TWENTY

Walking through Cabo holding hands with Grandpa Dean

2017 week twenty

Annual Baja trip 2017

After a long long morning of travel and errands we finally got to tramp down to the beach and enjoy the cool sand and warm waves. 

Theo did not like the waves and never got used to them. I'm not too disappointed. I would rather he ran away when the waves came for him than running head first into them like Veronica does. We have to convince her to be wary.

V couldn't handle the stench of the fish blood bucket (empty or otherwise) so she found this car air freshener and used it to plug her own nose. 

This year, our friend Travis came with us. He dreamed of sleeping in his hammock on the beach but it took a few days of work to realize that dream. The garage was a good second though.

At the "neighborhood" pool for the sand castle competition. 

Vera swam to the bar at the center of the pool and ordered herself a Topo Chico. Dear Topo Chico, feel free to use this photo in an advertisement. 

I didn't bother to bring much "real" clothing this year; and as I suspected, Vera was in dress up 95% of the time. 

Though Theo looks determined and precise with the legos in this photo, most of the time he would just swipe them onto the ground or fling the box across the room. Then he would cry about the legos being covered in sand and dog hair. 

Morning walk on the beach

The tide was so low every morning. It gave us lovely little wonderlands of tide pools and rocks to climb on and enough still water for Theo to play in. But there were urchins. And they were seriously poky. Matt can attest to that. 

Our beautiful isolated beach. 

Matt and my dad spent every morning fishing for our lunches. 

Travis used most of his mornings for proper beach vacationing, i.e. sleeping in. 

After a couple days of digging in the sand and setting up posts, Travis was able to set up his hammock on the beach and sleep there fairly comfortably. 

Despite the (misleading) rumors of man eating sharks, we all still went to Cabo Pulmo for snorkeling and playing in water with gentler waves -still not gentle enough for my uncharacteristically timid son.

Building a sand pool to trap the rock crab that Matthew caught. 

After a fight, and a blood-drawn battle with the rock crab, Matt decided to return him to the sea. 

Playa de los arbolitos.

More low tide magic.

This area had magical geological stripes running through the rock. 

I thought the little caves were interesting. Vera thought they were terrifying. This is as close as she would go. 

The best shrimp tacos after a long afternoon of playing at the beach.

We came home to a garden bursting with garlic and onions. And this is only half of it. Our neighbors said they had been eating our ripe blackberries and tomatoes all week hand over fist. It's good to have neighbors to water your garden and rescue the produce from the birds.

We had so much fun in Baja. We always do. The addition of Travis and my dad's girlfriend Lauren made it even better. It was all delicious meals and lots of laughing all day every day. We're so grateful to be able to spend time in that house every spring and get some good Grandpa Dean time in. Hopefully we can keep up this tradition for many more years to come.