In the words of Katy Perry, “You could travel the world, but nothing comes close to the Golden Coast”. With the strong pop culture influence, the whole family was excited to experience what California had to offer.
Arriving in October, we found ourselves beginning our California road trip with a focus on trees. We had seen some amazingly large trees along Canada’s pacific coast and were excited to discover that some the oldest living trees in the world were in California just a short, and beautiful, drive from Death Valley. We spent a night in Lone Pine and then wound our way up, up, up to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine National Forest. This place is a gem, not only for its amazing views of the Sierra Navada Mountains, but also for its fantastic visitor centre and of course, the amazing trees. We learned about dendrochronology (the scientific method of dating tree rings) and the kids enjoyed hands-on exercises to test their tree-aging skills. We then walked a 1 mile loop to see trees known to be upwards of 5000 yrs old. They looked quite old indeed; all twisted and haggard, though commanding awe and respect. The identity of the individual oldest tree is a well-kept secret to protect it from harm, so we decided to ask the trees themselves imagining they could tell us about all that they’ve lived to see.
At this point in our trip, we had to alter our plans due to wild fires. We had planned to visit Sequoia National Park to see the largest trees (by mass) in the world, but had to instead rearrange a week of accommodations when the park closed shortly before our arrival. We decided to see if we could reschedule our time at Yosemite and were very lucky to find a campground near the West Gate with availability. We headed north and camped for one smoky night in the ski town of Mammoth Lakes. The next day, with very expensive, trendy-ski-town, pour-over coffees in hand, we drove into Yosemite National Park from the east along the long, winding, beautiful park road. We had picnic lunch on the shores of the (then) quiet Yosemite River where the kids had a blast boulder hopping. We found an info centre and scored some Junior Ranger books before leaving the park to find our campground. That evening, we crowded around a laptop to watch the movie Free Solo, a documentary about a man who climbed the El Capitan granite cliff without ropes. Our second day in the park was spent in the valley where we saw Half Dome (although through smoke), enjoyed a short hike, and took in El Capitan while hearing a park Ranger talk about rock climbing its faces. Through telescopes we could see climbers with all of their gear making the multi-day ascent. Having just seen the Free Solo documentary, we were all in awe of this massive rock wall and the feat of ascending its face. On our way back to our campsite, we stopped to hike down into the middle of a valley known for its sequoia grove. We needed to see these trees, even if the hike was tough on little legs. We’re glad we did as they were as big and impressive as we’d imagined. We only scratched the surface of this impressive park and definitely have some unfinished business!
With our schedule adjustments, we found ourselves with three nights to kill before our next booking so we found a small home in Vallejo that was within our budget and spread ourselves out for a few nights. Chuck had started making some funny sounds so we booked him an appointment at the local Toyota dealership. Sadly, a year and a half of hard driving and towing meant that he ended up needing a fair bit of work and some of the required parts were nowhere to be found in California. Instead of cancelling our next camping reservation, we rented a different truck, which we named Buck, and carried on with our plans to camp at a KOA in Petaluma. And are we glad we did! Before heading to the campground, at my request, we stopped to visit and tour the Jelly Belly Factory. Yum! They offered a self-guided tour of their facility which showed us everything from making the jelly core, adding the candy coating, sorting, packaging, and distribution. There were interactive exhibits and a very well stocked gift shop. They even have a cafeteria featuring jellybean shaped pizzas and sandwiches. It’s a place worth seeing, even if you aren’t a Jelly Belly fan.
The campground, as many KOAs are, was a kid’s camping wonderland with a pool, a bouncing pillow, playgrounds, outdoor games, and many organized activities. The toilets flush and there are showers. My favourite part was their Kamper Kitchen, a roofed gazebo with electric stoves and running water. Oh, the luxury! We camped for two nights and made a day trip to see Point Reyes National Seashore. From the walking trails we could see many turkey vultures and brown pelicans soaring gracefully. We were given Junior Ranger books and badges for completing some exercises about the seashore and its inhabitants. We also stopped at one of the beaches to splash in the waves and officially touch the Pacific ocean again.
From Petaluma we made our way to a rental home in Richmond, a city that is a short train commute away from downtown San Francisco. This would be our home base for 5 nights. With the truck finally repaired and with food in the fridge, we planned our city itinerary which included a day for jumping on and off the popular tourist bus to see the main sites, and another day to visit the Exploratorium. But honestly, to really see this city, we would have needed more than a few days!
