California - Day 4 - Strawberry Picking!

On day 4 of our trip we headed to the coast. As you will see in the pictures, it was quite cold near the coast. Luckily I had brought some jackets for the kids and myself and Michael had an extra jacket for Jeff (since Jeff gave me his sweatshirt to wear on top of my fleece). It was probably high 50's which may sound warm to some of you people but not to us Floridians. To us (or me at least) that's like the north pole. Add wind on top and I'm one cold chickee. But it was all worth it to go strawberry picking. The Strawberry field was just outside Santa Cruz and the drive there was quite scenic, especially for us since the only "mountains" we see in Florida are called landfills.

Once we arrived, we had a picnic lunch:
After lunch, the kids wanted to play on the bales of hay. If you look in the background, you can (kinda, sorta) see the pacific Ocean.
Then it was time to go strawberry picking. The kids were in heaven! Allison has been asking Aunt Bonnie for months if she can go strawberry picking when we visit California. They loved going up and down the aisles trying to find the "perfect" strawberry:

I seemed to have found one:
Jeff and Daniel also had fun checking out the tractor:
Strawberry fields forever...
Before we knew it, we had picked 8 lbs of strawberries!
Afterwards we went in the store and Jeff couldn't resist the strawberry shortcake - yum!
On the way back to my sister's house we stopped at a winery. It used to be a Bonny Dune tasting room but they sold it to another winery. We enjoyed a tasting and the beautiful scenery - as you can tell, the weather was much warmer - we were only about ten minutes from the strawberry field but wow, what a difference! Here we are in the midst of the redwood trees:

My beautiful sister Bonnie:
I love when they hold hands:
And that completes day 4 of our trip. On day 5, we returned (two years later) to the Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose...