Category: travel

After I filled up one of my camera card with photos, I popped in my trusty old back up and discovered a couple pictures of Maggie last year wearing the same brown jumpsuit that we’ve got a duplicate of this year. She was such a chubby cutie pa-tootie, she still is just not as roly-poly. We packed the brown jumpsuit thinking that we’d use it all the time, but we only busted it out one day when the weather was a bit foggy. Other than that, we all got to strut our stuff in shorts, dresses and t-shirts….except for Barry who didn’t wear any dresses.

While we were in Carmel the World Series happened and somehow we became enthralled with the series. I found myself quizzing Barry about different players and we’d talk about the games well after the last pitch had been thrown. It worked out just perfectly that we’d pack our lunch and head out the door in the morning in search of a trail that would suit our needs either in Big Sur or the Point Lobos State Reserve across the bay from our cabin.

We snuck Sydney onto a few hikes, I swear that was a picture of a horse and not a dog with a red x on it, and discovered that even the high 60s are too hot for her to hike in. She’d always start out with such gusto, but a few times we were worried that we’d have to switch Maggie out of the backpack and slide Syd in.

During our hikes we’d chat each other up and the theme of our conversations often revolved around two things:

1. What were we having for dinner/dessert that night.

2. What time was the World Series on again?

We’d hike until our legs got tired, our dog started lagging behind or our child started screaming. At one point I dumped part of our water bottle on Sydney in hopes of cooling her off and I’m certain that she hasn’t forgiven me for it yet. I have moved wayyyy down on her list of favorite humans.

One day after a longer hike in Big Sur (Which I really didn’t get pictures of that are of any value. Boo on that. )we stopped on our way home to check out Point Lobos State Reserve. We left the backpack in the car and let Maggie motor along with us or passed us between our able arms. The Reserve was actually a huge chunk of land that was donated decades ago by the family that owned our cabin, so in a very round-about way I felt a distant connection to the cypress tree grove and steep cliffs.

We were surprised by the size of the reserve and happily followed a trail along the water’s edge watching the sun go down, putting on yet another spectacular show; however, we failed to realize how far away from our car we’d really gotten. So there we were….with out a light, map, or even a diaper and it was getting dark.

Suddenly, what had started out as a quick trip to scope out the State Reserve, turned into a ‘oh-crap-we’ve-got-to-get-back-to-our-car-before-dark-and-we’re-wearing-flip-flops’ type of stop.  We weren’t really worried all that much, but I wasn’t interested in cruising around aimlessly in the dark.

We busted our tushies and made it back to our car by the time it was pitch black. Both Barry and I heaved s sigh of relief and promised that we didn’t need anymore adventures like that…truth be told, we’d pretty much almost been hit by a few cars, but don’t tell our moms that, kay?

Once back home we started cookin’ up our delicious Surf & Turf and some brownies to boot….while St. Louie crushed Texas. Maybe crush isn’t the right word, but it sounds perfectly dramatic.