We’re going to be blogging lightly for the month of August, posting frequent photo postcards with a snippet of text. View the entire summer postcard series here.
Our toddler reading on vacation while riding a play horse, sharing a special cozy moment with Great Grandma, and keeping her baby-doll occupied. Especially on vacation, we’re a family of readers.
Last week we traveled around wine country sharing our beautiful home with my parents who were visiting from the East Coast.
One day to beat the heat wave sweeping Sonoma County, which I guess could technically be called summer, we headed to the shore hoping to see interesting sea birds and a colony of harbor seals with their pups at Goat Rock Beach.
This beach is particularly interesting because it’s where the Russian River intersects the ocean. Below you can see the river on the right flowing westward into the sea on the left.
The two sides are distinctly different not just in the salt content of the water, but also in the clarity, color and turbidity. During the summer months a sandbar builds up along the beach, separating the Russian River from the Pacific Ocean, making an idea location for harbor seal pupping.
The smooth sand and interesting driftwood also make for a fun place to explore.
Any time we travel to the beach we bring several field guides so we can identify the animals and plants that we encounter. Here are the best ones we’ve found, our favorite beach field guides:
– California Seashore Life: An Introduction to Familiar Plants and Animals (A Pocket Naturalist Guide)
– Pacific Coast Bird Finder: A Pocket Guide to Some Frequently Seen Birds
– Pacific Coastal Birds (Peterson Flash Guide). Evidently this laminated field guide is out of print, although there are several others in the series that are still available
To ensure that we always have these guides with us on impromptu beach trips, I try to keep them packed away in our trunk all summer long (along with our picnic blanket and sand toys). With the beach just a half-hour away, we find the cool ocean breeze to be a needed reprieve on hot summer days. We want to be able to hit the beach in a moments notice. We love California Living!
We so enjoyed our girls road trip through Northern California up to Oregon to visit my aunt.
We’re now in recovery mode, so we’re taking the rest of the week off from the blog. We’ll see you next week when we’re feeling more rested!
I love a good road trip.
Load up the car, head out for a long weekend, experience something new: count me in!
I’m sure you’ll find it absolutely shocking that I haven’t been on one in, oh, about four years, imagine that. What with the whole pregnancy and parenting thing, we just haven’t gotten around to it.
This weekend we’re throwing caution to the wind, shaking it up and taking a road trip. A mother-daughter road trip through Northern California up to Southern Oregon to visit my aunt.
We’re leaving Daddy at home for some very needed R&R with a clean house and a pantry stocked full of gluten-laden treats. He’s under strict orders to live it up and, um, clean up after himself (got that, honey!) since my gluten-intolerant ass is leaving the premises.
Now the question remains, did we forget anything? Because I don’t think we packed enough stuff.
We haven’t even gotten the luggage, cooler and purse in the car yet. Oh, and the kid! Can’t forget her!
Enjoy your weekend and we’ll see you back here on Tuesday.
Over and out! The girls are heading out…
How often in our lives are we able to scream at the top of our lungs?!
To just let go of our inhibitions and societal norms, and cheer with no one hushing us or telling us to take it outside?!
We enjoyed a whole afternoon of screaming, ringing bells, and dancing around cheering on the cyclists in the Tour of the Gila.
Yes, the toddler is ringing her bell directly in David’s ear. He’s such a patient dad.
It’s a nice reminder for the whole family to find more opportunities to scream at the top of our lungs every now and then.
