while perusing pinterest and other pockets of the internet for interesting things to do with kids in california, a little town called solvang kept popping up. basically, from what i understand, it was settled/invented/created by some danish folks from the midwest, who wanted a winter retreat in warm and sunny california. its now pretty much […]
museum
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
palm desert, california.
we just moved on from our two week stay in palm desert, california. it’s pretty much a retirement/resort community, in the coachella valley region, just south of joshua tree national park. we settled in amongst the palm trees and began our stay. we found out there was a weekly “yard” sale in the park, so […]
tucson (museum) time.
after we left mesa, we moved on down the road a bit to tucson, where we stayed in the driveway of a boondockers welcome member (in the middle of the desert) for a few days. there was so much to do in tucson, it was hard to narrow it down, but in the end, we […]
mesa miscellany. (plus some yuma).
when we parted ways with the grandlidboms, they headed back to nc, and we made our way to arizona. our first stop was in yuma, just across the border. we had a quick little stay in the front yard of a random strangers house, who we found via boondockerswelcome.com. (basically, it’s a subscription service that […]
the hoover dam
for our final field trip with my parents, we went to the hoover dam. we had learned a bit about it at the springs preserve, but we were excited to check the place out up close and in person. firstly, there were WAAAAAAY more people there than i ever would have imagined. we tried to […]
las vegas springs preserve
our second major field trip while new gramma and grampa terry were in town was the las vegas springs preserve. i didn’t know stuff like this existed in las vegas, but i guess there’s probably families who live here who need places to go that aren’t casinos. we learned a lot about the history of […]