Our final push up the west coast, we spent the last month and a half of the trip in three places, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. We wish we could of spent more time in each and certainly plan on visiting them again. Northern California
Of course San Francisco (bay area) is near and dear to our hearts because it's where Jen and I met and spent our last no-kid years. It's a spectacular city with everything you could want, including many of our friends. We didn't to visit everyone we wanted (sorry everyone) because we had to get to Portland for a meeting...
I just love this picture because it shows where I really like to get gas, right along side the truckers. Of course they give me no respect but keep trying to buddy up with them;-)
Every year since Taylor was a baby we visited our favorite beach in the world, Santa Cruz. For some reason every year we go we forget to bring bathing suits, but we end up going into the water anyway. The water on the West coast is always really cold, so it takes a long time to get used to it but the kids played in the waves for hours.
I love this picture I took because it really encapsulates much of what Santa Cruz has become over the last decade. It used to be a cool sleepy surfer town, with a fun boardwalk, amusement park, and great simple fair restaurants. Now like much of the West coast it's prohibitively expensive for anyone but the rich to live there. So today the beaches are full of middle ages surfers, or the only people that can afford to live there. I saw numerous families with small kids, all in wet suits surfing together... many of the kids were less than 5, one Dad was surfing with his toddler on his shoulders, totally awesome dude.
In all the years we lived in California we never visited the famous Mystery Spot. But of course we followed the one rule we set at the beginning on the trip, if there is something cool, fun or adventuresome to do in a place, WE DO IT! And as a tourist, when in Santa Cruz, you've gotta visit the Mystery Spot.
But I gotta say, that place was really weird, we saw stuff I can't explain and don't really want to talk about. The "mystery" of the place is something to do with physics, and how objects behave in a small section of that woods. You can see Jen below leaning off this table, there is not special camera angle, in any other place Jen would of fallen off that table. Her expression is the same expression we have while she's is doing it... it's really strange.
The other mysterious part was how certain areas warped your mind's perception of how objects looked. You can see her that Cam and Taylor look that same height, this only happens in this one spot. If they move 20 feet away, the height equality disappears. They did several demonstrations with the crowd to further demonstrate this mind warp.
The Sopers, Jen's good friends.
Jen's good friend Lorien's kids.
Our kids next to Jerry Garcia's (Greatful Dead) house, which is also two houses down from where I lived in San Francisco.
Jen next to one of her childhood house (one of 23 houses she lived in)
Portland Oregon
Portland is one of the neatest cities we visited, for sure top 10. If it didn't rain every day, we would of considered settling there. During the trip our kids were fortunate enough to participate in three birthday parties, this one is for my best friend's little girl, Quinny. They rented a bouncy house room for an hour... that was fun!
Me hanging out with JB's oldest, and super stud athlete, Sam. Sam is 10 btw, not the 15 year old he looks like. He schooled me in one-on-one basketball, I plan on practicing and getting a rematch soon.
JB, Quinny, and my kids.
Seattle Washington
Seattle, like Portland, is a special city, of which we would of considered living if there wasn't so much rain. But we really didn't have any idea how interesting, diverse and fun Seattle was. We ended up staying there for more than two weeks. The weather swung wildly, as shown here. We work up with 5 inches of snow.
Experiments with Campbells hair.
Hiking in Seattle, the trees are amazing... and quite large
Pike Place Market is a special and unique place. It started back in the sixties, and almost went under several times. But the premise it was started and still follows today is simple, it's a producers market, if you didn't produce it you can't sell it. There is vegetables from farmers, fish from fishermen, jewelry from artists, chocolate, cheese, clothes, and so much more. We frequently bought fish and veggies there, and had them for dinner.
We took a super interesting food tour of Seattle, where we got a behind the scenes look at many of the restaurants, and got to sample food all day.
We took a boat to Orca Island, of the many islands close to Seattle. It rained all day and we couldn't see much, but the ferry boat ride over was the best part.
