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It has been over a year since our last trip to California and the boys were very excited to see the beach and spend some time with their uncle Kendall.   Our trip started out with an extremely long drive across the Nevada desert complimented with a full on blizzard, a bit of thunder,  and hotel room in Elko. We arrived in Sacramento in the early afternoon and spent the rest of the day hanging out with my Dad.  Sunday morning the boys had an early Easter egg hunt at grandpas house before we set out to drive down to the bay area.

The first stop in Marin county was Muir Woods,  just as we got out of the car the rain started to come down. We hiked up and down the board walk and paved trail for about 2 miles before the rain really started to come down.  The boys could not have cared less about the rain and had a great time seeing the huge redwoods again.

By the time we made it back to the car we were all pretty soaked so we drove over to Stinson beach and ate lunch hoping the rain would stop.  After lunch the rain was still coming down so we just drove the 1 to Sausalito and around the Golden Gate Bridge before we gave up and checked into our hotel and met up with Kendall and Candace.  A few hours later the rain let up so we set headed out to Bonita Point for sunset. We hiked down the trail to the light house only to reach a locked door.

the end…

The next morning the weather was beautiful so we headed over the Golden Gate to San Francisco to check out the Sutro baths and Golden Gate Park.  Then we drove back over the Golden Gate  and met up with Kendall and Candace to hike out to Agate Beach near Bolinas.

Bowen (3yo) throwing a major fit at the Sutro Baths… we just all sat back and watched this one.

Agate beach has become one of our favorite places to visit, the tide pools are very accessible and just perfect for the kids.

Soon we were back on the road headed north up to Point Reyes.  We made a quick stop in Inverness to pick up a few things at the local market and to shoot a few photos of the infamous boat in Tomales Bay. This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip for me, I really love this old boat.

We then drove over to the Point Reyes visitors center and picked up the backpacking permits that I reserved a few weeks earlier. We parked at the coast camp trail head and packed our bags and set out on the two mile trail to our campsite.

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We quickly set up our camp and headed down to the beach to let the kids run wild before the sunset.

Kendall and Candace.

Fist thing in the morning Kendall and Candace went trail running while April, the boys, and went for a short hike south along the beach.

After our short hike we packed up camp and started on the hike out. The kids were great hikers especially Bowen (3yo) who hiked the 4 miles in and out of coast camp on his own with a backpack on.

We made it back to the car around 2:30 and made the short drive down the road to Limatour Beach. We then made the decision to drive back to Sacramento rather than wait 4 hours for the bay area traffic to die down (we got stuck in it once… never again). We spent 3 more days in Sacramento hanging out with my Dad and little brother before making the long drive back to Utah.

We just got back from our week long trip to Sacramento, First photo stop (this is a photo journal) of the trip was Donner Lake. I had driven past Donner Lake dozens of times but this was the first time we actually stopped. The kids had fun tossing rocks into the lake while we stretched our legs for a bit before we headed down the sierras to SacTown.

The next day we made a trip to the California Train Museum. Such an awesome place, the kids obviously had a ball checking out the trains and of course the huge Thomas the Train set was that biggest hit of the day.

My HDR shots did not turn out well due to low light and lack of a tripod but a few turned out ok.

HDR shot of the big Train.

Kitchen Car HDR

Bowen talking back to one of the exhibits

A few days later we made a trip down to the Bay Area and Traveled along Highway 1. The first stop on our day trip was Muir Woods.

Next we drove towards the coast and stopped at the Muir Beach Overlook.

WWII relics

Next we headed north to Bolinas to spend the afternoon at Agate Beach. Excellent tide pools that were very kid friendly.

After we spent the bulk of our afternoon on Agate beach we packed up and drove south along highway 1 to Muir Beach. We made it just in time for the sunset.