Santa Cruz/ Monterey Bay, CA

After a ton of SF traffic, we made our way to the KOA Santa Cruz/Monterrey campground. I felt bad for James driving in the mess of rush hour traffic, as it was my idea to go to the restaurant- but it was sooo good and the Irish coffee was as good as I remember. Kingston couldn't believe the streets with the cable cars were steeper than some of the streets in Seattle. A fun quick jaunt of the city, but again we'll be back in this area in the spring. We stopped at the Safeway in Santa Cruz to stock up on things, made to camp by 7-8pm to find the whole campground decked out in Halloween gear, kids running around trick or treating. As far as kid friendly goes, man, we hit the jackpot! Every weekend in October Fri & Sat they have a Halloween weekend (pumpkin craving, costume contest, trick or treating, monster mash dance party). It was pretty sweet.

We enjoyed the next next morning of grey overcast skies (missing Seattle about now) over coffee, waffles, scrambled eggs & sausages. Kids starting in on the Halloween festivities, Kingston was sorta into it. I dug out our Halloween costumes we brought cause we knew we'd be somewhere for Halloween….just don’t know it would be this soon. I found my Skelton onesie, l but couldn't find K's Top Gun pilot costume (from last year) so he wore his Mariners jersey, his all star hat and I put black mascara on under his eyes, it was perf. K met some kiddos from across the way and the Dad had a golf cart to drive the kids around to trick or treat campsite to campsite, James and I had cocktails by the fire and just relaxed.

The next day we caught up on laundry and sat by the pool. The California and Nevada kids were on fall break, so there were kids galore. K met a new friend at the pool, his name was Grady, he was from Reno. He and K hit it off almost instantly, Grady came back to our camp that evening and the boys rode the e- bikes all over around the camp ground. Camping in the fall like this it is hit or miss with other kid friends, so we were glad to finally enjoy this time.

Morning came and it's the day we would transition to Big Sur. Grady came by in the morning and the boys rode e-bikes again. Grady's Mom and I exchanged numbers and we planned to meet up with their family at the Monterey Aquarium later that afternoon. We packed up and headed out, first stopping in Monterey at a cell phone replacement store to pick up our purchases from the Amazon drop box we had ordered before we left. It was a nice treat to pick up our items for the RV.