Our new Favorite spot- Lovers point park

We had visited this park in Monterey right after San realized she could only limp along for a few days. Lovers point park is perfect to park right near the beach, get down just 15 steps and get your feet wet in the waves. 

When the BIL's family visited, we made another trip to the park..

We made it in the evening and it was overcast and almost started drizzling after we spent an hour at the beach.. so we made it back home with a nice dinner at Los Gatos in a Mexican place. 

Here are some pictures from the outing..

I started doing a yoga pose.. but the wind was stronger than last visit and I was not that confident of my balance.. so abandoned the attempt halfway..

Then a gull came and sat next to me.. very close to me. Must be a very sociable gull.. so I took a Gullfie..

and here is the "making of the Gullfie" shot from Jr. 

the star of the show..

I think it has been trained to pose.. maybe it expected me to hand it food after posing for photos.. dont know!

We had fun in the waves..

We will be making many more visits to this place over the years is our guess.

Love this beach!

Lovers point Park - Monterey

Given San is still on the restricted ankle regimen and wanted to go somewhere, anywhere.. we went to the easiest accessible beach, at Lovers point park in Monterey.

It is a 90 minute drive from here, but totally worth the drive. The weather was perfect there, a good 15 degrees cooler. We parked right next to the park, walked around the park and went down to the beach and got our feet wet.. 

My photographer is getting better every day!

There is a carpet of pink flowers everywhere, which makes for great pictures! 

we had to dry our feet before wearing shoes again.. so we just sat on a bench and watched the waves and seagulls and the incredibly human friendly gophers that were everywhere! they even beg for food on two legs and that was scary to watch!

I also got to climb on the rocks here and there and try yoga poses. Not recommending this to others as it was a risky move.. was in the moment and shocked my wife by trying to do this on top of the rock.. by the time she started to protest in terror, was out of the pose.. 

Long exposure trick on the waves.. 

slowly getting the hang of this.. have to go wider as the long exposure adjustment crops the picture!

Some pictures from the park and beach!

and what is a blog post without a short video?

Had a lot of fun in two hours and drove back! Definitely recommend it for a short walk in a scenic setting!

Kayaking in Monterey bay

A few weeks before we hit Lemony Snicketts in this house, there was a nice trip to Monterey Bay to Kayak in the open ocean for a few hours.

It was during Daddy's dedication to Yoga getting in the way of taking the kids out on weekends.. what with doing double classes on Saturday you see..

So one afternoon the kids go "Daddy, you have to take us somewhere today!" So off we went to Monterey, after being inspired by our friends who took their little one through this adventure just a few weeks prior.

It was 63 F out there and the water was cold, but we had a light breeze going and didn't get too wet and had a ton of fun.

Our tour guide was a student who had immigrated from Russia and she really loved the water and the creatures in the sea.

After giving us a crash course on Kayaking, we went on the water in three teams of two. The little one insisted on doing everything herself and she did an outstanding job! There were times when I was just sitting there letting her kayak me out.. it was fun.

We saw Seals, Sea otters playing..

We got to handle starfish and also learned that nothing sticks well to the top surface of the starfish because it has a bunch of hooks that are active. We put the starfish on our head and it gripped on to our hair (in my case whatever was left of it!)

There was one small mishap! We were advised not to bring a camera on the trip as there was a high probability of getting it wet. Having taken cameras safely through other adventures, parasailing included, I decided to take the camera in a small pocket in my life jacket. The camera survived a safe return to the beach without getting wet.

In my eagerness to tip our guide before leaving, I put the life jacket, which happened to have the camera in the pocket on the life jacket rack and went towards the car. The cleanup crew quickly came, dunked each jacket in a bucket of cold water and put it on another rack to drip dry! I almost cried when I realized what had happened.

Luckily the camera started working again after drying it out at home with a hair dryer over time. It still works but has a white balance issue. Maybe more drying will fix it. For now it has become an art camera!

Next time.. special ziplock bag for camera going on such trips and curbing the enthusiasm for tipping good tour guides.

Would strongly recommend Kayaking on Monterey bay as a family outing.