Up the Creek

Yesterday it was painfully hot here. Today it is too. 100 or something, with no air conditioning. Katie was out of commission with overheating/sleepiness/terrible cold. Finn and I decided to head for the beach, so we left for Santa Cruz after his nap. The road was packed, because it was a popular destination. We came to standstill about 7 miles from the beach, and I guessed we had another hour ahead of us. Finn was already yelling "ou-side! ou-side!" so I had to think quickly to avoid a disaster. We made a quick exit out to the redwooded hills of Felton, just off of Hwy 17. I hadn't yet figured out what we were going to do, but there is a state park there. Maybe we could hike? As luck would have it, we noticed a little stream where others were playing, and we made our way down.
Activities included:
--walking in the water
--playing in the wet sand with our new beach toys
--throwing rocks
--sitting on logs
--more throwing of rocks
It was a good time, and we nearly had the river to ourselves. Some dogs and owners came by to catch and throw sticks. I don't think that Finn knew that dogs could swim, so that was cool. I didn't take many pictures, because I was in the water most of the time. At first he really liked just watching water ripples.

Some other hi/low-lights:
--Getting hit in arm with a rock. This 12-year-old who showed up was a BAD rock skipper. Ouch!
--After 2 hours down in the river, it was time to go home. I carried Finn and 3 bags up 40 feet of river bank, up to the bridge, to walk back to the car. I put Finn down to let him walk on the bridge. He peered between the bars to look down at the river. He then took off his Twins hat and sent it down into the water below. That boy! Sigh.... After thinking for a bit, I put down all of the bags, grabbed him again, and we made our way back down to fish out the hat. Ah, toddlers. The whole way down he repeated "hat" and "naughty."

Here he is on his new Rody. This is about 5 minutes after he got it. Note the strange monkey shrieks. He's taken to calling it his "gonkey."

A Rody for Finn! from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.