All the Little Fishes in the Deep Blue Sea

You might have noticed from the photos, but this has really been Willow's vacation. Syd is the best of sports, but at just three years old, a week-plus is a long time to be without the regularity of the home routine, as well as the familiarity of the home stuff and the hometown people and places. She's grown very close to her grandmother this trip, which is as terrific a goal as anyone could have, and otherwise my focus has been to keep her as even-tempered as possible and encourage her to participate in whatever adventure she feels ready to participate in.

But at five, Will has come into her own as a kid. She is enjoying her grandparents, agreeable to any kind of activity, and relishing every single new thing that presents itself to her. And we've been learning so much about her on this trip, as well. The kid loves the beach, loves rides that spin around really fast--she loves adventure. Five is a good age.

I wanted the girls to engage with the concept of the ocean as more than just the beach, so we drove down to Monterey to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, another landmark that we hit every year. It has touch tanks where you can handle everything from seaweed to starfish to sea urchins--
--and extensive habitats both of old favorites, like the jellyfish--
--and new favorites, like the seahorses: Almost all of the exhibits are at a height appropriate for a child Willow's age----and, happily, there are outdoor as well as indoor portions of the museum, and interactive components to all of the exhibits (the thoughtfulness of the interactivity depending on how recently the exhibit was put together), and a playroom for small children with dress-up materials, art activities, and stuff to climb all over.

And when you're done with the aquarium, you have to save some energy for the Dennis the Menace Park. It was created by Hank Ketcham in the 1950s, and yet it is still an innovative and engaging playground, with just a few traditional jungle gyms and plastic equipment pieces, and lots of concrete and stone structures to scramble on, with slopes that allow you to climb up them or slide down them, a real train for hanging off of in a death-defying fashion in order to get a glimpse of the bay----a looooooong suspension bridge, a hedge maze, a rock wall, and several really terrific slides for the slide-fiend in the family: Whew. And when you're done with that, even though it's very late in the day, almost sunset, take a quick trip to the Seaside Beach:
The waves are excellent, and occasionally there are harbor seals, and if you run really fast, you can maybe pretend that you, too, are five years old and an adventurer at heart.

I Stood Directly on the San Andreas Fault WHY?!

I'm sure that most of you could probably think of lots more examples, but in my opinion, this photo demonstrates my single worst parenting decision EVER:
Yep, there are the babies, in sunscreen, hats, and matching T-shirts. And the blue post? Why, that's placed at regular intervals throughout the Point Reyes National Seashore to mark the exact line of the SAN ANDREAS FAULT.

I encouraged my precious children to stand directly on top of one of the world's most active and most notorious faultlines in our modern era. And then I snapped a photo.

Other than the constant threat of imminent death should California decide to finally up and fall into the ocean as it's been threatening to do for ages now, our visit to Point Reyes was as peaceful and pastoral as you'd expect at any national park, or at least one with a pretty active seismograph right there in the visitors' center. We went on a nice long hike out in the tule elk reserve, and saw sights both vast--
--and intimate:And in the land of a billion beaches but not as many climbing trees, our little tree worshippers finally found themselves a good one: And worship they did: Point Reyes is north of the Bay, so this was actually our first trip across the Golden Gate Bridge in a couple of years--normally we head southwest on our daytrips. There's a great spot for viewing the Golden Gate on just the other side of the bridge. If you've ever seen a photo of the bridge, this is likely the shot you saw: It's wonderfully iconic, both up-close and fitting the entire bridge into one frame, with the city behind it, and incorporating an interesting diagonal line. Just to the right of the bridge in that shot is Ocean Beach, actually a really nice beach for being inside a big city, and the beach at which we spent our sunset on this day: Because a day without a beach?

That would hardly be any kind of day at all.

When You're Goin' to San Francisco...

...be sure you know ahead of time what day of the week the Exploratorium is closed.

We drove up to San Francisco ostensibly to visit the Exploratorium (as a hands-on museum it's a little schizo for my tastes, but the girls love it, and as long as you take some Tylenol pre-emptively before you enter their doors you should fare alright), but alas, the Exploratorium is closed on Mondays.

But, you know, it's San Francisco. I'm sure we can find something to do.

We chilled at Crissy Field for a while, with its ridiculous view of the Golden Gate Bridge:
And whenever we stood still long enough, we gamely complied whenever tourists wanted us to take pictures of them with their cameras. I NEVER ask someone to do this, because their photos are always crap, and I usually make Matt take the photo when a tourist asks us, because I'm a camera snob about the boring poses and boring cameras of the tourists, but I actually wish I hadn't been such a snob and had been the one taking this shot: I bet Matt's photo was crap, though.

We ate some sourdough bread, of course, although we did not ride a cable car, and we went to the California Academy of Sciences, which I was REALLY excited about, since it just re-opened late last summer after a renovation that took so long that it's never been open in the decade or so that I've been coming to Cali for Matt.

