Pajaro Dunes Vacation

Last week we spent a few days at the Pajaro Dunes Resort for our summer vacation and had a wonderful time! I visited Pajaro Dunes with my family as a child, and it was pretty much exactly as I remembered. We left Monday morning and of course stopped by Dino's in Newark for a quick lunch:

Our next stop was the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz. I had been here before but this time I hated it! As soon as we stepped into the slanted building I became extremely dizzy and basically unable to move. The vertigo only improved when I stepped outside and looked up at the sky. So weird.

After a stop for groceries, we arrived at Pajaro Dunes!

Our condo was small but fit our family of 6 perfectly. 

The best part was the 1-minute walk down to the beach! 

The weather was in the beautiful 70's all week and a welcome break from the 100+ temps in Rocklin!

After exploring our new beach, I made a simple spaghetti meal for dinner and we relaxed after a long day of travel.

Tuesday we woke up to my birthday! We drove down to Monterey and visited the aquarium.

The penguins were my favorite!

Jenna loved the penguins so much she had to bring one home.

We walked around Cannery Row while waiting to eat a late lunch.

At Bubba Gump's!

I ordered the Shrimp New Orleans and it was SO fabulous!

Back at the condo, I snuck down to the beach to read while the rest of the family watched TV.

I was soon joined by the rest of the family. The tide was really high this evening and the boys had so much fun splashing through these really shallow areas.

While Jenna went shell-hunting with her Daddy.

And I posed in front of "stick man".

Wednesday was our planned "relax and hang out at the beach day". I made us a croissant casserole for breakfast and then Ryan and Lucas wanted to try out the tennis courts with me. We had fun and only lost 1 tennis ball!

We then headed down to the beach for a couple hours.....

We played frisbee, dug holes, built sand castles.....

And even received time-outs on driftwood.

I fixed us sandwiches up at the condo and then we all headed back to the tennis courts. Parents vs Kids.

We got hot quickly, so we retreated back to our condo to watch some I Love Lucy. I fixed an early dinner of tacos.

We were able to purchase a kit in the lobby to build a bonfire. We almost didn't use it because for some reason it just sounded hard to haul everyone down to the beach at night and start a fire. But we ended up going down right before sunset and I am SO glad we did! This was definitely our favorite night of the trip. The view of the sunset was beautiful, the crashing waves were a soothing soundtrack, the temperature with the fire was perfect, and it just felt like a magical evening.

Press play to watch my video below:

We did have a man and woman approach us with marshmallows and ask to "borrow" our bonfire. The kids thought they were weird and were convinced they were aliens, but we shared our fire for a while and they shared their marshmallows and graham crackers.

Thursday was Santa Cruz Boardwalk day! When we arrived, it was overcast and cool, but it ended up being out hottest day by far.

Does anyone else get nervous riding the Sky Glider? Just me? I shakily snapped this photo.

Some of the rides left us a little queasy.....

We rode rides, went to the car for our packed lunch, rode more rides, and then decided we were done by about 5pm. I think the Logger's Revenge water ride was our favorite ride of the day.

On Friday I was so sad to say goodbye to Pajaro Dunes. I found myself wishing we had just 1 more day to enjoy the calming beach. (It's a good thing we came home Friday because I started getting pretty sick late that night!)

We drove through San Jose and stopped at the Winchester Mystery House for a tour. We had never been before, and I really disliked it! I think I was mostly bothered by how HOT it was. I was literally sweating the entire time, and once the tour begins you can't just duck out because you will get lost in the huge house. I felt like I was trapped in this really weird house on an endless tour with no AC. Yuck.

But alas we made it out and finally headed home. Pajaro Dunes was a perfect family trip and I highly recommend it for an easy and relaxing family beach vacation. I hope we get to go back someday!