Day 8 - Going Home

I woke up Friday morning, and I knew instantly that I had caught the stomach bug that had been going around.  It was a miserable morning of packing everything up while needing to throw up.

The older kids headed out on a walk on the beach, and the little kids played games in the house, and I packed.

We needed to be out of the house by 11:00, and we had a lot of stuff to get packed up.  We worked right up until it was time to go, and pulled out of the driveway right at 11:00.  We all are going to miss this place.

We thought we only had 5 hours of driving this day, so we wanted to squeeze in one last activity before we left.  We drove half an hour to Natural Bridges State Park, to see if we could find some tide pools.

This place was amazing.  We walked along rock pocketed with pools of water, as the waves crashed up against the cliffs.  

Josh has always been my tide pool lover, and he spent the whole time exploring all the little pools of water.

 

 

 

Kate didn't really love the crashing of the waves.  She is not a fan of the ocean!

 Aaron also preferred to keep a safe distance.  

I finally made him come over and look at a tide pool.  I told him he needed to touch an anemone, and he was pretty freaked out at the thought of that.  The crashing up of the waves behind him didn't help much, either.

When Aaron couldn't bring himself to touch it, Nate came in to show him how it was done.

And finally Aaron mustered up enough courage to reach in and touch the anemone.  

And then a big wave crashed, and he was out of there!

Did I mention that Kate really did not like it here?

This natural land bridge is what gives the park it's name.  

Since we needed to drive home in the car, I didn't want the kids to get wet in the water, so the boys walked as close to the waves as they could, while still staying dry.

When it was time to leave, Owen sat down in the sand and refused to come.  He did not want to go home and leave the ocean! I can't say that I blame him.  I didn't want to go home either.

We finally convinced Owen to come, and we drove up to the visitors center to use the bathrooms and have some lunch before we hit the road for good.  I still was feeling really nauseous, so Scott did all the work of feeding the kids out of the van.

The rest of the day was driving.  We thought it would take 5 hours, but the traffic was so horrible, it ended up taking 8! 

Mostly everyone slept, but Kate had a rough time getting into a comfortable position, and kept waking up and crying. 

I was too sick to drive, so poor Scott had to drive the entire way.  It was such a LONG drive!  We finally made it to Reno after 9 that night.  No swimming in the hotel pool that night, we all just went straight to sleep.