08.16
So I still remember my sister and brother-in-law dragging me down to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk when I was a kid and so those memories were there when Lisa and I headed down there with our own kids this week.
Ryan, just like on our adventures in Disneyland, couldn’t wait to go on the log ride and it didn’t matter that it was still 60 degrees and foggy the first thing in the morning.
Katie, as it turned out, was pretty much open to any ride she could go on. She especially liked the rides for kids her size that she could go on by herself. It was quite a hoot to watch her riding rides all by herself.
Curiously, the Amazing Chinese Acrobats were there which is weird because they were in Reno when we were there last year. Reno, however, had fewer butt cracks in attendance, which by and large was a good thing.
We also got up to the Mystery Spot which was mildly entertaining. The engineer in me was not overly impressed, but it made for some fun and now I can say I’ve been there.
Also cool on this trip was the use I got out of my new iPhone. We used the GPS and maps application pretty extensively when navigating around Santa Cruz and it did pretty good for what we asked of it. It found the afore mentioned Mystery Spot for us and even found us lunch on the way home. Yes, the 3G coverage was crap and the phone refused to downshift into EDGE (where the coverage was excellent) and therefore battery life on the first day sucked pretty bad. Manually switching it to EDGE solved all that and from there on out the phone behaved great. I do hope Apple gets its 3G act together on the iPhones.
The camera on the iPhone isn’t all that bad for what it is and I got some decent shots off it (like the shot of Katie to the left).
Finally, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are “family outings” and there are “photo outings” and they are not necessarily the same thing. Lugging multiple lenses, strobes and other photo knick-nacks off to new locales is great for “photo outings” but sometimes even a “plain” D300 and an 18-200 bouncing off your hip while herding kids in a crowded amusement park can be a pain. I’m thinking that something along the lines of the Canon G9 might make a good surrogate for when kid herding is more the order of the day.
Anyway, a good time was had by all.
