Butterflies and Hermit Crabs

Today we took the kids to Monarch Grove Sanctuary in Pacific Grove to see the monarch butterflies. We left our house around 10am and when we got into town we decided to have lunch first. We found this tiny Japanese Restaurant which ended up being quite yummy, but lunch took a little longer than we had anticipated. We found the Sanctuary and walked around watching all the butterflies fly around. The ranger said they just started to wake up so we really timed things just perfectly. We even ran into a few deer! After watching the butterflies for a while we decided we weren't going to have time to go to the aquarium so we took the kids to the ocean to walk on the rocks and check out the tide pools. I pretty much dropped Gregory in the water when we arrived - just his feet. The rocks were slippery!! We took a couple of pictures, found a few shells and left. On the way home, we made our must stop at Fisherman's Wharf for caramel corn and cotton candy. YUMOLA! (Carmel corn is still something I haven't given up, but my cardiologist said it'd be okay once in a while!) We had a great day!

Here we are at the entrance to the sanctuary

Gregory trying out the binoculars. I realized I was teaching him to use them backwards!!

Bailey sitting on the monarch butterfly bench

Deer! They were quite tame. Clark was really quite close

See all the clusters of butterflies? They are all closed up until the temp gets higher than 55 degrees. They are just starting to wake up here.

Watching all the flying butterflies

Just beautiful!