We stopped at Año Nuevo, a state park where you can see herds of elephant seals. Unfortunately, their walking tours were full that day, so we’ve made a mental note to go back next winter when the seals come ashore.

Ryder would like you to look to the left, where you will see the Pacific Ocean.

A cool wind-blown tree on the bluffs.

See more photos here (some are mine, some are Dave’s).

Some highlights included hiking to Hanakapiai Falls, snorkeling in super-clear water and seeing giant sea turtles, and long walks on the beach.

You can see a lot more photos here.

 (chocolate cake with speculoos cookie butter frosting)

 (surprise cake from work)

… some new (real) cacti to go with my crochet cacti collection…

… strawberry-banana daiquiris…

… and cookie stuffed cookies for Ryder’s labmates to enjoy.

Two of the largest trees, the “mother of the forest” and the “father of the forest” are 15 feet in diameter and almost 300 feet tall!

Besides those two huge redwoods, there were many, many more huge redwoods. After a while, these trees started to look normal!

The hike itself was also really nice – the park is very wooded so we were in the shade most of the day, and had a nice 3 mile loop to hike. There are a lot more trails through the park, including a longer hike out to Berry Creek Falls that Ryder and I are eyeing for a time when we’re feeling adventerous.

More pictures here.

Pole Field is an art installation featuring poles.

This park is on top of an old city dump, and it’s an odd mish-mash of clearly man-made landforms, public art installations like this one, and marshy fields.

The park edges the Bay, and we had a nice view across it, as well as of a bunch of shorebirds, and a few windsurfers. You can see some more pictures of our visit here.

Oranges in the sun – seems so appropriately Californian

Flowers peeking through the fence

A sunset from our driveway

Funky old pickup that lives in our neighborhood

Pretty lilacs wisteria

Beautiful blooming tree (Anyone know what kind of tree this is?)

Evening sky on our walk home from an emergency tortilla-chip-acquisition-expedition

Walking through some of their archways.

 The main quad.

 The facade of the campus church.

The rest of the main quad (this is what you see standing in front of the church).

We also saw this little hummingbird perched on a tree!

We spent a few hours there this afternoon, hiking along some of the trails and marveling at the trees.

We got a few views of the city of Palo Alto spread out below, with San Francisco Bay and more hills behind it.

At the end of the hike, we checked out the Folger Stable museum. They’ve restored the carriage house and stable which was built by James Folger (of Folger coffee fame) in the early 1900′s. It’s a really beautiful building, and is still in use with a couple dozen horses stabled here.

photo from Wikipedia

There are several other parks in the same range of hills/mountains, and similarly close to our house, so we will certainly be doing more exploring soon!

Yesterday, the weather was sunny and warm, and we enjoyed it by taking a stroll around our neighborhood. These ducks were enjoying the “creek”.

This is the “creek” – enclosed in a cement ditch for its entire length (at least in mile or so of it that we’ve seen). If you look in the distance, you can see the mountains, which are to the west of our house, between us and the Pacific. There are lots of parks and hiking trails in those mountains that we’re looking forward to exploring.

Looking down our street.

And tonight, a few last rays of sunlight lighting up the clouds:

First real meal in the new place: pizza!

Our plants are enjoying the full sun that we get most of the day in our front window.

Making progress in the living/dining room – we hung pictures this weekend and just have a few lingering boxes in here.

Filling our shelves with our favorite books and happy knick-knacks.

The office/craft/guest room, previously full of boxes, still has a lot of boxes, but at least most of the belong in here now. The 5 stacked under the window are all full of fabric…

We’re learning how to work with very limited counter space. Current strategies include using the dryer as a work space. Other new kitchen strategies involve seeing how many times we can rinse and reuse a cereal bowl. I think our standards for kitchen cleanliness are directly related to whether or not our living situation has a dishwasher (don’t worry, if you come visit I promise we’ll wash the dishes really well!). I’m optimistic that sometime in the near future, we’ll have finished unpacking all the boxes (well, maybe not the boxes of fabric) and I can take some pictures of our house looking clean and tidy!