Monterey with Sheri and Dallin

Mom and I took Sheri and Dallin to Monterrey on Saturday. It has been raining here for about two weeks and was still raining a little when we arrived in Monterey, but it cleared up later.

Since we were hungry, the first thing we did was go to the Fish Hopper restaurant. This is the same place Mom and I ate when we went in January. The waiter took a photo of the four of us at our table with the ocean view. Dallin was enjoying the bread while we waited for our food.

Mom and I both ordered the Macadamia crusted Halibut. It was amazingly good like last time. Sheri got the seafood platter with crab with a skewer of scallops and shrimp with rice. She looked like she was enjoying her food.

After we ate, we went to the Aquarium. Dallin and the rest of us enjoyed the exhibits such as the sea anemones.

Sheri and Dallin got to be in the aquarium. There was a tunnel that they crawled through to get to the other side.

Dallin really liked the star fish that were available to touch. There were bat rays that people could touch, but they were not getting close to the people while we were there.

Dallin discovered that he really likes chocolate chip cookies. He liked them so much that he even swallowed.

We stopped at Ghirardelli for Hot Fudge sundaes. I did not get a photo before we started eating, but they looked and tasted amazingly good. Here is Sheri finishing off the last of them.

After we got home and Dallin had his bath, he decided that he did not like the gate that kept him from going down the stairs, so he tried to go under. He got stuck, so we rescued him. He was more annoyed than upset about getting stuck.

We had a great day. It has been fun having Sheri and Dallin visit.

Uvas Canyon

On Saturday, February 12, Mom and I invited john and Becky to go for a hike in Uvas Canyon County Park. Uvas means grapes, but I did not see any grapes. There are lots of hiking trails to choose in the park. Since one of our hiking goals is to prepare to hike to the top of Half Dome, I picked one that had some good uphill hiking and also some nice scenery. Of course, there were geocaches along the way. Becky posted some great photos and recorded the Ten Commandments of Geocaching in California Crapos.

We hiked up the trail along the stream. Here is hiker Mom looking good. This was her first hike with her new Camelbak and trekking poles.

We came to this fun tree. Mom was the first to climb up on the tree.
We also found a few geocaches along the way. This is an ammo box cache that we found.

When we got back to the car, John and I decided to go look for one more geocache that was close to the car. It is called the Waterfall Cache for good reason. The cache was close to this waterfall.

The total hike was about 4 miles. We will be doing several other hikes with increasing difficulty to prepare for the big hike. And to answer Mom’s comment/question on Half Dome: Of course, there are geocaches to find while hiking up Half Dome. We found some of them in 2008, but most of them are virtual caches where you just log information without actually finding a container.

Baby Blessing

Before we started taking baby blessing pictures, this cute young man was talking to Grandma on the walki-talki.

We had various group photos.

The following photos were cropped from other photos in order to see how cute Charlotte is. Neil just came along for the ride.

Sabino Canyon

While in Arizona for Charlotte's blessing, we decided to go to Sabino Canyon on Saturday. Sabino Canyon is north of Tucson and is around 3000 feet elevation. There is a stream coming down the canyon but the low elevation still makes it somewhat desert like. There is an abundance of Saguaro cacti. There is a tram/shuttle that takes people 3.8 miles up the canyon an then returns. There are 9 stops along the way and the trams run every 30 minutes so you can ride or walk whatever portions you want. We needed two benches for our group.

Right next to the tram was a roadrunner. I did not see the cayote, but I am sure he was not too far away. The roadrunner did not seem to be very afraid of people.

We took the tram all the way to the end of the road at the back of the canyon and got off at stop 9.

At the back of the canyon, there is an alternate adventurous route down to stop 7. John, Becky, Neil and I decided to take the long trail (2 miles of trail to get to where it was less than a mile by road). This trail had some great views.

We stopped at the back of the canyon for this group shot of the four of us using the 10 second timer on our camera. Neil expertly pressed the buton and quickly made it to where we were just in time for the photo. Good job Neil.

