Back and Relaxed - Carmel, 2010

We had an incredible time in Carmel this year. I took about 400+ pictures so I have been trying to sort through them in the last few days and deciding which ones to share. As a disclaimer, I can't narrow it down very well so there will be A LOT of photos in this post. :)
**You can click on any of the photos if you want to see them in full size.**

Carson did awesome for the entire time we were gone. He didn't even notice we weren't here. He took all his naps, slept fine through the night and had fun playing with Grandma. That made it so much easier to relax while we were gone.

On the trip we did a lot of new things and were just basically free. It sort of felt like I had forgot my purse or something, like you feel naked when you don't have something that's always with you. It took awhile to stop feeling like we forgot Carson in the car. 

Basically we just chilled, went sightseeing and gorged ourselves with tons of food. Bob took us to some fancy cheese shop...we each ate over a pound of cheese alone in three days. Yummmmm. We had our favorite cake in Monterey, drank beer and wine, made dinner at home and took full advantage of the espresso machine in our house. Luckily it also had some decaf or Bob and I would have been wired the entire time. Oh, I got to experience my first Trader Joe's too!

It was surprisingly really cold the entire time we were there and rained a lot too. Luckily I decided to bring my big winter coat, scarf and gloves because I actually need them! I was completely bundled up the entire time.

We usually fly into San Jose and drive an hour down to Carmel. This time Bob asked if we wanted to stop at a redwood forest on the way down as a detour. We were all over that! It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. It literally felt like you had been plucked from the real world and dropped on some crazy planet. It had the most enchanted feeling. Everything was SO green and everything around you was so captivating. I took a ton of photos there...here are some of my favorites.

 It was hard for me to get the actual scale of the trees in one picture because I didn't have my wide-angle lens with me. I did take this picture with my phone to send Carson. That tree Carl is standing in front of is 270 feet tall!

 

I was going to take a picture of Carl under this one big tree that was split in two at the bottom. Then he yelled at me for never being in the pictures so I set up the self-timer and jumped in.

Then he made me kiss him. Yuck. :)

We found lots of these banana slugs. Apparently they are the mascot of Santa Cruz, but they were nasty. They stood out everywhere and were cool to look at though.

 

One of my favorite things were all the big triangle-shaped spider webs that were covered in rain drops. They looked so awesome.

And there were a lot of different kinds and colors of mushrooms all over. They all looked like flowers or clams. And all of the ground was covered in clovers. We never found a four leaf one though.

We took turns under the huge overhanging trees.

 

 

There were all kinds of other plants growing on the big trees that had fallen on the ground.

Then it was time to go check out our rental house. It turned out to be more than awesome. It had a gourmet kitchen, beautiful furnishings, three patios and much more. It was really nice!

Then we headed to Point Lobos. That's the local natural reserve that we have gone to every year. It is so pretty. They have what is called "seal island" out on one of the points. It is impossible to see them with your bare eyes, but you can sure hear them! Especially when the wind picks up just right. I finally got somewhat of a decent picture with my telephoto so now I know what was out there.

This area is mostly all cliffs so you stay up top instead of going to a beach.

There is this ice plant all over there. I absolutely love the colors!

 On Saturday we drove down Big Sur and stopped at a few beaches. This was the only time it was actually sunny and we all loved feeling the sun. We hiked around and spent time just laying in the sand. They had three huge storms just before we got there so it was still really windy and the waves were huge for that area. 

 

 

At one point we were all laying in the sand and I looked over to snap this shot of Penelope next to me and Bob perched up on the rocks. Aaaahhhhhhh........

There were really cool big turkey vultures that flew over us the whole time. I got this shot of one.
We saw three whales while we were at the Bixby Bridge also.

 

 We were hoping to be there for the sunset, but it was too cloudy to see much of anything. This is what the sky looked like that night.

And on a different spot that same night:

Sunday was really rainy. We went down to Carmel Beach to walk around. My umbrella was pretty pointless and I had to come hope to re-dry my hair. Then we came home, finished what was left of all our amazing food and took off back up to San Jose. 

It was really great, but we came home pretty tired. We stayed up super late (for us), didn't sleep great in the bed there and still woke up at our normal time. We are still trying to catch up. Tuesday was Carl's birthday. This was a wonderful way to celebrate! He took Monday off too so he's have a day to relax before going back.

So, if you got this far, thanks for reading! I told you it would be looooooooooong.