I began writing about our recent CA trip and somehow it turned into a VERY long post, so it’s now a 3-parter so you don’t fall asleep in the middle :)
This weekend Mr. C and I took off for California for a short but much needed vacation. I think I, especially, may have been a bit stressed and “short” the past couple weeks, so I was very glad to get away. Usually a CA trip includes one day of Disneyland, something a bit more relaxing for another day, and lastly we tend to hit the beach the morning we leave. This trip followed that plan mostly, but it felt very different than other trips because it was a bit more unpredictable. We had so much fun but unfortunately it was also so much harder to come back this time.
We began our drive early Saturday morning a bit later than planned. I wonder if it’s even possible to leave on time for a road trip. In my experience it’s just not possible, no matter how hard you try. We still made great time though and arrived at Newport Beach around noon. By the time we got there, I was so very carsick, worse than I’d ever been actually. I could barely eat my lunch, and you know there’s an issue then! The restaurant we went to was along the boardwalk and the food (the little I ate) was great. They had the most amazing homemade pickles and everyone knows pickles are just the best. We wandered around a bit and then bought our tickets for whale watching. I’m the sort of person who likes guarantees so I struggled a bit with the idea of floating around in the ocean just waiting for a whale to surface. But, we’ve wanted to go whale watching for awhile so it seemed like the perfect time.
Getting on the boat wasn’t exactly what we had planned. First of all, even though we got there about an hour early, it seemed that we were the last ones on the boat because pushing to the front seemed to be the theme for the day. By the time we got on the boat there was only standing room outside and the idea of standing for 3 hours didn’t seem too appealing. We found a booth inside and loaded up on Dramamine (I took a second pill once I saw the big metal sign about getting sick outside instead of in the restrooms, leading me to assume that getting sick was pretty common). We hadn’t been on the boat long when the captain announced there were a slew of dolphins ahead so we rushed out to the deck. A few seconds later there were more dolphins than I’d ever seen in my life. They raced along the side of the boat, blending into the waves at times and jumping out of the water at other times. They were so beautiful and it was unlike anything I’d seen before. They swam with us for quite awhile, allowing us to take a ridiculous amount of photos. Here’s a few of my favorites.
That was all the excitement for awhile. Then we just drove/floated around looking for whales. We hadn’t seen anything for awhile and I began to think that maybe we’d be one of the unlucky groups to not have a whale sighting that day. I prayed for a whale, any whale, to swim over to our boat. God must not have been too busy that day because a few minutes later a blue whale was spotted! We saw it blow and that was about it, but shortly after we saw 2 fin whales, a mother and her baby. They stayed around the boat and surfaced every 10 minutes or so. It would have been great if they had just jumped out of the water so I could get a really great look at them, but from what I saw they were huge and I really appreciated them giving us a show!
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| The blow from the Blue Whale, this was all I got of him |
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| Back of a Fin Whale |
As we headed back the sun was beginning to set. Mr. C and I stood on the deck for the ride back, enjoying the breeze. When we were almost back to port we spotted some pelicans and these super cute napping sea lions. The sea lions looked like it took every ounce of their strength to stay awake and stare at us. What a life!
We finished our evening by driving in circles (in a car this time) until we found a great Mexican restaurant to try out. The restaurant shared it’s name with the last name of a couple of our favorite people so we figured that was a sign :) It must have been because dinner and our margaritas were pretty great! I’d love to post a picture of my dinner but you know how that goes….I get my food and the idea of taking a photo is the last thing I’m thinking of!
Next up: Disneyland!
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