West Coast - Day 20

Our final day of vacation was a long travel day, as we drove the 700+ km from Calgary to Regina. The day did not start out well, as neither kid went to sleep until real late and neither was very interested in breakfast. However, we made the trip from Calgary to Medicine Hat without problems. After lunch in Medicine Hat, we drove home. Both kids fell asleep fairly quickly, and there were no real problems until between Swift Current and Moose Jaw, when Evan got pretty restless. We put the DVD on for the rest of the trip.

My biggest difficulty during the drive was that it was very windy and the wind was blowing straight across the highway. We passed a semi-trailer that had flipped over just outside Swift Current, and I had to fight the steering wheel all the way home. In fact, my hands and forearms really started hurting in the evening.

The boys (and myself) were very happy to see their home and all their toys. Thus ends our family vacation for this year.

West Coast - Day 19

With Calaway Park out of the question, our various contacts in the Calgary area advised us to go to Heritage Park, which is what we did. We arrived at the park around the middle of the morning and made our way into the park. There is a steam train ride, so we went to the station to find out when it would be leaving. There was about a 1/2 hour before it left, so we wandered around the station area and looked at some of the old buildings and a really old steam engine. We then took the train around the park, which was enjoyed by everyone. I was really excited that the train was pulled by a real live steam engine, while everyone else just had a good time watching the scenery go by.

Heritage Park is full of historical buildings and people in historical costumes, so we took some time after the train ride to visit a few of the buildings. By this point, Evan was getting very hungry, so we stopped for lunch in the carnival area, so that we could go on some of the rides after eating. For the first ride, Xander declared that he wanted to go on the kids ferris wheel, even though we stressed that he would have to ride it alone. He made Sandra walk him up to the wheel, but after that he got on and even sat quietly near the top while some other kids were loaded. However, he only made it one revolution before he decided he wanted to get off. I don't think it was fear, but likely the fact that he did not expect it to be a long ride - the kid has a very short attention span. It took a couple of revolutions, but the workers stopped the ride and let him off.

The next ride was the carousel, which the whole family could go on. Evan rode on a horse and even held the reins properly. It was very cute, but unfortunately, I was in front of Sandra, so we did not get a picture of it. After that was The Whip - a bunch of metal cars that would fling around a corner. Xander and I went on that ride, as Evan was too small, and he got very upset that he couldn't go on the ride. Xander loved it though. The final ride was The Caterpillar, a metal train that went in a circle and where the entire train got covered by a cloth cover during the ride, which Sandra and Xander went on.

During the last ride, Evan stayed with me and played with his stroller, which is his absolute most favorite thing to do. After the ride was finished, we wanted to go on the steamboat, so I put Evan in his stroller, in order to make it to the boat in time, but he did not want to go in his stroller. He started screaming and he did not stop until the steamboat ride was over, 30 minutes later. It's fairly aggravating because once he gets worked up, there is no way to stop him, and he is not quiet.

Our next stop was the old roundhouse, where there was a bunch of old railroad equipment, including a car used by the Duke and Duchess of York when they visited Canada, as well as a car used by various Canadian Pacific officials and some Prime Ministers. We then took a horse cart ride through the park, since Evan is a big fan of the animals. The horses were called Splinter and Shredder, and I was the only person in the cart who knew where those names came from - I guess the Turtles aren't as big as they used to be. Evan fell asleep as soon as the cart started moving and stayed asleep when we stopped and I put him in his stroller. While he was sleeping, we grabbed a snack and then took Xander back to the rides so that he could go on them a few more times before we left.

We returned to the hotel, where everyone had a quick nap before Jules arrived for supper. We had a good evening visiting with her and then got the kids into bed. Tomorrow we are getting up early and heading for home.

West Coast - Day 18

Despite being another travel day, we managed to fit in some extremely lucky railfanning today. We got up really early and left Salmon Arm immediately after breakfast. Our first stop of the day was at Craigellachie, which is where the last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway was driven. We got the boys out and wandered towards the monument right before a tour bus arrived and flooded the area with Japanese tourists. However, the cool part was that the tracks run right beside the monument, and as Sandra was taking our picture, we heard the horn of on oncoming train, and we got to see a short freight (with 4 engines (!)) run by the last spike.

