Exploring the Coast - Monterey and Point Lobos

  On Sundays we like to just do some exploring around the town.  This last Sunday we ended up in Monterey.  It was really windy and cold, but we checked out some shops and took some good pictures.  Seth loves to take pictures.  I take a few every once in a while, but he is much better at it. 

Seth got a shot of me checkin' out a toy shark 

That is the pier, with all the fancy restaurants

We are going to make big bucks someday doing advertising for Oakley... this is just a practice shot

     Then on Monday for F.H.E. we decided to check out Point Lobos State Reserve.  We both had a BLAST walking around the trails... maybe straying from a few trails... and checkin' the place out.  We had a little mishap with some seals, details later.  But we ended up staying there a lot longer than we had planned on. 

If I was a Vampire, this would be my vampire pose (we just watched Twilight)

Seth crawled into this little cave and I took the picture, problem was we had to get in and get out before the tide came back in... a little sketchy but we got the shot

     Okay... here is how the story goes.  If you look at the picture above, you can see a dark shadow between the rocks on the right side.  When I was standing up on the rocks where Seth  took the picture above I noticed that there were either some logs or some seals in a cave over by that shadow.  So naturally we decided it would be a great idea to run over and check it out.  And oh boy did we hit the jack pot.  We had to climb up rocks and while avoiding the waves and then when we looked into the cave there were about 20 seals laying in there! Seth saw them first and tried to get some pictures, but then the seals must have seen or heard both of us because then they started to yelp and all of them made a run for it.  We didn't mean to disturb them, but they were pretty mad at us.  Once they were safe in the water they all just stared.  It was so cool to see though.

Over on a different part of the point we tried commanding the waves

San Jose Sharks

     For my birthday present, Seth got two tickets to see the San Jose Sharks.  We could have gone to a game on my actual birthday but he decided to wait until we moved to the coast again to go to a game.  So last weekend we drove up to San Jose for the big hockey game.  The game was intense!  Everyone at the arena was quiet, watching the puck, and if you leaned too far forward you got yelled at (didn't happen to us though).  Lets just say that all the fans here are super fans.  We felt very out of place because we didn't have a Sharks jersey and everyone else had the jersey, the beanie, the gloves, the scarf, the face paint, even the hair color to represent their team.  I guess the Sharks are doing really well and all the games have been sell-outs this season.  It was such a fun game, even though we didn't quite fit in.  The Sharks played against the Phoenix Coyotes and won 3-2.  It was such a great birthday present!

Pacific Grove

     We have moved once again.  This time we are living in a house in Pacific Grove, which is in the Monterey Bay area and next to all the richy rich golf courses like Pebble Beach and Spanish Bay.  We love it here because we are so close to the water and it reminds us of home.  There are seals and birds all over the beach and tons of tourists.  Just yesterday we rode our bikes down to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Cannery Row.  

     Which reminds me... we recently made the best purchase ever.  It was like love at first site.  We bought a Kona muni-mula hard tail (its aluminum spalled backwards) from a lady who used to race for Kona! It has mainly the Shimano components, a RockShox fork and it fits perfectly.  I'm thinking of upgrading to front disk brakes pretty soon.  So now I can cruise around town and ride all day long.  And since Seth already has a bike back at home but we still wanted to get him one so we could go riding together, we bought a bike for $15 off Craigslist for him.   It works most of the time, but thats what you get for 15 bucks.

The beach at Pacific Grove... so many seals

It was super windy and super cold... I have three jackets on

Seth rode down to the beach to show Tyler the view... we think this picture is so funny

This is a memorial dedicated to all grandpas and since we love our grandpa very much we had to take a quick pic

Birthday Celebrations = State Park Exploring

     This last weekend was my birthday (3/14) and so we did some more exploring.  The morning started out with homemade wheat pancakes (provided by Grandpa) and Seth gave me a beautiful bouquet of flowers and hockey tickets to see the San Jose Sharks!  Seth and I also bought a new camera, a professional SLR by Sony.  We were really excited to try it out and wanted to take it exploring with us.  So we drove to Yosemite National Park and hiked up the trail to the lookout point.  We wanted to hike all the way to the top of the falls, but once we got to the halfway mark we discovered that the rest of the trail was covered in snow and was a much much steeper climb... since we were just in jeans and tennis shoes we decided against it, but next time we won't wimp out.  It was the best birthday.

We were lucky enough to see a little linx chasing a squirrel

This bird was so cool and Seth was able to get really close to it before it flew away

We met a guy from Germany who took this picture, behind us is the upper half of Yosemite Falls

There were so many spots to rock climb along the trail, we HAD to stop a try out a few... and Seth just HAD to get creative with the camera

This is a shot of Bridalveil Falls, its a smaller waterfall that you see when entering the park

    This next park that we decided to visit is called Big Tree National Park.  It is only a 20 minute drive away from where we live.  So on Sunday we drove up after church and since it was such a warm sunny day in Angels Camp we were wearing our shorts and t-shirts... we had no idea that there would be snow at Big Tree Park! So we decided to get out and take a few pics, but after about 15 minutes we got cold and decided to head back.

This is the Centennial Tree; its actually not THAT tall, but it sure is wide