California, Winter 2001
We decided to visit my mother in California just after Christmas. Tired of driving 3 days to get anywhere, I decided to splurge and fly the family from Denver to California. This is the first time any of the kids have ever been on a plane, so I was hoping it would be a good experience for them. As luck would have it, the plane for the flight was a 747, and even better yet we were bumped up to Business Class, which on this plane is equal to First Class on most airlines. The flight was great and a wonderful first experience for the kids. We landed in San Francisco late at night, and the drive to Aptos was a long one. It was rainy and foggy, and we go to SeaScape Resort around 1:30 at night.
The Resort
Before I get to our day to day activities, a little bit about SeaScape Resorts. Hunting for a place to stay whenever we travel is always a little difficult, since there is always at least 6 of us and sometimes 7. For most standard hotels this means 2 rooms. While searching the web for places to stay, I found SeaScape Resorts. They had a winter special going which was less than 2 rooms at another nice hotel would have cost. We got a 2 room 'villa' near the edge of a cliff overlooking Monterey Bay. This villa was a two story, 2 bedroom, 3 bathroom suite that was easily larger than many apartments. It had a beautiful view of the bay, included a separate kitchen, living space (with a couch that turned into a bed for even more sleeping space), gas fireplace, microwave, range, refrigerator, washer and dryer, TV in every room... you name it, it had it. My pictures of the interior, exterior and local scenery are here:
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| Dining area and Kitchen | Joshua coming down the stairs | Veronica, Joshua and Valerie on the couch | All four kids by the fireplace | Veronica out on the bed (faking it of course) | Some wall decorations | More wall decorations | Valerie on the bed |
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| View out the back porch - Monterey Bay | Along the cliff looking towards Santa Cruz | Back of the unit | Front of the unit - we were in #609 | Front door, flowers blooming in late December... |
The staff was great and my only complaint was room service took 1 hour rather than the promised 30 minutes (hey, we were starving). That and some mornings, the smell of rotting ? was very bad outside. It never penetrated the suite and not really related to SeaScape beyond it's proximity to the ocean. All in all this is a great place to stay, and I would love to try it in the summer.
Day 1
After a nice breakfast in the resort restaurant, we headed out though it was rainy and cool. We first went to the Santa Cruz Wharf, and got to enjoy some of the local 'wildlife'-
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| local pelican | Sea lion on pier | Hoping for food |
From the pier we drove south to Mission San Carlos Borromeo, a famous mission founded by Padre Junipero Sera of the Order of Franciscan Friars. The weather improved and the rain stopped as we drove south. We managed to sneak in between 2 weddings... it's very popular for this sort of thing.
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| Cross in courtyard | Bell Tower | ||||||
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| Valerie, Joshua and Matthew | Small scale replica of Mission |
From here we went to a small but beautiful shopping center in Carmel, and had dinner at a local restaurant.
Day 2
Because it was still rainy, we decided to drive into San Jose and visit the "Tech Museum of Innovation". This is a very large museum devoted entirely to high technology, just my kind of place. In the end we saw probably less than half of the museum, so it does warrant a return trip. Our only bad experience was we bought tickets to their 360 degree dome IMAX, and 2 minutes into the show the film broke. The good news is they refunded our ticket price, including our entrance fee into the museum itself.
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| Earthquake simulator | Kids got to "remote control" this underwater exploration vehicle | One of many high tech displays |
The kids were able to make there own web pages at the museum, including pictures, background and favorite links, and Joshua and Veronica decided to spend the time to do this. The museum leaves the pages on the internet for 3 months, so for posterities sake I copied them here:
Veronica's Tech Museum web page
We had also hoped to visit the Winchester Mystery House, but we ran out of time. No doubt the next time we are in the area we will check out Paramount's Great America theme park, since it was closed for Winter during this trip.
Day 3 - New Years Eve
New Years Eve turned out to be the first sunny day of the trip. Taking advantage of the weather, we first took a tour of my Mom's and Hugo's neighborhood. Filled with many beautiful homes, the entire area is very scenic and I can see why my Mom lives there. Unfortunately I did not take many pictures of the neighborhood, but that's just another excuse for me to go back and get some more.