After lunch, we stopped at the spiral tunnels at Kicking Horse Pass, which is where the CP line crosses over itself twice in order to make the grade through the mountains more manageable. I wasn't expecting to see a train, as even though the line is busy, there are large gaps between the trains. Luckily for me, as I was showing Xander a model of the area, there was a horn blast from under the Trans-Canada and a train appeared, heading for the tunnel. That meant we were able to stand and watch a container train pass under itself as it headed down out of the mountains and towards Field. <Train Geek>I have run this route in Microsoft Train Simulator, so it was pretty cool to see it in real life - and to see a train going through the tunnel.</Train Geek>

Our final stop of the day was Lake Louise, where we just stopped for a short photo opportunity. The lake is a very beautiful spot, but it was kind of hard to appreciate the beauty with Xander complaining about the wind and wanting to go back to the car. Oh well. At least we were able to have a family picture taken in front of the lake. It was kind of funny, as there were two guys who obviously wanted their picture taken, but were too shy to ask, so the one guy offered to take our picture and after that was done, he then asked if we would return the favour.

After Lake Louise, we drove into Calgary, leaving the mountains behind. Upon arriving in Calgary, Sandra discovered that while Calaway Park is open, it is only open on the weekends, which means we won't be taking the boys there tomorrow. Sandra is pretty annoyed that the park is closed, since she was really looking forward to going to it. As we reserved a hotel for two nights, we have to do something tomorrow, so it sounds like we are going to go to Heritage Park and then spend the evening visiting with my cousin. I don't think she has ever met Evan. Oh, and he rode in the car fine today - 6 hours and we did not even show him a DVD. I think it was partially because we left early, partially because he woke up from his nap at the tunnels, so we could immediately take him out of the car and partially because we ate lunch on time. If I can get those three things working together on the way back to Regina, we should be able to get home without any problems.

West Coast - Day 17

Today was just a travel day. I decided to pass on visiting Microsoft, since it would mean more driving in Seattle for what is really nothing more than a small museum. We stayed in our hotel until around 10:00am to give the morning rush hour a chance to calm down and then we left and headed north. We took a small country road from Bellingham so that we could cross the border at Abbotsford and therefore miss any Vancouver area traffic.

From Abbotsford, we headed to Hope, where we stopped for lunch, before driving up to Kamloops and then Salmon Arm, where we stopped for the night. That puts us half way to Calgary, so we should be able to drive to Calgary tomorrow, where Sandra wants to take the boys to Calaway Park.

Evan continues to be a challenge while driving. He woke up around 30km from Hope and had another meltdown and would not calm down until there was food on the table at Dairy Queen, despite being offered lots of different kinds of food in the car. He started screeching again not long after we left Hope, so we put Backyardigans on my laptop and let him watch that for the entire rest of the trip. That worked, but that is also as long as my battery will last - just under 3 hours. I'm concerned that he will start screaming as soon as we start tomorrow, and since we have a six hour drive, half of it will have to be made without a DVD playing. We're going to try and leave early so that more of the driving is done in the morning and see if that helps.

West Coast - Day 16

We spent the morning in the hotel room, as we had reserved a harbour cruise at 12:15pm, and that did not give us enough time to do anything else once we got through breakfast and the regular morning routine. We ate breakfast in our room, as we had fruit from yesterday and the breakfast room was packed full of people again. We then tried to put Evan down for a morning nap and gave Xander a morning quiet time before lunch, but I don't think either really worked. Once we finished lunch, we herded the kids out and made our way back to the monorail and took it downtown.

To get to the harbour, you have to go down a lot of steep roads, and even after that, you get to a point where you have to take stairs. I'm not certain how cars get down, but it must occur somewhere quite far away from the part of downtown where we were. We ended up carrying the kids and the strollers downstairs in order to get to the pier where our tour left from. We arrived about a half hour before the tour boarded, so we walked to the end of the pier and looked at the water for a bit.

