There were some children (young and old) pretty excited about presents.
We had our traditional omelets for breakfast and an amazingly good ham dinner later in the day, but I did not get any photos of food related activities.
Not too far away, we found Castle Rock. From one view, a profile of the rock looked like a face with a large nose. Neil was putting his finger in one of the "nostrils".
There were lots of small and large caves in Castle Rock.
After we got back from Castle Rock, it was time to go to Brian and Annie Blank's house for an amazing selection of foods and a very enjoyable evening of socializing and Christmas music.
Sheri Played the piano to accompany the Christmas songs. We also had most of us playing chimes along with some of the songs. John and Mark were teaching Dallin how to play the chimes.
Neil was a one man band with the chimes.
It was a great evening with about 40 people in attendance.
We went to the beach in the afternoon. Low tide occurred just after dark and we wanted to see the tide pools as close to low tide as we could get. The tide was going out as we arrived. We had a good time getting close to the waves and then running away.
When we got to the tide pools, we saw starfish, sea anemones, crabs and hermit crabs. If you look closely at this photo of a starfish, you can see the reflection of two grandchildren in the water.
There were several hermit crabs that were fun to catch.
There were 13 starfish on this one rock
It was a fun day at the beach.
The grandkids had a good time playing with the many creative toys.
Paddling in the woven boat with Uncle John.
John and Dallin are visiting the Mother of the Forest. This tree is the tallest tree in Big Basin at 329 feet tall.
We came across several banana slugs on our hike. It was getting late, so there was not much light for this photo. It is pretty obvious why these are called banana slugs. This guy was about 7 or 8 inches long. The Banana Slugs are the mascot for nearby UC Santa Cruz. I wonder if UC Santa Cruz has a track team?? How fast can they be?
It was a fun day. We ended it with pizza from Via Mia.
We saw lots of deer along the trail. This one ran past us to join his cousins.
They have fences and poles close together to keep out people that had too much to eat for Thanksgiving. Bret and I both made it through without too much difficulty.
As it was getting dark, the sunset caused some pretty colors and the city lights became more visible.
As it got darker, the shutter stayed open longer making it look lighter than it really was. This shot was taken looking northwest toward point of the mountain.
This shot is looking southwest. The tallest peek in the back is Mt. Nebo.
We still found three more caches after these last photos were taken. We found 10 of the 13 geocaches we looked for. By the time we found the last geocache, it was pretty dark. We then turned around and walked the 3 miles back to the car in the dark. Many of the geocaches we found we from a series called Utah slang caches. Most of them were terms I had heard many times before but some of them were terms Bret and I had not heard before. The cache names we found (in the order we found them) were: Fetchen, Gosh Darnit, Fricken, Sheesh, Dad Gummitt, Let me in, OSH, Golly G. I was not familiar with "Let me in" and "OSH" or what they mean. The others were not new. These caches were all easy to find and right along the trail. Even though it was pretty dark for the walk back, there was snow on the ground and the trail was snow free (mostly) so the reflection of the city lights off the clouds was enough for us to easily find our way back. It was a really fun afternoon/evening hike.
There are two cute little Hobbit trees in front of the front porch.
About 200 feet from the front door of the house is a great little park. There is a nice playground for the children in the neighborhood.
Next to the playground is a pavillion for picnics and BBQs.
There is also a large grass area that looks like it might be suitable for frisbee or football.
On the other side of the park from the house is a Safeway grocery store. The church is 0.65 miles from the house, so it is close enough to walk in nice weather. Brian and Annie's house is 0.9 miles, John and Becky's house is 1.8 miles, Mark's house is 1.9 miles and John and Claudia's house is 3.8 miles. We will be in the same ward as Brian and Annie. The others each live in a different ward. Having 4 different wards meeting in 3 different buildings so close is unheard of in Missouri.
A few blocks from Secure Computing is Alan Avenue. I not seen a street named after me before. It was kind of fun and made up for not finding geocaches.
