Watsonville, California (Santa Cruz/Monterey Area)

 We left Big Sur early on Sunday morning - It was about 5am and it was still dark.  We wanted to get to the Santa Cruz/Monterey KOA before they closed scenic Highway 1 for the Big Sur International Marathon.  The road was going to be closed from 6:45am - early evening and we were ready to move on!  We made it to Watsonville before the campground office opened, so we found a skatepark and let the boys do a little early morning skateboarding!  Once the office opened, we called and secured an early check in,  and  headed over to the KOA.  It was an awesome campground - spacious, landscaped sites, curbside trash service (oh, yeah!)  and a Jump Pillow that kept the boys moving from sun up to sun down!!!  It was also a great home base - close to many incredible tourist attractions.  Here are some of our favorite memories from Wastonville and the Santa Cruz/Monterey area of California!

Goodbye, Big Sur!

Hello, Watsonville!

Our happy little campsite!  That tree was amazing!

We were right across from the Jump Pillow~Best.Feature.Ever!

Chilling in the hot tub!

The Boardwalk in Santa Cruz

Laffing Sal made US laugh!  Check out Aaron's smile!

Hee Hee!

Santa Cruz Sea Lions

They were swimming around the paddle boarders! 

 

Any one who's anyone is there ;-)

The Thomas guys taking in all the sights and sounds of Santa Cruz!

YUM!

Seriously, how could we not go here?????

Lots of artifacts and interesting Bigfoot information in this little red house!

"Big Hairy Man"

We learned so much during our trip to the Bigfoot Museum!  The people who run the museum are very passionate about the subject of Bigfoot and were very willing to share their vast knowledge!

Our first Redwoods experience!

WOW! 

Makes you feel so small....The park had great trails and we had an interpretive trail guide, so we were learning as we walked through the maze of awesomeness!

Bryan & Aaron

A boy growing in the root system of a tree...Interesting :-)

This section of tree was labeled with significant happenings in history (to correspond with the age ring!)  It was so massive, I had to stand back to get the entire thing in the picture.  A close up of a small section is a few pictures down on the blog!

The park has some amazing, old growth redwoods.  The tallest tee in the park is 285 feet tall, and about 16 feet wide.  The oldest trees in the park are about 1400 to 1800 years old.

One of the coolest museums that we've visited!  (Located in San Jose)

Many hands on learning activities! (Haha - get it? ;-)

This was a new activity station.  The boys were fitted with devices that measured EEG meditation and attention, heart rate, muscle tension & much more.  They wore these devices around the museum and when they synced up with the machine at the end, they had all kinds of information about themselves!

Here they are getting fitted with their testing gear!

Moving & grooving in the name of science!

This was a great robotics lab!  Aaron's still wearing his gear - that boys loves science!

Exciting energy lab!

Braden using brute force to try to make the quake sensors move!

Bryan and the boys had a blast in this gallery! 

Look at those handsome faces!

We were so excited to check out this aquarium!  We had heard great things and we were prepared to be amazed.  We were not disappointed!

California kelp forest

This was cool - Started inside and ended outside, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Just amazing!

We thoroughly enjoyed our time at the Monetery Aquarium & the town of Monterey!

Back at the campground, the boys swam, biked & played with friends! 

Some of the boys' friends from the KOA!  We made so many awesome memories during our time here at the Santa Cruz/Monterey KOA in Watsonville, California!!!!!