Either Paradise or The Set for a Horror Film?!

We made it about 200 miles down Baja to an agricultural valley called San Quintin. Our hotel is lovely: tile floors, fountain in the large foyer, and we are about the only ones here! There must be over a hundred empty rooms. The beach too is empty for miles, except for us, and the hundreds of sand dollars dotting it.

We passed fields of prickly pear cactus on our way down, which must be one of their agricultual crops, as well as acres of grape vinyards. The landscape is much like central CA.

Liam is Blogging Here!

a day at the besh

Hasta Luego

After a fun day with Chris, Tui , Nicole and Nathan we're off to Mexico. I am looking forward to riding in the passenger seat, and getting a really good look around now that Bob is here. After raining most of yesturday today has a beautiful clear, clean look to it. The sky doesn't have even a whisper of a cloud. I'm not sure how connected Baja is to the internet. So, this may be our last post for a while.

White Knuckle Driving in LA

We made it. We're about 10 miles from the border in San Diego, and have driven virtually the whole of our country's beautiful and ever changing coast. The driving has been generally easy; and for much of the trip in Oregon and Northern California we shared the road with just a few other cars. Ahhh, but then we hit the LA freeways. Oh My God! It's terrifying. Anything less than 70, and you become a menace to the road. Cars weave around the freeway going 80-85 MPH. Crazy! I wonder what the per capita car accident rate is in Southern CA. Anyways, we are here at Chris's with our bodies intact. Bob arrives today, and then it's off to Mexico tomorrow.

A DAY WITH THE BABIES.

We had an exellent day at Tim's house. We saw Sydney and Cameron they were so adorable. We got to hold them. I was very excited to see them .I was so glad when Melissa let me help her with the babies. I had the job of filling out the log. I filled out the log for : how much milk the babies drank from the bottle, how long the babies played and what they played. It was an exellent day with the babies!

An OK Day

Today we didn't do that much. We went to the beach in between sanfrancisco and santa cruze.Thats about it besides an arcade we went to in Santa Cruz. Even Lottie was bored.

We played in the sand at the beach. We really were fooling around. We kept falling off the sand wall. It was a little over my size. We wanted to stay there because it looked fun. I just used my pocket knife to make a house out of a Dibs box, and wanted to play with it in the sand.

Next stop was the arcade. we didn't do that much stuff at the arcade. We played a car game. I got damaged in the first game by slamming into walls. In the second round i got killed immediately by slamming into a wall, and falling into the sand, then the car blew up. i don't know how Liam got killed in the first game. liam's car got killed in the second game by falling off of a bridge and going into the sand. Then he blew up.

The End

Foiled, and Foiled Again

We travelled a good distance today; from Ukiah, CA to Paso Robles about 340 miles. I had hoped to take a nature walk out to see the elephant seals breeding at Ano Nuevo, North of Santa Cruz, but we needed to be accompanied by a naturalist, missed the 12:30 group, and waiting around until 3PM meant we might NEVER get to LA! Then I thought, OK, well, we'll ride the roller coaster on the board walk at Santa Cruz. But, the small amusement park doesn't seem to be open yet this season. DARN...! Maybe on the way back. There was a video arcade which the boys played in for 1/2 an hour. That may be the high point of this trip for Liam so far!

Santa Cruz is a very cute little town. I thought about Cindi Riffkin (is that her name?) And wondered if she is still around there.

Anyways we've arrived at warmer weather, and our hotel has a heated outdoor pool which I promised the boys we would try out tomorrow morning before we head off. We're only 200+ miles from LA, and should be seeing Tim and his family tomorrow.

Dad, Estamos estudiando espanol en las mananas en el carro. Tengo un CD con ejercicios para lost ninos.

Today's Adventures

We saw an exhibit for trees that are old and giant.THey are called Redwoods. And there were carvings of Paul Bunyan.

The Paul Bunyan exhibit was also an exhibit where you could see the sights, trees, and artwork carved out of the trees.

There was a family tree. It was actually one trunk, and 12 trees growing out of the branches! There was also a Brotherhood tree, and it was giant. There was an elephant tree. It was called that because the roots looked like elephant trunks. We drove through a giant redwood. It was lopsided and needed suspensiion cords to hold it up.

Crescent City is a long way from Seattle!

The Oregon coast is beautiful. The towns are sparse, and full of weathered clapboard houses that have seen better days. The town buildings are strung out along spits of land where rivers meet the ocean. I imagine the people who live there are/were either fishermen, or loggers. There are miles and miles of dense forest, as well as huge swaths of clear cut mountainsides. I was reminded today of Ken Kesey's book Sometimes a Great Notion. We also passed fields of red cranberry bogs, and alot of rolling green sheep country. All so lovely.

We are traveling slowly. It's hard to just drive by all of these amazing things without stopping. Tomorrow the Redwood Forest.

Stellar Sea Lion Facts

Sealions can make a low voice sound.

Sealions stay in the cave in the winter.

Sealions go and lay on the rocks in the summer to mate and have babies.

Sometimes sealions get into fights.

Sealions have back flipers so they can walk.

We saw 300 sealions!

It is the biggest sea cave in the United States.

Unfortunately we've had technical difficulties downloading amazing sound footage of the sea lions bellowing. It was VERY noisy in the caves. (Added by Mom)

Eugene, Oregon

We said good-bye to Bob at about 10 this morning. It took us 6 hours to get to Eugene; probably the max the boys can tolerate without a major break for a hike or something. Even with 2 short dog/kid run breaks, they started to complain about sweaty, hurting bottoms after 5 hours, which of course then degenerated into bathroom humor....

We're staying at a La Quinta hotel with a pool, and nice river walk right out the front door. Quite a nice first day. I'm glad to be off.

Mexico Here We Come

We're almost ready...

The dog has been vaccinated, put on heart worm medicine, and issued an international health certificate. The boys have their school assignments, and have started putting their carefully chosen toys in their individuals car boxes. We have books on CD, Spanish for families on CD, and a laptop the boys can watch movies on when I'm desperate for peace and quiet. Bob has his tickets to San Diego, and home from Loreto in March, and has been refusing even to consider driving to Oregon next Sunday and then bussing back to Seattle on Monday. Even the chance to see the sea lion caves in Florence, Oregon can not sway him.

So Sunday February 20th we're off on our great adventure.