California Day 4

Day 4:
Aug 30

We decided to go to Santa Cruz and Monterey in one day. 
We started in Santa Cruz to visit The Mystery Spot since it was much closer to San Jose. It ended up being a beautiful drive too. I can't even describe how cool The Mystery Spot ended up being...it seriously boggled our minds. We're still talking about it. I won't go into detail because I don't know where to start, you'll just have to check out the website if you're curious.

Once we got into Monterey we were all starvin' marvin' so before we could get started sight seeing we had to make a pit stop for some lunch. We wandered around for a bit and finally settled on Thai food. Let it be known that I have been trying to get Israel to try Thai food since we met- 4 years ago!!
For some reason he finally agreed. (Okay, maybe a combination of peer pressure with a little curiosity on his part. haha) The point is he went for it and actually enjoyed it. I even got him hooked on Thai iced tea. We even went to get one on the way to the airport before we left San Jose and when we got home he asked if I knew of a place nearby in Salt Lake where we could go get some. I'm still in shock. He was very adventurous with food during this trip and didn't eat one hamburger while we were there. I'm so proud :)

While we were in Monterey I felt that we couldn't be there and not visit the Aquarium, luckily, I was able to convince everyone else what a fantastic idea it really was! Once we got there everyone got into it. We arrived and realized we had less than 2 hours to see everything. YIKES. This place was huge, so much to see and so little time. ..but, we decided we could do it if we kept a good pace. We made it about ten steps inside before Israel became completely distracted by the octopus. I admit it was super cool to watch, but I swear he stood in front of that one tank for a good 15 minutes at least. He just stood and stared. I loved how much he got into it! Even Julio and Elisabeth were amazed by the fishes!
About 20 minutes into our Aquarium Adventure the camera battery died. NOOOOOO!
We even thought ahead and brought a back up camera-which of course we left back in the hotel room. Awesome. We caved and bought a disposable camera and are keeping our fingers crossed that something-anything is salvageable from that roll of film. (seriously, what did we do before digital cameras??) Here are a few of the pics we managed before the camera died.