Diana and I went out camping last weekend as well as visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We didn’t know if we’d be able to find a campsite as we hadn’t reserved any so we had a back up plan of just hanging out at the beach and then staying overnight at her Father’s. Sunday morning we got up packed the truck and headed for Santa Cruz and the Big Basin State Park. When we arrived we were pleasantly surprised to find out they did have open sites, it turned out a lot of them. We set up camp, went on a little hike in which we saw a small waterfall, then drove to Santa Cruz to walk through the mall and have dinner at a great British pub in Aptos. After dinner we drove back up to camp and went to bed. We got up early on Monday and drove into Monterey where we spent the day at the Aquarium. It goes without saying that this was awesome! Lucky us the aquarium right now has a juvenile great white shark in their largest tank, which we were able to see and perhaps take a picture of. I was worried we wouldn’t be able to see it, that it’d hang out in the back of the tank but a number of times it swam right up to and past the glass, affording everyone there a great view of the fish. I took some pictures but don’t know if they came out as flash photography was strictly prohibited. There were plenty of other things to take pictures of though! I went through 3 and a half rolls of film, mostly on jelly fish and otters but other things as well… I can’t really speak for Diana but I can tell you that I love the aquarium and could spend all sorts of time there, my only complaint was the penguin area of the aquarium was closed for remodeling and the semi-hordes of children getting in my view, we just so happened to arrive on home-schooling day. I think Diana had a good time… :). I fell in love with the entire weekend, the camping, the hiking, the shopping and the sight seeing, I hope our outing at the end of this month to Big Sur is as exciting!
