2016 Family Adventure - Part 2: Old Sturbridge Village

November 12, 2016 1:57 pm

The first order of business after our long train ride was a day off. So we spent a day just hanging around the house letting the girls run around the back yard.

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I'm sure you weren't, but in case you were wondering, all the pictures on this trip were taken either with a phone or using my new 18-135mm zoom lens that I purchased specifically as a just-take-one traveling lens. I'm fairly pleased with its performance though it's not as nice as my 50mm prime.

The next day it was off to Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts. A preserved / restored rural New England village representing life from the 1790s to the 1840s. On the way there we had to make a pit stop to find some Dramamine for Heather, who was becoming carsick.

When we arrived we first ate lunch at the Oliver Wight Tavern. Then it was into the past:

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The sawmill is always interesting. There was a lot of ingenuity in these old water-powered automation systems. Kind of amazing what it takes to bootstrap a society. 2016-10-05_14-07-46

Here's Jess taking a break next to the covered bridge. The covered bridge doesn't usually have the interior fencing. They were setting up for a town-wide production of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and the fencing in the bridge seemed to be to keep the audience on the edges, presumably so they wouldn't be trampled by a galloping horse. Side note: I read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow on the train ride home. It's kind of dumb. I guess it's a good representation of the "Have you ever heard the story of the...." kind of ghost tale though. 2016-10-05_14-31-19

I took this picture as Heather and Corinne were chasing chickens around the town green. The chickens had all hopped off the side of this porch and Corinne was getting ready to follow. 2016-10-05_14-50-29

Hanging out at the general store eating a snack. 2016-10-05_14-58-41

The water wheel that operates the gristmill. 2016-10-05_15-14-58

Squirrel! 2016-10-05_15-53-50

Corinne was enamored of all the animals, but, unlike the chickens, the sheep didn't run away. 2016-10-05_15-57-41a 2016-10-05_15-58-52

After our adventure in the past we made our first Friendly's stop for dinner and ice-cream (and it's only like half a mile from the Old Sturbridge Village entrance). Heather chose the build-your-own kids sundae with mint chocolate-chip ice-cream, strawberries, cookie dough, marshmallow, and rainbow sprinkles. She thought it was amazing. I stuck with the Reese's Pieces Sundae. 2016-10-05_18-26-45

Then back home for another day of rest before our adventure-within-an-adventure: Washington, D.C.

2016 Family Adventure - Part 1: The Train

November 5, 2016 2:11 pm

We're finally getting caught up around the house. So I can start blogging our big adventure. Our big family adventure this year was a train trip to the East Coast.

We loaded up on the California Zephyr in Martinez, CA on September 30. The Martinez station is fairly nice. It seems to have been recently renovated and the parking is free.

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We booked a private sleeper room and a roomette since 4 people can't sleep in a single room (you could fit 4 in the "family bedroom," but then you don't have a private bathroom/shower).

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Heather was super excited to sleep in the top bunk. She and I stayed in the roomette while Jess and Corinne stayed in the regular room.

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However, Corinne and Heather completely changed personalities / temperaments while on the train. We called them "train children." They were just...different. We had a long stop in Denver so we got off the train to walk around a bit. Which was when we decided maybe Heather was getting motion-sick. So we bought some Dramamine for her, which helped her significantly, but she was still a "train child."

Meals generally involved Jess and I attempting to cajole some food into their mouths while they acted loony. Watching shows on phones was about the only way we could get Corinne to sit still.

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The California Zephyr runs to Chicago at which point we had a long layover before boarding the Lake Shore Limited out to Springfield, MA. We took the opportunity to walk around Chicago for a bit.

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It was a bit cloudy so we postponed going up in Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) until the return trip. But we did get some authentic Chicago-style pizza at Giordano's.

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Okay, the perspective makes the pizza look bigger than it really was, but it was still impressive.

After dinner we hung out at the station--in the Metropolitan Lounge and wandering around to stretch our legs. The newly renovated Metropolitan Lounge is quite nice with plenty of space. The dedicated "Kids Corner" was very helpful in keeping the girls contained and entertained. I also took the opportunity to use their new showers which was quite nice.

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Our train out of Chicago didn't leave until 9:30pm, so the girls were pretty exhausted, but we got them changed in to pajamas before boarding so they could go straight to sleep.

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Then it was on to Springfield. Mom and Dad picked us up at the station and we were glad to be in New England and off the train.