The kids enjoyed the bus ride through the city streets, though not necessarily for the sights but rather for playing the audio tour in 11 different languages and giggling over how it sounded. We made sure to stop to see The Painted Ladies, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Yoda statue outside the headquarters of Lucasfilm, to walk up and then down the steepest street in North America, and to try out a cool climbing structure that we found, just because it was there and looked really fun. It was a long day and we all slept well that night.
The Exploratorium was amazing. Literally every exhibit required you to touch something or manipulate the exhibit in order to discover and learn. There’s an area focused on human phenomena such as thoughts, feelings, and social behaviour. We even watched a magic show to learn about deception and conditioning. There is an area dedicated to illusions, another to magnetism, and another highlighting mirrors, lights, and bubbles. We ran out of time before seeing the area about living systems and just squeaked in a chance to explore their outdoor exhibits which included some ecology of the Bay area. I would highly recommend visiting over two days as we arrived at opening and left at closing and felt rushed to really take it all in.
After 5 nights, we made our way south from San Francisco but made sure to detour to Cupertino for a quick visit to the Apple HQ building. We enjoyed a tasty latte while browsing the store and managed to score some free stickers. We didn’t stay long for this was the drive we’d been excited for; driving Highway 1 south along the Pacific coast. And yes, it was as beautiful as it is said to be. We were over 3 hours into the drive before we really hugged the coast and the whole day was a long haul for much of the drive was spent going 40mph along tight turns and hilly stretches. At times, we were so high above the ocean, it would turn your stomach to look down. Other times, we could almost drive directly onto the beach. We ate lunch with our feet in the ocean, then continued on to Morrow Bay. Just before reaching our campsite, we pulled off at a rest stop to have a look at a large colony of juvenile elephant seals. A volunteer from a conservation organization that helps protect the seals took time explaining their eating habits, migratory paths, and some of the curious wrestling behaviours we were witnessing. They were loud, a bit stinky, and so cool to see so close!!
We found a campground on the beach and set up our tent in sand for the first time. It took some adjustments to get it stable enough for potentially strong sea breezes, but we did it. We made sure to use some of our time there on the beach playing in the sand, running away from the waves, and checking out the town of Morrow Bay. There is a spot where sea otters like to hang out so we made sure to find them and ogle at their cuteness. We also found ice cream, of course.
Continuing our journey down highway 1, we enjoyed another day of beautiful views and excellent weather. We turned inland before reaching Malibu, mostly due to traffic and total drive times, and explored the agricultural regions within the Santa Rosa valley. We reached our AirBnB home in Burbank by late afternoon, grabbed some groceries, had showers, and had an early bed.
Los Angeles has a huge list of things to see and do, but we had only 3 full days (and a limit on the budget) so we had a family vote and decided to see the Hollywood sign, go to the Griffiths Observatory for sunset, spend a day at the California Science Center, walk along Hollywood Blvd to see some stars, take a drive through Beverly Hills, and have a picnic dinner on Santa Monica Pier. I have to say that I hadn’t realized how much LA has influenced me through tv, movies, music, and stories as a kid until driving around the city. I’d see names of streets that I’d heard in songs or suburbs mentioned in movies, and I couldn’t help quoting Pretty Women when driving down Rodeo Drive. But I would say that the most notable impression that I had after our visit to LA was just how vast the socio-economical divide really is in the US – I mean, you could visually see it. Every mountain side had homes that looked grander and larger as your eye flowed up to the top, and every highway underpass in the city valley had tents pitched and people living on the cement sidewalks. It felt like a visual representation of the poverty-wealth gap with vast majority of folks down in the valley, squeezed into the tight city spaces, and the wealthy living on large lots with grand views up the mountain sides. It was hard to see, and sad to consider, and I struggled with feeling like I wouldn’t want to come back.
Our favourite part of our stay in LA was the Science Center. Not only is it a super awesome museum on any given day, but it also had a LEGO art exhibit happening. We spent a full day and ran out of time to see everything. The LEGO art was phenomenal – it was an exhibit of an artist who works with the bricks to do a number of unique and amazing things including recreating other famous artwork, creating 3D items in photographs, building statement pieces and illusions, and creating full-sized animals. Our jaws dropped more than once walking through this exhibit. From LEGO we explored the space areas and made our way into a separate building that was housing the Space Shuttle Endeavour. We learned about how the shuttle was moved from the airport to the museum location (spoiler – it was not an easy undertaking and was an incredible work of coordination, engineering, and a bit of luck), and we got to see some movies about life on the shuttle. We had some lunch, grabbed an awesome IMAX movie about underwater creatures, and finally got to start exploring the main exhibits that cover life and ecosystems. It was here that we got to see the kelp forest and the large aquariums. We also spent a bit of time in the desert ecosystem area so that we would feel ready for our next month of edventure. We saw our first fennec fox and the kids fell instantly in love! The science center is a nice mix between museum and zoo where we can learn lots while also seeing some live animals and reptiles. It was tough to leave having not seen everything.