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| The street Mom and Hugo's house is on | The front of the house | My Mom's garden on the side of the house - Much more extensive in the back | Lemon tree/bush by driveway |
We then drove a short distance into the Forest of Nisene Marks, a beautiful Redwood forest that is just behind Mom and Hugo's home. We enjoyed a wonderful hike through the forest, where I took several pictures. One thing the pictures cannot capture is the very green smell of everything!
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| Valerie and Joshua in front of tree | Mossy trees everywhere | A particularly pretty tree | Joshua in front of pretty tree | Muddy trail through the forest | More of the trail - the streaks in the picture are actually falling water drops |
Heading into Santa Cruz, we stopped to watch some of the brave souls who surf even in the dead of winter.
From here we drove to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, which is often closed this time of year but was opened by the city due to the nice weather. The Boardwalk is a beach area fronted by a boardwalk with numerous amusement park rides, and the kids had a blast riding the rides, eating cotton candy and finally going onto the beach and playing in the waves.
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| South end of the boardwalk | The first "big" rollercoaster Veronica has ridden | The beach in front of the boardwalk | The Santa Cruz Wharf as seen from the boardwalk | It's starting to get a little crowded | Joshua and Valerie in a car ride | Valerie in a helicopter ride | The four kids in line for the haunted house |
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| Waiting for the next wave | The younger two break early | Everyone is running now | Audrey holding coats, waiting | Neptune's Kingdom (an arcade) |
We had planned to spend the evening in Santa Cruz enjoying the First Night festival, but we were exhausted. So, late in the evening me and the kids spent our time in the heated pool and then sauna. Though we had heard there would be a fireworks show over the bay, we did not last that long. It was pitch dark when we were in the Sauna, and the kids got a big kick out of the steam that poured off of our bodies every time one of us got out.
Day 4 - New Years
Anticipating everything would be closed and possible inclement weather, we visited Audrey's Uncle Nick and his wife Pat. They live in a Suburb of San Francisco, so it was a bit of a drive. It was a nice drive and we enjoyed visiting with them and seeing their wonderfully decorated house. Not many pictures this day, but here is one of Audrey and Nick-
Day 5
Today was the day of the Whale Watching trip. We had booked passage with Sanctuary Cruises, which has two boats in their fleet. Unfortunately, since we had booked during a weekday and their were a small number of passengers, we ended up on their small 42 foot boat rather than the much larger Princess of Whales so often mentioned on their website. To boot, we went out in much worse weather than normal, but they are loath to cancel so out we went... 3 1/2 hours on the rough sea. In the end it did pay off and we did see one grey whale, as well as some other interesting wildlife. Unfortunately I only got one picture, and it was an exercise in caution, as the waves were very rough and I was fearful of the camera going over. You know that movie Perfect Storm? Well, it wasn't that bad but for a period we did encounter waves that peaked higher than the height of the boat, so it was... "interesting". Amazingly no one in the entire Pacheco family got seasick though almost every one of the other 6 passengers did. It was an experience I'm sure they will never forget!
Day 6
We drove down to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It rates a 7 out of 10 as far as Aquarium's go, there is a lot to see but it is showing it's age a bit.
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| Valerie looking over the bay with my Mom's Binoculars | Looking over the bay | Display in Aquarium | More Display's | More... | A bird and Matt's arm. | More Bird's | More... |
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| Outside of Aquarium on the Bay side | "Big" fish | Hammerhead shark | Turtle | Boat on the bay | Cannery Row | More of the row | and More... |
Day 7
Sniff, we leave... after breakfast and we are checked out of the room, we walk along the beach and the kids collect quite a few shells. After saying our goodbye's, we drove up highway one to the SF airport to fly home. The flight back is the total opposite of the flight in... United Airlines at the last minute decides to change planes from a 767 to a 727, and of course since we were early to the airport our original seat assignments are no longer valid. We are now spread out all over a totally full plane. Anything I might have said good about United earlier, I might take back.
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| The back of the hotel from the path to the beach | Veronica, Joshua, Pat, Valerie and Audrey walking along the beach | Looking for shells | The beach |