A big difference between this trip and the one we did in 2011 was the timeliness of the trains. Amtrak must have worked out a new agreement with the freight companies or something because we were almost always either ahead of schedule or on time. Maybe I'm mis-remembering, but it also seemed like last time we always waited at every station until the scheduled departure time. But this time I think if the stop didn't have a real station (meaning people couldn't show up and buy a ticket at the last minute) the train would leave as soon as all expected passengers had deboarded/boarded; which really helped with the time performance.

Thanksgiving Road Trip 2015

December 29, 2015 2:59 pm

For Thanksgiving this year we drove down to Texas to visit with Jess' family. Christopher & Jenny and their kids were going to be down from Colorado and Cameron was home from school. Chance & Rachel and their kids live in the general area as well as Colton; so it was a pseudo-family-reunion kind of thing.

2015 - Texas - Travel Map

We had originally intended to leave Livermore the morning of November 19, but Heather's preschool had their Thanksgiving Feast that day around noon. So we stayed for that and left immediately after.

Heather made the front-page of our local paper when the kids were singing the songs they've been learning:

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Oatman

Once the feast was over we loaded up in the van and drove to Needles, CA for the night. On Friday we loaded up and drove into Oatman, AZ to see the burros. Heather was a little apprehensive, but it was still a good way to get out of the car and stretch for a bit.

Grabbing some ice-cream at the Oatman Hotel

Lowell Observatory

From Oatman it was on to Flagstaff, AZ. We grabbed dinner (at Chick-Fil-A) and then headed up to the Lowell Observatory. They have public viewing and talks each evening. We got to see the moon up close through their largest telescope and we saw Uranus as well (even with a building-mounted telescope it still only looks like a fuzzy blue dot).

Heather with the Clark Telescope behind her.

We also listened to a talk about Pluto. The Lowell Observatory is where Pluto was discovered. In July of this year the New Horizons Probe completed it's 9.5 year journey to flyby Pluto and take the best pictures of it the world has ever seen. Heather was actually somewhat interested in the talk, but she really wanted to interrupt every few minutes to ask unrelated questions or make statements. They were always still space related though. I had to threaten to leave if she didn't wait to ask her questions at the end. She reluctantly agreed to do so. Then she asked the presenter what hit Uranus to tip it sideways.

Sunset Crater Volcano and Wupatki

The next day we drove North to see Sunset Crater Volcano and Wupatki National Monuments. Sunset Crater is one out of a string of dormant cinder cone volcanoes in Northern Arizona. North of the volcano a ways is an old pueblo from the 1100's.

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Heather playing in the dirt in the sports arena at Wupatki

By the time we finished at the National Monuments and headed back out the East side of Flagstaff the sun was already setting. We drove to Albuquerque, NM and stayed the night there and then drove straight on to Frisco, TX. I had more stops planned, but by Albuquerque we were already almost a full day behind schedule, so we skipped the remaining stops.

Thanksgiving in Frisco

We spent November 22 through November 29 in Frisco. We went to the Zoo with Christopher & Jenny and kids on Wednesday, but mostly just hung out.

Dr. Christopher reads "Human Body Theater" to kiddos

Cameron and Christina made adobo for dinner one night. Here it looks like there's a problem.

Christopher apparently said something humorous

We did get Johnson Family pictures taken while we were there and one of just our little family as well:

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Capulin Volcano

When our week in Frisco was up we began our long trip back home. Weather looked clear so we opted for the Northern route up through Colorado and across Utah and Nevada. We stayed the first night in Amarillo, TX and then angled up across the corner of New Mexico. We passed by Capulin Volcano National Monument on the way. We had to drive down a snow-covered road to get to it, but the park entrance had been plowed by the personnel running the monument.

Unfortunately, they hadn't plowed the road that runs up to and around the rim of the (dormant) volcano so we couldn't go up and have a look around.

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Colorado Springs

Our destination that evening was Christopher & Jenny's house in Colorado Springs, CO. We stayed a couple of nights there and gave Heather the chance to play in snow.

Arches National Park

We drove out the West side of Colorado and spent the night in Moab, UT. The next morning we drove through the first third or so of Arches National Park before continuing on our way to Lehi, UT.

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We bought a kangaroo rat stuffed animal for Corinne at the gift shop

Getting in and out constantly was annoying, so I started making use of the moon roof

La Sal Mountains looking South from Arches

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From Arches we drove up to Lehi, UT to spend a night at the house of some friends from college. Then it was on to Winnemucca, NV and home the day after that.