The Academy of Sciences' renovation makes it look much more like a modernized natural history museum. You can see where many of the dusty old stuffed animals were moved to, to be incorporated into brighter, more interactive exhibits, and you can tell where the big bucks were spent, on a huge aquarium that is reminiscent of the Monterey Bay Aquarium----except that there's an albino alligator--and a big rainforest habitat that exists in a huge glass globe in center of the museum.

If you don't mind dead bugs on pins, there are some very cool exhibits on butterflies, and one in particular that shows the genetic diversity of one specific insect by showing just thousands of them stuck on pins so you can see their tiny little subtle variations of color and size and shape and spots and stuff.

The children's play room, which is a necessity, I think, in any modern museum, be it science or art or natural history, was imaginative but small, and the baseball caps were crazy-overpriced (although I really wanted one), but the Galapagos and Madagascar exhibits were really excellent, and Willow and I spent a VERY long time hanging out by the pendulum and learning that the earth spins:

Not a bad lesson for such a fine day.

Tomorrow--Point Reyes National Seashore.

Once More to the Beach

We've visited California often enough by now that we have some definite favorite beaches here, that we go to as often as we can while we're here. Crissy Field in San Francisco is one, and we've been there twice so far, and Ocean Beach, also in San Francisco, is actually a new one that we caught at sunset yesterday and were pretty stoked by. Other beaches, such as Natural Bridges, we're not that excited by--we're beach snobs, I suppose.

Our most ultimate favorite beach by far, however, and my favorite beach of any I've ever been to--black sand, white sand, Iceland, Hawaii, Italy, Florida, Scotland, wherever--is Pebble Beach, the local name for part of Bean Hollow State Beach. Instead of sand, this beach consists of pebbles broken off of a quartz reef offshore, and worn all smooth and awesome:
Sure, they just look like a gravel parking lot from that angle, but check them out up close:
They're just every color you can imagine, black and white and clear and green and shiny and speckled. It's extremely satisfying just to plant yourself belly-down on their warm surface and peer near-sightedly at them--you could pass a contented infinite of time that way. They're also, however, immensely satisfying to play with, all warm and smooth and with a nice weight to them, a nice change from the gritty, sifty sand of the other beaches: And also unlike sand, they have a lot more air between them, and their warm weight is relaxing, so you can actually bury Daddy REALLY deeply while he naps:He came out okay, if a little woozy.

Pebble Beach is also nice for clambering up rocks----and peering into tidepools situated feet from the splashing surf----and taking some time to gaze out into the infinite distance: Of course, after you've spent hours and hours at Pebble Beach, you're all sweaty and grubby and wet anyway, so you might as well go ahead and hit a sandy beach on your way home, just for the novelty of the thing: Some of us like to run with the tide, and some of us like to watch:

There's pleasure to be had in both of the activities, of course, one active, and one profound.

Tomorrow--San Francisco.

I Ate a Lot and Then I Danced

Little girls wore their pretty pillowcase dresses to match my vintage sheet skirt--
--and we chilled at a great big mansion:
We were there for the wedding of Ashwin, Matt's high school best friend, to his lady Reva. Because I am a big nerd, I was so way super-stoked about the wedding, which was to be a traditional Gandharva vivaah ceremony (done according to the Dnyanaprabodhini prodecure, with some of the bride's Nepali traditions added in, as well), and because I am a really, really, REALLY big nerd, I am going to tell you all about it:

So first is the simaantapujan, which used to be the welcoming of the groom's party to the bride's hometown for the wedding, but for our purposes now it's this awesome groom's party parade, with drumming and dancing. That leads to the madhuparka, in which the bride and groom have a little honey and yogurt snack to calm them down.

Then comes the vivaah sankalpa, in which the bride and groom and their families pray for a happy marriage, and then they worship the statue of Lord Ganesh that's there, and then a prayer to the family deity, and then the bride and groom pray for a happy day--that's the Punyahavaachan.

Then Reva's brothers gave her away, which is the Kanyaadaan.

Then comes the Swayamwar. The bride and groom garland each other, then stand with a curtain in between them and their families behind them while some poetry is recited, and at the end of each verse in the poem, the guests throw rose petals at them.

Then the bride and groom take their oaths, which is the Niyama-bandha.

Then Reva got a necklace that shows she's married, and Ashwin put some vermillion on her forehead, and the couple put on Mangalsutra, necklaces to protect them from the ugly thoughts of other people.

Then Ashwin and Reva put some popped rice in a little fire, which is the Laajaahoma, and Reva stood with her right foot on a rock for a minute. And then Reva's brother symbolically twisted Ashwin's ear to remind him to be nice to his sister, and Ashwin gave him a present so he wouldn't get his ear twisted again.

