Happy birthday to Bernadette!

Roni and family claimed they would be up about 10 or 10:30, so after we walked back to the mobile cache, and had breakfast, we went caching along the point. The first was a little one in a group of trees along the path. #2 was on a green utility box. We walked from that one to a virtual. Back at the car, we went for one in the little cemetery next to the golf course. Then, at about 10, we were back in the room, and there was a message. They'd gotten on the road about 9:40. So we met them at the Dennis the Menace Playground. Alex had already had a lot of fun exploring everything. I was last here in February of 1976. It was unusual, visionary, in those days, before "Adventure playgrounds." It still has the suspension bridge and the train to climb all over, but I think some of the more dangerous things are gone. Every time we visited since, it's been closed, so it was a thrill to get back at last.

World's Cutest (and dirtiest!) Wiggles Fan. Monica bought shirts for the girls. Alex is SOOOO proud of this. Besides, at the concert she got to see Murray, who took a rose from her!

After we played another hour or so, it was time to get Alex headed toward the boats. (She'd seen the boats from the top of the hill in the playground and was focussed on them, till we got sidetracked at the train. At first she wouldn't go in the train, then we couldn't get her off.) The boats took three adults and one child, so Rich, relieved, stayed off and followed the geese and goslings. The boat amused Alex for awhile, but she began to want to get down after a half hour or so. Then we went to McDonald's. The two-year-old has read the text! "NO!" is her favorite word.

OK, we thought probably A. could use a nap, and Roni thought it might be fun for R.J. to cache with us. We went back to their motel room and left them. Our first cache with R.J. was a couple of blocks from the playground, in a tree, and R.J. was the one to find it! I traded travel bugs, and we went into Old Monterey. We walked around a number of confusing streets, and Rich found the cache behind a rock in the 'dobe wall. #3 was along the History Walk and I located this one stuck to a bench. In fact, it was so easy I hid it a little better.

We then got lost trying to get to the top of a hill without going through the Presidio, so R.J. wanted a bit of a nap himself. We took him back, and Alex had been dead out for 45 minutes. We thought we would meet at the beach, and Rich and I went off to the http://www.pgmuseum.org/ Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History. I've wanted to see this ever since Rich went while I was at Bouchercon, and this looked like an opportune time to do so. It's nice! It has lots of taxidermic birds which I found interesting. There are some fossils, some butterflies. It's a pleasant little museum.

There was still time to cache, so we went to one called "Maps and Manzanita." We were all over that manzanita grove till we found it.

Then off to the top of the hill we hadn't seen with R.J. What a gorgeous view! We finally found the cache, too.

Back at their motel, they were gone, so we started going along the coast looking for them. Rich turned around too soon, then we made another pass, and finally thought maybe they'd wanted to ditch us. Rich wanted to beachcomb (it's a lot different in April than September) and I sat and enjoyed the wonderful view, the waves, the rocks, the oystercatchers, etc. We made another pass by their motel, no, so we thought we'd look for the last cache on the coast. However, it's a .6 mile walk, and would take too much time, so we decided not.

When we dropped by the kids' motel room then, they were back. They'd been at Asilomar beach and I would have enjoyed watching Alex there, but Rich hadn't realized it was sand, not the mud he remembered. Oh, well. We made arrangements for dinner.

I saw a sea otter off Lover's Point, across from our motel, so my evening was made.

We ate at the Loose Noodle, which is quite good. No boats for Alex today and she did drop a couple of crayons on purpose, but on the whole she was good. We arranged to meet at the Aquarium tomorrow, and so we split another time.