The cruise was nice, except that neither kid really wanted to be there. They definitely did not want to be on the deck (too windy), and even when we sat inside, Evan kept getting upset and Xander kept disobeying. Xander got more excited once we arrived at the industrial section of the harbour, with all the container ships and cranes, while I ended up just ignoring Evan, as he would start screaming if I even made eye contact with him.

After the cruise, we took the monorail back to the park and went to the the Children's Museum here in Seattle. It was another hit with the kids and roughly similar to the last children's museum we went to. It had a grocery store, a pretend Taco Time fast food restaurant, a mountain area and an area with odd pipes and levers where you could put small plastic balls through the pipes - some had compressed air running through them. Once we figured out where the balls went and how it worked, Xander had a lot of fun making them go from one side to the other, where they would fall among cymbals and other musical instruments in order to make noise. Once everyone was pretty hungry we left and started walking out of the park.

Before leaving, we stopped and watched a street performer do a short act - he was a juggler and rode a unicycle and he put on a fairly good show. Xander got right into clapping along with everyone else. When the act was over, we went for supper and then returned to the hotel room. We've decided to head home in the most direct route, which means going into Canada at Abbotsford and then taking the #1 to Calgary. I am very ready to just head home, as I am pretty much wiped out. Tomorrow should be mostly a travel day, but we will see how far we can go with Evan, as he hasn't been lasting very long in the car lately.

West Coast - Day 15

Due to the fact that I did not have to drive, today was a better day, though walking through Seattle has its own perils - there are a fair number of homeless people who are either drunk or more than a bit muddled. We saw one guy walk out into the street and start yelling at the cars, while another guy walked up to us and told us that he wished he could make us understand. Anyway, back to our actual adventures.

We started the day by fighting our way through breakfast, since the hotel was fairly full with at least one school group and the breakfast room was packed. We then walked the three blocks to the park where the Space Needle is and rode the monorail to downtown Seattle, where we walked down to the Pike Place Market. Even early in the morning, it was fairly busy, which turned out to be because they were having a fair in the market today. By the time we left, it was almost impossible to push a stroller through the throngs of people.

For the first little bit, we just explored. The famous fish stand turned out to be a bit of bust, since it was surrounded by 100 eager tourists and no one who was buying any fish. One of the workers even asked in desperation if anyone wanted to buy fish today. If I lived here, I'm not certain I would shop there - by walking up to the counter, you become the center of attention, with 100 cameras trained on you. As we wandered through the shops, we decided to buy food for supper from the shops, rather than eating in yet another restaurant. Plus, our hotel room has a full kitchen, so we would be able to buy some corn and cook it.

About half way down the main street of the market is the first Starbucks location, which I stopped in and bought some coffee beans and a coffee, just so I could say that I had. I don't know if all Starbucks are like this, but they take your order on one side and then throw your empty cup across the room to the barista that actually makes your coffee and calls out your name when it is done. At the far end of the market they had set up a stage for the fair, and a local all girl band was playing as we walked back into the market to shop for supper. I felt very much like a Seattle cliché - walking through Pike Place Market, drinking Starbucks coffee, while the girls screamed out Celebrity Skin.

We left the market and stopped for lunch at McDonald's, before taking the monorail back to the park and then taking all our stuff back to the hotel room. We then walked back to the park in order to go to the Science Fiction Museum. The museum was extremely cool, but you will just have to take my word for it, since you weren't allowed to take pictures. Sandra did take a picture of the sign for the bathroom, which I will add to the blog, since it is a pretty cool (and geeky) sign. The museum had a lot of displays with the various science fiction books and authors as well as memorabilia from movies and TV shows. I'll just list a bunch of stuff we saw - the original captain's chair from the Enterprise set, the Enterprise-D model used for filming Next Generation, the Death Star model used for filming Star Wars, an animatronic Donatello, a stormtrooper costume, Corporal Hicks armour and gun from Aliens, the Terminator head and hand from T2, and an entire wall filled with various science fiction weapons (but no lightsaber - and I told Xander we would see one - *sigh*). There were also some interesting multimedia displays, but they were either packed full of geeks or too long to sit and watch with the children, so I skipped most of them. The one was a bunch of computer terminals where you could look up information on every spaceship from every science fiction series. The terminals were packed with people, but they had a huge screen behind them that was showing a looping movie of all the different ships flying past, landing at spacedocks and so on, so I held Xander and watched it go through all the ships once.

