4 years, 10 months. 

Dear Jack,

For our final stop of our Camry family road trip across northern California, we drove from Monterey to Santa Cruz, before ultimately heading back to Sacramento, where Mommy’s side of the family is from.

Mommy had told me that once before she had been to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk Beach Amusement Park and thought our family would really love it.

So we put it on the agenda, following our trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Here’s my video I made about our trip there:

To get going, we stopped at Staff of Life’s Café Del Sol for some vegan donuts. I know that to an outsider that may not seem like that big of a deal, but for a vegan dad like me, it’s epic.

Where we live in Nashville, there is no easy access to vegan donuts; they definitely don’t sell them at our Whole Foods. It would be different if we lived in Portland, Oregon; which I hear is the “Vegan Donut Capitol of the World.”

But where we live, donuts made without eggs and milk basically cease to exist. Therefore, we enjoyed our breakfast!

When we arrived at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, we had about 45 minutes to walk there on the beach; since we had arrived before the amusement park itself had opened yet.

Our family budgeted $50 for the 2 hours we were there; and we based on the 2 hour time limit on how much we were willing to pay the parking meter.

You definitely wanted to play some games, so bought $50 worth of tickets so we could go on two rides with all 3 of us, then let you go on several rides by yourself, then spend the rest on games.

I loved how ambitious you were! You rode your very first roller coaster with Mommy and me: the Sea Serpent. It was pretty thrilling for a boy who’s not quite 5 years old yet.

But at 42 inches tall, you were just tall enough to be permitted to ride.

Our other family ride was the Cave Train Adventure, where we were able to “time travel” to the days of caveman and dinosaurs; it was completely dark in there, except for the black lights.

For your individual rides, you were able to fly a plane as well as a drive a monster SUV, a boat, an orca whale, and a big rig truck. You loved it all!

And then there were the carnival games…

I made sure you only played the games with the sign that read, “A winner every time!”

Your best venture was Bob’s Fishin’ Hole. On the first try, we accidently figured out that the blue fish, which flowed further away from the ledge nearest you, were the heavier fish, which were worth the biggest prizes.

So you caught 3 blue fish and one the biggest prize they had: A giant blue pirate fish stuffed animal. On the first try!

By the end our 2 hours, you had a prize in each of the 3 sizes.

We returned to the Camry with 7 minutes to spare, then he finished our day with dinner at Whole Foods, where we enjoyed more vegan donuts.

And finally, that’s it.

That’s our whole Camry family road trip. We had a blast. I look forward to next year when we travel to San Diego for your Uncle Jake’s wedding.

Love,

Daddy