiques.  We ate at a landmark restaurant there called Katy's Place.  It was delicious, and their specialty was breakfast-all-day, so of course Glenn was thrilled!  Ironically though, he ended up getting a hamburger, and I got biscuits and gravy.

We made it to our hotel on the Monterey Peninsula by 3 o'clock that afternoon.  No nap for Violet again, but we did get to explore the peninsula that afternoon.  This lighthouse is one of the main attractions there, but I guess it closes at 4, so it was all gated in once we walked over there.  But we took a picture with it anyway...

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If there is a beach, Violet can entertain herself, so of course we spent a little more time on the beach that afternoon.
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I just can't tell you how relieved I was when Violet went to bed that night at 7:30.  And then I was even more relieved when she slept all the way til 6:30.  She was like a different person the next day, with a good night's rest behind her.

And if I had to guess, I would say that Violet's favorite thing she saw on this whole trip was probably this dolphin statue in the hallway outside our hotel room:
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9 comments:

  1. fuuuuun. jacob and i did a similar trip last summer. that area is so so beautiful.

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  2. Even though it is sad that Violet doesn't like taking pictures with you, it still makes me laugh. Also, this vacation sounds really fun.

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    1. It was! You and Judson should do it sometime before you have kids! It was fun with Violet, but it also would have been fun to just take as long as we wanted at every place.

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  3. I know you had talked about taking a trip several times, so I'm glad you did it! IT looks like it was fun.....As a side note, I still hear about Violet and AFton quite a bit! SAD!!

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  4. Up the PCH is where Jackie and I went on our honeymoon. We started at Newport beach and drove the same up to San Simon. we toured the Hearst Castle and then drove up to Carmel and into San Fransciso. Your pictures bring back fond memories of that trip 28 years ago.

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  5. I should have proof read my last comment BEFORE I posted it. "drove the same way up to San Simeon...into San Francisco".

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  6. SO cool. Lobos looks beautiful!

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    1. I think it is only a couple hours from you guys, so you should take a trip there sometime! The hiking is easy and beautiful. We felt like we could have spent a whole day there.

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