I couldn't find anything really interesting to buy in the gift shop, and I was really hoping for a lightsaber so that Xander would stop complaining. Before we left, Xander decided he wanted to go through the Jim Henson temporary display. I carried him through it, but it was mostly drawings and pictures, with just a few Muppets here and there. He didn't even seem very excited when we saw Bert and Ernie, so once we had quickly seen everything, we left. After the museum, we went up to the top of the Space Needle, took some pictures, returned to the ground, bought some ice cream and then returned to the hotel for supper.

West Coast - Day 14

Well, at this point, I am ready to go home. The day started off easy enough, as we got up late, packed up the car and headed to the Portland Children's Museum, which is right beside the zoo. That meant that it was a route we had already driven, so it was an easy trip to make.

The museum was a big hit with the kids. It had a ton of things to do, though it was pretty busy with school trips, which meant we had to push Xander a bit to play. There was a water area full of contraptions to pump water through, and dozens of ways to end up soaked. They had a stage and auditorium with a dressing room full of clothes so that the kids could dress up and act in front of their parents. There was face painting (but neither boy was interested), a large wooden train set to play with and a clay area, where you could build things out of clay. However, the clay did not interest either boy. The bigger hit was the Bob the Builder section, which had models of all the characters that the kids could climb in, as well as a bunch of other building projects for the kids. Xander and I built a wall that Papa would be proud of, while Evan spent the entire time mastering the stairs, since they were half-sized, which meant he could go up and down like a big boy.

At the other end of the museum, there was a dig pit, which was an area full of chopped up rubber and a bunch of Tonka trucks, various shovels and pails, and a couple of wall mounted conveyors to put the "dirt" in. Xander had a lot of fun filling a dump truck and playing in the "dirt", but it was a very busy area and he wanted me to come and join him, which I wasn't allowed to. I think that shortened the time he spent playing. Another cool area was a small grocery store and diner, where the kids could pretend to shop, or work at the supermarket, or be a short order cook. Again, it was a bit packed, but Xander had a great time buying some food. Unfortunately, he thought the corn he bought was real and that we would be eating corn on the cob for supper and he was pretty disappointed when we had to put all the food back.














Early in the afternoon, we drug the kids away, hoping that they would be tired enough to sleep during the trip to Seattle. Again, that was not the case, as both kids stayed awake. The trip to Seattle was horrible. The interstate between Portland and Seattle is extremely busy - it was 6 lanes almost the entire way and we encountered completely stopped traffic going into Tacoma, due to two recent accidents that had closed lanes and a brush fire beside the interstate. After inching through that traffic, we hit the Tacoma rush hour traffic and we were stopped for another 15 minutes or so. Thankfully, we were going the opposite direction of the Seattle rush hour traffic, as the four lanes heading south were full of stopped vehicles for approximately 40km (from Tacoma until the outskirts of Seattle). Who in their right mind drives in that kind of traffic every day?

Once we arrived in Seattle, things got worse. Evan started screaming and throwing a fit and there was no way to calm him down, nor was there any place to pull over and take him out of the car. The freeway was five lanes wide by this point and full of cars, though they were all moving. However, I ran into massive problems once we got off the freeway. The actual roads of Seattle are impossible to navigate unless you know where you are going and even the GPS was of limited usefulness. It would tell you to turn right, but not that you had to be in the leftmost lane in order to make it past the two intersections before the place where you were supposed to turn. I ended up in two right hand turning lanes that I wasn't supposed to be in, as well as a bunch of road construction, which forced us to cut a bunch of people off to change lanes, all while Evan was screaming at the top of his lungs. Luckily, we managed to find our hotel, despite turning twice when we weren't supposed to, and I quickly fled the car to get our room. Honestly, if we hadn't reserved a hotel room in Seattle, I would not have stopped, and we would be in Vancouver right now, on our way home.

