yesterday, this tiny human turned eight. she’s turning into a super cool medium sized human, right before my eyes. she is adventurous and curious and smart and thoughtful and funny and creative. she loves wildlife and nature and art and minecraft and camping and hiking and rock climbing. she wants to be a geologist or […]
derek
whale watching and mission touring.(california adventures with new gramma).

for our big cool adventure while my mom was here, we planned a whale watching trip. derek found a groupon, and even though it was late in the migration season, there were still daily whale sightings and we had high hopes of seeing some cool stuff. look at everyone, all excited for our trip: everything […]
new gramma visits california beaches.

my mom had big plans to come visit us in june in yosemite national park. but, when western new york winter lingered on and on and on, she looked into changing her flight to come see us while we were on the california coast. she joined us while we were at thornhill broome and then […]
channel islands visitor center.

so. the story goes, that anna and i had a trip booked to camp on anacapa islands in the channel islands national park. but, just before we were set to go, we chickened out. an earthquake. no shelter from sun. aggressive birds. no internet. no escape until our ferry came back. winds. low temps at […]
ronald reagan presidential library.

at each new location, we do a lot of research about things to do in the area, and then we plan accordingly, timing the things derek wants to do on the weekends and the things he’s less interested in for our weekday activities. while we were at thornhill broome, the top item on his agenda […]
soledad canyon happenings.

after our two weeks at california state beaches with no hookups, we headed inland for a break at soldedad canyon thousand trails rv park, to clean, do laundry, recover, do some rv upgrades, and so on. as always, when we find ourselves in less exciting places, we try to have a bit of routine with […]
adventures in los angeles

we aren’t superfans of big cities. at least i’m not. i mean. the history and architecture is often pretty cool. and there’s usually so many great places to eat. and museums. but the people. and the traffic. ugh. after our two beach weeks with no hookups, we moved a bit inland to a thousand trails […]
leo carrillo state beach.

beach number two on our california state beach tour was leo carrillo in malibu (which meant we got to do a bit of l.a. traffic driving on our way north). we got in pretty late, and got set up, and then derek had to pack for a morning flight back to north carolina for the […]
san elijo state beach.

after wilderness lakes, it was finally time to kick off our long stretch of california state beaches. derek booked us at four different beaches for five out of seven weeks in march and april. the first one up was san elijo, a little bit north of san diego, near encinitas, california. our campground was up […]
wilderness lakes stuff.

i’m way way behind in blogging, but we haven’t had very good internet lately. so, to kick things off, i’m taking us way back, three campgrounds ago… after our time in palm desert, we spent a week in menifee, california at wilderness lakes. (we stayed there for a few days just before christmas last year). […]