As winter break had approached, we realized that we probably COULD take a careful vacation with the family. We really needed one, we all needed to get out of the house where we’d been cooped up for almost a year. But it was scary out there, with no vaccine and the virus running rampant in its first winter surge. So we decided to go to Pajaro, which was a safe, familiar place. We would take very precaution: we’d bring all our food from home (doing as little shopping as possible), and we’d do only outdoor activities like walking and hiking (all indoor activities like the aquarium were closed anyway) where we could be socially distanced from other people. We rented a unit shortly before the vacation. There weren’t many left by then, but we were able to get a two-bedroom condo in Shorebirds. It was small but we were very glad to get it, and we planned to spend most of our days outdoors anyway. So, two days after Christmas, we went to Pajaro! We were there from December 27 to January 3rd. It was a great vacation, and so good to get away. The unit was indeed very small, so loafing around the condo was not really an option. But that was fine as we’d been cooped up for almost a year so it was GREAT to get outside. The smallness of the unit just meant that we couldn’t be lazy during the day. We did bring a Lego Christmas gift with us: the Millennium Falcon, which we assembled in the evenings when we had some down time. So we did LOTS of hiking. Complicating this plan a little bit was that I’d strained a tendon that ran the length of the sole of my foot from heel to toe way back in June. It had happened after a hike in Rancho where I’d worn my walking shoes on a much longer hike than expected. The tendon had been bothering me for six months by this point. What this actually meant was that after sitting or resting for a while, this tendon would tighten up, so that getting up and walking on it was acutely painful until it loosened up again, which led to a certain amount of staggering and limping until it was warmed up. I went through the move and all the unpacking with this thing, which was annoying. This tendon, combined with the fact that the kids were at home for the school year, led to me not doing my daily walk for a year. Long periods of rest helped, over many weeks, but then I’d stress it again. I was determined not to let it be a problem on this trip, so I just walked on the damn thing and powered through the soreness every time it seized up. And, to my gratification, this exercise of walking miles and miles on it every day, stretching it out, seemed to help because the pain faded away in January. On our first day we went to Wilder Ranch, north of Santa Cruz, and did the bluff hike there, then had a picnic and let the kids play on the giant tree near the farmhouse. We got pints of Maryann’s ice cream in Santa Cruz on our way back as a special treat. Back at the condo we went down to the beach and took a walk to the Pajaro river. It was a gorgeous day, and so good to get outdoors in a beautiful location. Pajaro is only an hour away, but it feels like another world. On the 29th we went to Point Lobos and spent the day hiking the whole perimeter of the park, starting by going south then hiking in a clockwise direction along the cliffs. This is our new, expanded family hike as the kids are older and can handle a longer hike. We got home in the late afternoon and had a little well-earned quiet time, then had our traditional American tacos for dinner! This is one of the few dishes I brought forward from my childhood in Fresno: mid-20th century Cal-Mex tacos. My mom made these when I was a kid. It’s a favorite with my family too and I pretty much ONLY prepare it in Pajaro as a special treat. It has become a Pajaro treat because we can get really good tortillas in Watsonville (as La Rosa) and it’s easy to prepare in an unfamiliar and unstocked kitchen, and it’s delicious and a big hit! The next day, on December 30th, we went to Elkhorn Slough and did a bunch of the hikes, including some new ones. We did just about all the trails in the park. A highlight was finding some coyote tracks and doing some tracking and sleuthing with Owen. Later, we found a feather spot where it looked like a RAPTOR -- maybe a red tailed hawk? -- had been killed and eaten. This is highly unusual of course. There were feathers hanging from a branch and a bunch of feathers on the ground below. We studied the scene, kind of like detectives at the scene of a murder, to figure out as much as we could about what had happened. Then we went out to hummingbird island and did our usual kid photograph on the stairs there. It was a good day. On New Year’s Eve with did a new hike: we went to Pinacles National Park and hiked up to the top! This was one of our biggest hikes of the trip. It was a great day for it, cool and clear. It was a gorgeous hike. We were also lucky enough to spot some California condors! These are very endangered so this was a stunning event for us. There has been a long-running program to breed them in captivity and release them in the park, to try to get the population re-established. We saw several: they are absolutely huge birds, with the widest wingspan of any bird in the U.S., with striking white elbow patches. One was sitting on a rock sunning itself, and at another point we saw one soar below us, which was amazing. Then we saw one perched on a rock much closer, so we got a better look at it. It was a great hike and an amazing day. Back at the condo we made fried squid for special New Year’s Eve appetizers, another Pajaro treat, then we had tacos for New Year’s Eve dinner. We also went down to the beach at sunset as Lela want to get a bunch of photographs of her doing dance moves against the sunset. We got a bunch of good photos! On New Year’s day we went to the forest of Nisene Marks for a hike. The park is a long, skinny one with a single paved access road going from the entrance to a point several miles deep within the park. The hikes all branch off from this road. There are a bunch of little hikes down near the park entrance, but the big hikes are deep in the park toward the end of the road. The little hikes are good for young families, and we’d done a number of those before, but we had our eyes on a bigger hike deep in the park. However, we didn’t fully realize the importance of the park’s layout when we started the day. So we didn’t handle the timing optimally: by the time we arrived in the mid-morning there was no more parking at the far end of the road where the big hikes started. So we parked a couple blocks outside the park, in town, which meant hiking the length of the paved road – several miles – before we could even get to an interesting trailhead. Plus, hiking on the road meant being around other hikers, including those who were not into nature and had kids on little bikes and loud radios in their bike baskets. Also, to complicate matters, my boots were falling apart, with the sole coming off like a big flap, and I was worried about fording creeks with my disintegrating boots. So the day did not go as planned. In the end we took a modest hike from the road, then turned back in the early afternoon, which was a bit disappointing. (However, a few weeks later, using what we’d learned that day, we DID manage to get to the park early enough to park at the end of the raid, and we did manage to do an amazing trail to a waterfall, which was very gratifying and vindicating.) Once we were out of the park we went to Mentone, David Kinch’s new pizza and pub-Italian restaurant (I just invented that term but it seems appropriate) in Aptos. Mentone had opened right before the pandemic so they’d had to change directions fast in order to survive, so they had switched to just pizza and all take-out. We got there as they opened, and we ordered three pizzas to share, which we took to a nearby city park. The pizzas were AMAZING. Fabulous thin crust, with innovative Neapolitan-Californian toppings. They were great and a huge hit with the entire family. We knew we’d be back! On our last day, January 2nd, we had an easier day. The weather had turned on us, and we’d done most of the hikes we could think of, and we were pretty wiped out after hiking every day for five straight days. So we worked on the Milenium Falcon, and baked chocolate chip cookies in the afternoon, and had platters of nachos for dinner. It was a good day! Then on January 3rd, we came home! It had felt really good to get out of our routine and out of the house. We spent five great days hiking together on beautiful trails and getting physically tired outside, and eating fun foods and putting together Legos and making cookies. It was a great vacation!