However, we are here, and we are three blocks away from the Space Needle, which is where 90% of the stuff we want to see is, so I don't have to drive until we leave, and I will try to enjoy myself while I am here.

West Coast - Day 13

We woke up early today as we had reservations on the Mount Hood Railway for 10:30am and the railway is about an hour outside of Portland. The train started boarding at 10:00am, which meant we had to leave by 9:00am, but since that is likely a busy traffic time, we tried to leave by 7:30 (giving us 1.5 hours to get through traffic and 1 hour to get to Hood River). We made it out by 7:50 and luckily for us, the GPS routed us north to Vancouver, WA and then east, so we skipped almost all the morning traffic and we made it to Hood River around 9:30am. We would have been there sooner, but there was an accident on the freeway that had traffic stopped and backed up for about 15 - 20 minutes.

The Mount Hood Railway is a small excursion railway that runs old passenger equipment up the Hood River. We purchased tickets in the air conditioned dome car, but I'm not certain that was actually necessary, as there were only 15 people on the train, and they didn't check your tickets or prevent you from moving between cars. The train takes a 1.5 hour trip to Parkdale, stops for an hour long lunch break and then makes the return trip. During the trip up, a narrator tells you all about the region, which is primarily full of apple and pear orchards. It was a very nice and relaxing trip up, though Xander, who has been desperate to go on a train ride our entire vacation, spent the entire time coloring on a piece of paper. As there is a switchback on the way up, for the first part of the journey, the engine actually pushes the train from the back, which felt a little bit weird.

We had lunch in a small park and let the kids run around and stretch their legs a little. I had hoped that would tire them out so they would nap on the return trip, but no such luck. It just made them tired and cranky, so we had to spend the return trip trying to keep them occupied. However, there was some fun for a railfan like me on the way down, as the railway does some light freight service in addition to the excursion runs and today they stopped in Odell to pick up three freight cars. The engine parked the dome car right where we could watch it pull ahead, back into the siding and pick up the freight cars. I watched as much as I could, given that Evan wanted to run around the train. Xander seemed to enjoy watching the engine as well.

The kids were extremely tired by the time we got back to Hood River, as Evan fell asleep before we made it back to the freeway and Xander did not last much longer. About halfway to Portland, there is a huge waterfall called the Multnomah Falls. You can see them from the freeway, and there is a large parking area in between the east and west bound lanes. We pulled in and parked and Sandra walked up to the falls to take pictures while I sat in the air conditioned car with the boys (as it was 30 degrees out and they were both asleep). She was gone for about half an hour and both boys woke up right when she got back. Evan immediately worked himself into a frenzy and we had to stop and calm him down before continuing on our way.

In Portland, we hit a little bit of stopped traffic, but nothing too horrible. We stopped at a Safeway to resupply before heading back to the hotel and ordering a pizza.

West Coast - Day 12

We spent today at the zoo in Portland and in bumper to bumper traffic on the freeway. We left the hotel at 10:00am local time, but I-5 was still basically stopped until we got over the huge bridge (6 lanes each way, stacked on top of each other). We came home at 4:00pm, and again, I-5 was stopped all the way from the bridge to our exit. We have reservations on an excursion train at Mount Hood tomorrow, which is 100km outside of Portland, but we will have to go through the traffic to get out of the city, and I'm not certain when we will have to leave in order to make it in time.

Back to the zoo. We arrived, found a parking spot and put the kids in their strollers. The first section we went through had seals, sea otters and tigers, which was a weird combination of animals. Xander really enjoyed watching the tiger - he seems to like the bigger animals. We took a quick stroll through a bird area, where a bird landed on my shoulder (not that I wanted it there, especially as it crapped all over the ground immediately after I shooed it away), took a quick look at some large spiders and spent a little bit of time watching the penguins, which both kids liked.

