We had a wonderful family vacation in California. We left home about 6 am on Saturday 22 October and boarded our flight to Minneapolis. All our segments were in first class and it was so nice to be so comfortable while we chugged through homework and flew to the west coast. We had plenty of time to make our flight from Minneapolis to Santa Ana's John Wayne Airport. We were on board and there was time to spare, so our super-sweet flight attendants even made sure the kids got to go up onto the flight deck. The captain hopped right up and made room for each of the kids to sit in his seat with his hat on so Jim could snap a quick picture. :) The children also both received several sets of "wings" as souvenirs of their visit to the cockpit.
We flew directly over the Grand Canyon and we were all fascinated. None of us had ever seen it before and it was super-cool to see it from the air! Aidan and Esme had the window seats and Aidan snapped some good photos from the air.
Yup, that's a pretty big hole! :)
Upon landing in Santa Ana we grabbed the one bag we checked - empty, because we knew we would need it on the way home! - and found our rental car and we were on the road. We hopped right on the Pacific Coast Highway and made a beeline for Laguna Beach, where we knew we could find the tidepools we've been looking forward to showing the children since Jim and I were there in 2006. There are even volunteer guides on the beach now, helping to make sure folks leave the critters where they belong, and also helping us find the best places to see the many sea creatures that live in the pools. We spent a really enjoyable hour or so climbing on the rocks and peering into the tidepools. We found a lot of creatures!
Right in the middle of the photo below is a Sea Hare, a kind of seawater-dwelling slug thingy. The guides said it was really rare to see them on the beach, so we were lucky!
The shiny brown thing at the center of this photo is a really glossy shell with an animal inside. Unfortunately I can't remember what the guide told us it was. We saw TONS of hermit crabs though, and barnacles, rockweed, sea anemones, mussels, rough limpets, coralline algae, tube snails, sea urchins and sea palms. And that's not to mention the sea birds we saw - brown pelicans, cormorants and seagulls that look nothing like our Lake Michigan gulls.
The kids and I stood in the surf for about .03 nanoseconds - we had to! It's the Pacific Ocean, for cripes' sake! But it was soooo cold! Jim was smarter and kept his feet dry. :)
Jim, Aidan & Esme inspecting another tide pool.
Aidan tries to get a pelican's eye view of a tide pool.
Esme watches the hermit crabs scuttling about.
Woo-hoo! We're at the Pacific Ocean!
After our perusal of the beach and tide pools, we headed for a little shop selling mostly beach toys, hoping to find something for Esme to wear on her feet. She had brought tennis shoes, which were fine but not really beachwear, and a pair of plastic water shoes which have never fit her properly. An hour on the beach gave her sore feet, so we found a quickie pair of flip-flops for her instead. And sunglasses, as she left hers in the car in Michigan, of course.
After outfitting Esme for vacation (!) we went to a little bakery/restaurant called C'est La Vie in Laguna Beach, where Jim and I had lunched five years ago. We loved it - American decor, Mexican waiters, Italian background music, and French food. The kids had pasta, Jim had eggs and I had a croque-monsieur. We also shared a giant fruit-and-cheese platter. The food was even better than we remembered it. We turned down dessert, which was really hard to do, but we had passed a gelato shop on our way down to the beach, so we went there for dessert instead! It was awesome but I couldn't even finish my coconut gelato - too full from lunch I suppose! Esme had chocolate and Aidan had berry.
We headed back up the coast and checked in at our hotel - the Hilton in Costa Mesa - and spent a little while unpacking and relaxing. It was only early evening by that time, but we were all exhausted - in Michigan it was bedtime! Vacationers undeterred, however, we hopped back in the car and went to Downtown Disney for a while to check it out and to find a little something to eat. It was packed! We browsed the stores for a while and just before leaving stopped in a little bookshop/coffeeshop and had Italian sodas and sandwiches/fruit to tide us over until morning. It wasn't hard to fall asleep when we got back to the hotel. :)