We made it back down to the road and met up with the rest of the group. They were waiting for us where the road crossed the stream and where the stream formed lots of small pools. What happens when there are bodies of water and lots of rocks and kids under 100 years old arrive? The rocks get thrown in the water, of course. Neil is teaching the young ones how to find and throw rocks in the water.

John and Neil got on opposite sides of a 20 foot diameter pool and threw rocks in the water in order to splash each other. I did not see how wet Neil got, but John had some good splash marks on him.

We road the tram back down the canyon from stop 7.

After we got back to the cars, we drove a short distance to Coldstone for ice cream. Below, you can see blue ice cream (cotton candy flavor) going down the hatch.

After we got back to the house, we had amazingly good fettuccine alfredo for dinner. It was a really fun day.

Monterey

Last Saturday, to celebrate Mom’s return to California, we drove to Monterey. Monterey is down the coast from Santa Cruz. When you are at the beach in Santa Cruz and you look out over the ocean, you can see the hills behind Monterey. Two of the many major attractions of Monterey are the Aquarium and Cannery Row. Our intention was to go to the aquarium and eat at one of the many seafood restaurants on Cannery Row. Cannery Row is where there used to be fish canneries where the boats would bring the fish in to the docks and the fish was immediately put in cans to be shipped around the country. The Canneries are all gone now, but there are lots of places that tourists like to visit such as great restaurants, shops and a John Steinbeck museum. The Monterey Bay Aquarium is at the end of Cannery Row.

When we got there, it was about time for lunch so we walked down the street trying to decide where to stop. A couple of places gave out samples of really good clam chowder to people walking by. The best clam chowder was at Louie Linguini's. The also had deep fried artichoke hearts on the menu and we were really tempted to eat there until we got to the Fish Hopper.

The view was spectacular from our table.

Even though the view was great, what convinced us to go there was an item on the menu that we could not pass up. It was Macadamia crusted Halibut served over sweet potato wedges with mango, papaya, broccoli, yellow squash, snow peas and red peppers with mango relish on it. These are two views of my lunch. Mom’s was identical because it was too good to share.

This may have been the best lunch I have ever had. After lunch, we walked down to the rocks.

We still need to go back to Louie Linguini's and try the deep fried artichoke hearts.

We eventually made it to the aquarium and decided that we want to come back here frequently so we got a membership to the aquarium. Children and grandchildren under 21 get in with us and we also have two adult guest passes that can be used by anyone and we do not even need to go with the guests, but we would probably want to. We saw a lot of cool things at the aquarium, but did not get to about 80% of it so we will need to go back again. Just before we left, we talked to a girl that works there that had a clear container that had baby moon jellyfish that you could see up close. They get up to about 16 inches in diameter as adults, but the ones we saw were two inches or smaller and were only a few weeks old. She was going back to return them to the larger tank and asked if we wanted to see it. We went with here and saw the tank with all of the baby moon jellyfish. Some of them were about a ¼ inch in size and were a couple of days old. It was pretty cool.

When anyone comes to visit and stay with is in the near future, we need to try and plan on a trip to Monterey and the aquarium. It takes a little over an hour to get there but it worth the trip.

Rocky's "New" Dog House

Brian and Annie had and old dog house that they did not need any more. They said Rocky could have it if we wanted. We brought it over this morning and put it were he could guard the lemon trees. Becky's aunt Wendy gave Rocky a sleeping pad, which he likes, so we put the pad in the dog house. A couple of hours later, he was in the dog house taking a nap. He must like it.

Grandpa's Funeral - Jan 4th

There have already been some great blog posts and tributes to Grandpa Blank, but I wanted to share some additional photos to add to what has already been shared.

The bugler played the most amazing version of "Taps" I have ever heard.
The Flag was then folded and presented to Grandma.

My final photo is of Grandma and her oldest grandson, John back at the church.
Good bye Grandpa.