Our next stop was the zoo railway, which is a small train that runs through the park that the zoo is in. Xander was really excited about the train ride, and it was a very relaxing ride through the forest. Near the end of the ride, Xander was sitting on my lap, and Evan wanted to take his place. He started screaming and I offered him his soother. In a fit of stubbornness, he grabbed it out of my hand and threw it out the train window. Methinks he is truly my son.

It was a long time after lunch when we got off the train, so we stopped for lunch before continuing on through the primate section. It wasn't as big a hit as in the zoo in Idaho Falls, since there was a fence and a window between us and the few monkeys - most of the exhibit was of Amazon creatures - so Evan couldn't walk right up to the monkeys. After the monkeys, we stopped at the elephants, which was another animal that Xander was excited to see. We finished off our tour by seeing a hippo and a giraffe, which Xander specifically requested to see. In the African area, we got to see them feed a couple of tortoises and a lizard, which was pretty cool.

In the same park as the zoo is a test rose garden, which Sandra wanted to go to, since she is determined to see roses on every family vacation we take, and we have yet to see a single rose. The entire garden was not in bloom, but there were some roses, so it was a success. Evan feel asleep on the five minute drive to the rose garden, and stayed asleep when I put him in his stroller, so Sandra and Xander wandered around among the rose bushes, while I stood with Evan. Once Sandra was done in the garden, we returned to our hotel area, grabbed a quick supper and then took the kids to the pool.

West Coast - Day 11

We completed our tour of the Oregon coast today. Our first stop was the Oregon State Aquarium in Newport. Likely because I was traumatized from yesterday, I decided to take the kids into the aquarium without any strollers. That turned out to be a mistake, as Evan was impossible to keep track of and Xander got tired and wanted to be carried. However, the aquarium was a hit with the kids. Evan loved looking at the fish in the tanks and even spent some time playing in the water where you could touch starfish.

Some other highlights were the giant octopus, the biggest crabs in the world (and they were HUGE), the shark tank, which went over your head, and a sea otter that really enjoyed playing with the crazy humans watching it. When we arrived it was swimming near a window with a bunch of kids in front of it. When the kids left, it darted away to follow them around the tank. It eventually came back to the window to look at us - soon it started playing with Sandra - as she would move her head around, it would mimic her. It was quite the cute little animal.

After dragging the kids out of the aquarium, we drove to Tillamook, where there is an air museum in a giant World War II blimp hangar. Sandra had found the museum in the hotel information last night and it looked like it had a good assortment of planes, which it did. Among others, there was a Bf-109, a P-38, a P-51, an F4U Corsair and an F-14. Probably the coolest thing about the museum was that all the planes were flyable (or close to flyable) and there were no roped off areas. You weren't allowed to touch the planes, but you could walk right up to any part of them. I spent a lot of time walking around the World War II planes - it was exciting to be that close to history. I was also impressed with how small most of the planes were - the Bf-109 is tiny and the P-51 is not much bigger.

For the kids, they had a bunch of old cockpit trainers that you could sit in, and those ended up being the part that Xander loved the most. He spent as much time as he could sitting in the cockpit, pretending to fly and shoot down other planes. He liked it so much that he kept getting mad at me whenever I would drag him off to look at another plane. Evan was pretty tired by this point and spent most of the time being pushed around in his stroller by Sandra, in an effort to keep him happy.

I bought the kids some gaudy toy airplanes and then we started driving towards Portland. The coast was pretty foggy at this point and it started raining, which is the first rain we've seen this entire vacation. The rain stopped as soon as we turned inland and the drive to Portland would have been uneventful, except for Evan, who spent almost all the time screaming. At one point he worked himself up so much that we had to stop so that Sandra could calm him down. He was tired and a bit hungry, which is likely what most of the problem was - in addition to his stubbornness.

We are spending the next three days in the Portland area, which means I get a couple of days where I don't have to pack and unpack the car. I reserved a suite in a Holiday Inn Express, which means we have a separate room for the boys to sleep in. That will help Evan, as for the past week he has been going to sleep very late, since we were all in the same room. It also helps me, as it means that I can sit around with the light on while the boys fall asleep, rather than spend the whole time in the dark.