We left LA with bittersweet feelings and headed for Joshua Tree National Park. It, along with many of the parks we’d seen, was a big surprise. We were not prepared for how vast it was. We were also surprised to see the diversity of plant life, especially the different cactus plants. The park contains two distinct ecosystems that converge in the park’s center: the Mojave Desert, home to the Joshua Trees, and the Colorado Desert which is lower in elevation and hotter than the Mojave. Our campground was in the Colorado Desert and was quite warm during the day, and quite cool once that sun disappeared. We saw lots of critters around the site including a beetle that is famous for doing a handstand and farting when scared. We had a good giggle about that whole concept.
Our two-night visit afforded us only one full day to see all of the attractions so we packed it all in. We first stopped to see the cholla garden and learned how to pronounce its name (choy-ya). These spiny plants were impressively pokey and the park’s signs warned of painful pricks and told us to keep kids and pets close to us and on the trails. We made sure to heed these warnings. Next stop was Skull Rock, a rock that, unsurprisingly, looks like a skull. There were a number of boulder piles that looked like they didn’t belong and were just dumped there by something. Many of the rocks are unique shapes and look almost carved. Geologists believe these rocks are actually cooled, hardened magma that had boiled up into cracks and chambers under the surface more than 100 million years ago. Over time, the surface changed and eroded and left behind these magma casts, like how a popsicle remains when you take it out of a mold. The surface was very bumpy and a bit hard on the hands but the kids couldn’t help but climb them.
From Skull Rock we found a secondary road that wound us through the Mohave desert and amongst some tall and impressive Joshua Trees. These trees have an interesting survival story involving giant sloths, and since the world no longer hosts giant sloths, the trees’ survival is of concern. They also happen to be really fun to see. We parked the car and hiked a mile to the ruins of an old gold mine, or more correctly a gold mill, where we saw the rusted remains of a hand-made mineral sorting machine. The kids were “meh” about this site and were eager to climb more boulders so we made our way to Hidden Valley where the kids killed an hour exploring the cracks between boulders and climbing wherever they could. Hot and tired, we went back to our campground and enjoyed a movie night on the laptop while also enjoying the starry sky before a brilliantly bright, full moon rose.
Our final nights in California were spent in San Diago at a KOA campground. We arrived on a Saturday Oct 23 and that the campground was coordinating a number of Halloween activities for that afternoon and evening. Having planned in advance, we had found a thrift store in LA and were able to get costumes for the kids so they were ready and excited to take part. There was a costume parade followed by a costume contest. Then for an hour, kids could trick or treat amongst the trailers and RVs and tents. It’s amazing how much candy they got in one campground! And finally there was an open field for a glow-in-the-dark dance party. We had a great time dancing together and the kids were so happy that they didn’t miss Halloween (at least the version that they’ve come to know).
We spent a day recovering from the dancing and running final errands ahead of our drive into Mexico and down the Baja Peninsula. We were all feeling the excitement, and the nervousness, of heading south. Me especially. I was a bit of a wreck. For our final full day, we visited the San Diego Zoo. Having been given a number of tips for visiting, we made full use of our day and were able to seen almost every part and nearly every animal. It’s a well designed zoo and I especially appreciated the included bus tour as we were not only given opportunities to gaze at animals, but the driver offered funny and interesting information on both the zoo’s operations and history, as well as neat facts about the animals themselves. Favourites, you ask? Well, the fennec foxes and the koalas were close to each other and so we made sure to visit those spots twice each. The polar bear was a bit far away to really enjoy but we could still see how big he was! Molly loved watching the African penguins waddle and swim. We got an up-close look at the hippo which was awesome. It was a great day all around and we managed to avoid the rain that arrived just as we left.
Although we had initially planned to hang out in San Diego for longer, we were able to organize an awesome opportunity for the kids in Todos Santos, Mexico which required us to arrive a few days earlier than planned. So, with our bellies full of candy and our minds full of memories, we set out to cross into Mexico.