The most beautiful part of the ceremony is the Saptapadi, in which the bride and groom take seven steps and make seven resolutions together, and then we get to clap for them.

Then is the Dhruvadarshan, in which the priest has the couple look north, to the pole star, and then is the Uttarang Homa, in which the couple prays for leniency in case they messed something up in the ceremony.

Then we get to go up and offer congratulations, which is the Aashirwaad, and that concludes the formal portion of the day.

And yes, including the parade, I'd say the whole thing took a good two hours, but it was outside, and if you were near the back of the tent you were quite free to carry on your own conversations or pop out to the refreshments table or let your kids run around on the grass for a while. Sydney played quietly with her toys for the entire ceremony, but Will had to go with mom and chill out climbing trees out of earshot for a while, after driving herself hysterical in shame and grief due to mistakenly leaning against a pillar and knocking it and a big basket of flowers over. Nobody cared but her, but she does tend to be her own harshest critic.

After the ceremony we wandered the estate for a while and had ourselves some cocktails and samosas and vegetable kabobs (this was possibly my favorite wedding ever), and then re-stuffed ourselves with even more delicious Indian food at the reception:
I'll tell you, I like anyplace that has a buffet, and if you have a buffet of delicious, authentic Indian food? Well, you've just won my heart.

Will crashed out before dinner, even-- but Syd held out----for a while:

The cake was actually really cool, as well, and although I was too drunk by then to get the whole story behind it----I did take some extra pictures, so maybe I'll find out later:

With our two little girls fast asleep on the sidelines, and ourselves full of Indian food and booze (well, I was full of booze at least--I was owed it, after the ridiculous wedding that took place last time we were in Cali), we then got to dance for an hour or so. Another awesome thing about this wedding? Contemporary Indian pop music. Waaaaay better than YMCA. Except for the parts where the DJ would turn the music down so that everybody else but us could scream the popular lyrics, it was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

And then both girls simultaneously wet their party dresses in their sleep, and Matt's suit jacket that Willow was sleeping on, and we got to carry them, urine-soaked and whimpering yet still asleep and thus dead weight, the quarter-mile down the path to the entrance of the park and then further on to the car. So yeah, my back kills today, but it was so worth it.

Tomorrow, we talk beaches.

The Artichoke Dip Goes 'Round and 'Round

Six Flags has too many terror-rides to bother going there with small children, DisneyLand freaks me out with its gender stereotypes and latent racism, but a vegetable-themed amusement park?

I am all over that business.

Yesterday we all took the girls to Gilroy Gardens, a small amusement park in Gilroy, California. If you understand that Gilroy is the garlic capital of the world, and that just to drive past Gilroy on the highway is to have your car fill will the delicious smell of Gilroy garlic, then you will understand that the mascot for Gilroy Gardens is a cartoon garlic.

A garlic, friends. A cartoon garlic. Can you grasp the awesomeness of that, or do I need to tell you again? This theme park's mascot? Is a garlic.

I bought a stuffed Gilroy Garlic, and Grandma Janie bought Sydney a Gilroy Garlic baseball cap.

So one of the cool things about Gilroy Gardens is that it has the Circus Trees, which I saw on some TV show probably two decades ago, and yes, they're pretty awesome. Another cool thing about Gilroy Gardens is that where DisneyLand and Six Flags are all huge expanses of concrete, this amusement park is rife with tall, shady trees and cooling creeks and duck ponds and stuff. And for being perhaps one of the top five awesomest places that I have ever been to with my children, it really wasn't that crowded (unlike the City Museum, but sort of like Walking with Dinosaurs Live near the end of its Indy run). Part of that is that, since I am an obsessive researcher, I have read pretty much every California travel guide that has been printed in the last decade, even for the parts of Cali that we definitely won't visit because it's like a 12-hour car ride away, and I have NEVER seen Gilroy Gardens listed.

Which is whack, because look! The Artichoke Dip!The Garlic Twirl!And the Strawberry Sundae and the Apple and Worm, and for adults the Mushroom Swings and the Banana Split and two roller coasters:

And when you're bored with those there are the bird shows and the paddle boats and the monorail and the two water playgrounds----and the train and the path behind the waterfall and the rock maze--

--and the tours of the six distinct gardens within the amusement park and the greenhouse and the audio tour to introduce you to all the different trees in the park and the fruit-and-vegetable show--

--and the garlic-themed food items and the two carousels...

And the chance for little girls and their Poppas to hang out on the kiddie rides together:

Tomorrow I'll tell you all about the traditional Indian wedding that Matt and I took the girls to yesterday.

How to Tell That We're in California

Because the entire state is like a freakin' greenhouse:

Tomorrow I'll tell you about this awesome vegetable-themed amusement park that we took the kids to today.