West Coast - Day 10

Today was a bit frustrating at times and very tiring, but still a good day. We did not drive very far, less than 200km, as we spent the day walking around at various locations. Our first stop was at some sand dunes, which the area north of Coos Bay is famous for. I had gone through the park website last night and found what looked like the perfect trail through the dunes out of the 20 or so they had - it was easy to walk, half of it was wheelchair accessible, and it ended at the beach, where the kids could play in the sand and water. It sounds so perfect when I write it - if only it had actually turned out that way.

At first, we could not even find the wheelchair accessible area, as the main route everyone else was taking was down a very steep sand dune to a bunch of other dunes. We looked at it and decided it would be almost impossible to take the kids down that, so we searched in the other direction and found the paved path down to the dunes. It was steep, but paved, so it was not too bad. After a short walk, we arrived at the dunes, which meant that we could no longer push the strollers. This was also the point where my brain slipped out of gear. The trip down wasn't very far, and the website had said that the paved portion was half the trip, so that meant the beach was just a short trip over the dunes. I should have realized that we had not walked even close to 1/2 a mile and that the path was a mile long. So, we started walking over the dunes with Sandra carrying Evan and pulling his stroller behind her, while I carried a bag, the folded up second stroller and led Xander as he walked. Crossing the dunes was easy, after which we entered a path through some bush. A path that went on and on and on and on. I was ready to give up and go back well before we left the bush and arrived at a bunch of low hills, since it seemed like we would never reach the beach. However, Sandra was a fair ways ahead of me, so I was unable to call to her to stop. When she did stop, she scouted ahead a bit and saw only more hills, so we turned around, at which point we met a couple who told us the beach was just over the next hill and then they drug the strollers up it for us.

We spent about 40 minutes playing in the sand, except for Evan, who was so tired that he screamed whenever you put him down, so one of us had to carry him the entire time. The beach was beautiful, though, with pure white sand and nice waves. We finally decided to leave and started back with both strollers in tow. Luckily, the same couple was also on the way back and they pulled Evan's stroller, while Sandra carried him and I walked with Xander and carried his stroller. I had to bribe him with treats, but he walked all the way back to the paved section, though it took us a lot longer than everyone else. We then climbed the hill and got back in our car. All in all, it was a pretty dumb trail to take the kids on and I should have realized that if the trail was a mile long, we had a lot of walking to do (and abandoned the strollers).

After a quick lunch in the next town, we drove to a sea lion tourist trap, where there is a cave you take an elevator down to in order to see the sea lions. First, we walked to a lookout point, where you could see all the sea lions down on the rocks below, and we also saw a grey whale swimming past and surfacing every once in awhile. We then took the elevator down and explored the cave a bit. It was nice to see, but Evan had to walk around on his own, even though the cave was almost completely dark and quite sloped in places. Then, on the way back, we ended up pretty much carrying the kids, so we were both quite tired when we got back to the car.

Our next stop was a lighthouse not far from the sea lions. There was a pretty busy beach nearby, due to the fact that today is a holiday, and we had to park in the overflow parking. That meant a long walk to the path up to the lighthouse and then a very long uphill climb to the lighthouse. We put both kids in the strollers for this trip, and Evan quickly fell asleep. This beach was also beautiful, with a rocky coastline ending in a nice sandy beach - Sandra stopped and took a lot of pictures on the way up. At the top, I rested, while Sandra took a bunch of pictures and played with Xander a bit. Then we took the path down to our car, where Sandra managed to transfer Evan to his car seat without waking him up.

We then drove to Newport and found a seaside Best Western to stay in. After a quick supper in the restaurant, Sandra put Evan to sleep, while Xander and I walked out to the beach to play in the sand. We had a good time, even though the beach is huge - it took us five minutes to walk from the entrance to the water. While we were playing in the sand, a couple of guys arrived and started flying model airplanes from the smooth sand on the beach, which was pretty exciting to watch. Anyway, hopefully tomorrow is lot more relaxing, as I don't know how many days like today I can take.