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Wednesday, February 09, 2005
recap of our "mini-break"
We just got back from two nights and three partial-or-full days in paradise (also known as Morro Bay, California, for the uninitiated). Everything was fantastic. At least four or five times in the three days of our trip, T and I looked at each other and gushed, "I am just so glad we are here!" Exclamation point inclusive; we really were gushing. The kids didn't fight. T and I didn't fight. The weather was perfect. T injured his back and was in a little pain from that from time to time but even that didn't dampen our spirits for long; we were having the best mini-break (one of my favorite Britishisms and I have shamelessly stolen it even though I've never been anywhere near England) in the history of the world.
And then we came home.
That's the thing about fabulous vacations; they tend to end. And as soon as you get up on the first morning back home, and the kids are sniping at each other and the parents are doing their fair share of the same thing, and the inevitable heap of laundry threatens to smother you, and the search for socks in the unmated socks bin seems as head-explodingly frustrating as it ever is, there's this tendency to think, "if only we were still on our fantastic vacation, how wonderful everything would be." Conveniently forgetting, of course, that in order to stay longer you'd have had to pack more which is an added stress, or else do laundry which is distinctly un-vacationish. And eventually we'd run out of money and have to come home or take up a life of vagrancy -- which for a family with kids is rather irresponsible.
A year ago this week we were coming home from Florida, experiencing the same set of post-vacation symptoms: wallowing in happy memories, wistfully wishing we hadn't had to come home, being thrown face-first back into a life where clocks matter and so do messes, and three times a day there are all these overgrown baby birds with their beaks open clamoring for me to FEED THEM (and clean up after them too, while I'm at it). And with all that I'm still very, very glad we went. I'm even glad we're home; I just don't know it yet.
And now a few (ha ha!) pictures:
One of the long-standing Morro Bay vacation traditions, since we first took the kids there four years ago, has been the bicycle park.
Which means that the "sale pending" on that sign is bad news. :(
It is when it is windy that we most realize how badly he needs a haircut. All he needs in this picture is a time machine and some eye makeup and he'd be a headline tour.
The shell crop was pretty measly this year, except for the sand dollars (and of course the ever-present butterfly clams, the kind whose shells crack if you touch them). Here are two of the smaller ones in T's palm. And LT's shadow.
I think Morro Rock is much more photographable than its Yosemite equivalent, Half Dome. (better watch out that I don't get struck by Park Service lightning for that one).
C, champion of the climbing wall.
LT at the top of the spiral slide
C bought herself a unicorn at Albertson's (Albertsons' toy aisle being yet ANOTHER MB tradition. Not to mention that it was in that Albertson's that I first saw -- cue heavenly chord -- DIET CHERRY COKE. And my life changed forever). She named it Bright Bright White and didn't put it down for at least, oh, ten hours.
This time instead of camping, since we were only staying two nights and we weren't sure of the weather, we stayed at Motel 6, whose signature utilitarian-but-bright decorating style is seen here, as the kids play Uno in their jammies.
One defining physical feature of Morro Bay is the sandspit that encloses the estuary. Last summer T, my dad, and my brother boated out to it. On this trip he took us to see it -- by a land route, however. Here are the kids looking for shells on the seaward side of the "spit". Which I hate to call it, because I am a dork, and I wish it had a different name.
At the "fish park" (as it is called because one of the kids named it that, after the large fish-shaped ladder thing which features in its play structure, and as anyone knows who has kids, you eventually end up adopting untold numbers of their sayings as your own without even realizing it), there is a really bizarre swinging/spinning sort of thing. It looks so simple and yet the physics of it defy anyone to make it go without much, much effort. Usually the grown-ups end up hogging it until one of the men gets it whirling around, usually standing on it rather than sitting. Here is LT taking the easy way out, being spun/swung by someone else.
the Rock again, this time with a flock of birds taking their baths in its reflection
This was actually the sunset on the first night. We watched it through the windows of the restaurant where we ate the best restaurant clam chowder I have had in years. We'd have said that about the fish and chips, too, if we didn't know of the glory that is Giovanni's Fish Company, just up the street, where we had lunch the next day. OH LORD I NEED TO GO BACK. NOW. *sob*
We decided to take the ultimate scenic route home -- that being Highway 1. Anyone who lives in a place without Highway 1 near it simply doesn't know what s/he is missing. Anyway. This is NOT one of the famous views of that often-photographed area -- it's part of a colony of elephant seals who winter just off the highway, just north of Cambria. Very bizarre to look at, yet interesting. And smelly.
There have been many pictures taken of this bridge, almost all of them better than this one. But the thing about scenery like this is that even an utter amateur like myself has a hard time messing it up. Wow. (I made T stop nearly every time there was a pullout so that I could take pictures. I won't inflict them all on you, however).