It was a lot of driving which was made bearable by having the Raspberry Pi running Kodi and hooked in to the van's entertainment system. We had movies and TV shows to watch to keep Heather occupied as we drove across hundreds of miles of nothingness. I caught up on all my podcasts which could be played through the front speakers using Bluetooth while Heather watched stuff in the back with headphones. I'm not sure how my family growing up survived driving across the country from Connecticut to Utah and back without such conveniences.

Monterey Bay 2015

September 5, 2015 9:09 pm

We went down to Monterey for the weekend of August 21, 22, and 23.

I took that Friday off from work and we drove down mid-day to avoid morning rush hour traffic. When we got there we grabbed lunch at Point Pinos Grill, which was considerably nicer than I was expecting considering the prices. After lunch we walked across the street to the Point Pinos Lighthouse.

This picture would have turned out better if the sky weren't so heavily overcast, but not much I could do about that.

After touring the lighthouse we headed to our hotel room at Asilomar Conference Grounds. Once we were checked in we walked down to the beach (Asilomar State Beach) to do some playing.

I dug a hole, because why not?

And Heather stood in it, because why not?

We hung out in our little beach shelter (which worked fairly well overall):

We walked along the beach and dabbled in the water:

This was Heather's usual reaction to the waves coming in:

I tried to take some artsy pictures of the waves stacked up as they came in:

Then we headed up to the room for a dinner of hastily retrieved McDonald's; eaten on the floor (there never seems to be a good place to eat food in a hotel room).

Saturday we eventually made it out the door and down to Monterey's main drag. We ate breakfast at Coco's which was....not a highlight of the trip. It could have been a smoother experience, but the food was fine.

With food taken care of we walked down to Monterey Bay Aquarium to spend most of the day. Public Service Announcement: Buy your tickets online and print them out. We walked straight in the door while a line down the block was waiting to buy tickets.

Heather got to see some baby moon jellies up close as we walked in.

Heather, Jess, and Corinne sat in a giant clam:

And some more jellies, because they seem to make the most successful pictures at aquariums for some reason:

After completely wearing everyone out at the aquarium we headed to a local pizza joint, Gianni's, for dinner. It sounded like a sit-down and order kind of place, but it turned out to be a place-an-order and seat yourself kind of place. Which would have been fine, except they were packed and there was nowhere to sit. And Heather was DONE with the day and couldn't take being in the restaurant. So we converted our order to takeout and I took Heather back to the van to decompress while Jess waited for it to be ready.

Once it was ready she called me and we drove around to pick it up (couldn't drive up earlier because there would have been nowhere to park). That worked well for Heather and we had another dinner on the floor of our hotel room. The food was good though. Probably would have been better not stuffed into takeout containers and driven across town though.

On Sunday we got up and eventually got packed up and out of the hotel. We headed down to Carmel-by-the-sea for breakfast at Em Le's. They have famous deep-fried french toast:

Em Le's is just a tiny little restaurant tucked into the corner of a building. There's only seating for maybe 25 people at a time. The food was really good; give it a try if you're in the area.

See with the Point Pinos Grill, Gianni's, and Em Le's? I tried to find unique, local places to eat; but it's tough not knowing what to expect when you have little kids. Don't want to unintentionally go somewhere too upscale or non-kid-friendly (Em Le's was close on these criteria, but we didn't have any problems).

After eating we went down to Carmel Beach for a few hours, but didn't take any pictures this time around. Then we loaded up into the van and headed home. Which took much longer than it should have. I was expecting weekend traffic heading back into the Bay Area so we left at like 2, but it was terrible. So try to avoid that. We ended up needing to stop for food so we found a Habit Grill (which is a chain, but I hadn't seen one before) which was decent.

April Stuff (a.k.a. Johnsons in Livermore)

July 3, 2015 9:42 pm

Waaaaaay back in April, some of my family came out for Corinne's blessing. My parents came for a week, and my brother Christopher and his son Miles were here for that weekend. I came across some nice pictures, so here they are!

Heather and Miles, up at the Redwood Valley Railway:

We had a picnic dinner at a local park one evening. As I recall, it was windy and chilly, but the kids had a blast on the playground.

After Christopher and Miles left, but while my parents were still in town, we went to Muir Woods. It was pretty fantastic. Unfortunately, none of the pictures with my parents came out very well, but they were there!

And to round out our coverage of April, Kyle and Heather made this:(I think Kyle did most of the work, but it's pretty clear who his muse was.)