Gorgeous view of Carmel Valley mountains
Kids riding bikes around campground
Hiking in Garland Ranch to the Waterfall trail
Gorgeous oak trees with moss everywhere!
Well we made it to the waterfall....DRY...completely DRY.
Good ol' California in drought
Great views of Carmel Valley
Next stop...
Carmel Beach
White sand beach!!
Pebble Beach in far background
Love this one with the kids behind us
...
On the way into our campground, we drove past these pigs every day and it said ok to feed them. So we would bring our apple cores from lunch or banana peels from breakfast and stop and feed them
Next stop...TIDE POOLS in Point Lobos
Secluded beach for the new seal pup breeding area
View of Carmel Highlands...gorgeous!
More seals on rocks
Next adventure....a scenic drive through Carmel Valley
Couldn't get a good picture...but we saw a buck deer, a doe, and 2 young deers. A deer family! All together, then the buck walked off.
We ventured to Pinnacles National Park!
Large rock formations
We hiked Balconies Trail to Balconies Cliffs via Balconies Cave
We saw rock climbers way high on the rocks, so the kids tried a little rock climbing
Heading into the balcony cave
Inside the cave
Gorgeous oak tree trail
On the way home we saw this....the sun and a part of a rainbow....
We think it is...
A sun dog or sundog (scientific name parhelion, plural parhelia, e.g. "with the sun") is a relatively common halo, an atmospheric optical phenomenon mostly associated with the refraction of sunlight by small ice crystals making up cirrus or cirrostratus clouds.
Sundogs may look like bite-sized rainbows, but inspect one closer and you'll notice that its color scheme is actually opposite. Primary rainbows are red on the outside and violet on the inside. Sundogs are red on the side nearest the Sun, with colors grading through orange to blue as you travel away from it. If you recall, a double rainbow's secondary bow colors are arranged in this same way (red inside, violet outside).
Sundogs are like secondary bows in another way too: their colors are fainter than those of a primary bow. How visible or whitewashed a sundog's colors are depends on how much the ice crystals wobble as they float in the air. The more wobble, the more vibrant the sundog colors.
No camping trip is complete without a camp fire and smores
We had a great time camping over Thanksgiving break
