Diary of a New Daddy: Highlights of our visit to Southern California

We did A LOT of driving during our first two weeks in US. We drove down south, stopping at Monterey Bay, Carmel, did all the scenic routes, stopped at Anaheim, LA and San Diego. And then we started driving back up towards Yosemite National Park and back to SFO. Daddy estimated the distance we covered was like driving from Spore to Penang and back again.
The scenery in California is quite breath taking though. Lots of vast land, oceans, mountains. At times, it felt like we were driving to the ends of the world. We would drive for hours and not see a single building. Just lots of vast land filled with crops, or horses and cows grazing in the fields. Or we would see huge majestic mountains that's towering over us. And the oceans, they just stretched on forever. It's really amazing, God's creation. I think He had a lot of fun when he created the land and the sea.

Well, the very first stop of our trip was to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This is one of the nicest aquariums I've visited. They have a very wide range of marine life and the exhibits are well organised and interesting. When we arrived, we were just in time for feeding time at the Kelp Forest which is a 2 storey high tank housing a Kelp forest complete with marine creatures. The feeding show was quite informative and interactive and it attracted a huge crowd. Caleb was quite fascinated with the section featuring the sea otters. He was glued to the tank for quite a while watching the sea otters swimming round and round. But his favourite section was definitely the toddlers corner. There was a section set up for water play. They also had a touching pond where toddlers could dip their hands into the water to feel and pick up star fishes, shell fish, sea weed etc. Caleb was really apprehensive at first. We tried to persuade him to dip his hand into the water but he didn't want to. SO we had to led by example and put our hands in to touch the starfish. Me and Daddy have never touched star fishes before and honestly, we were a bit apprehensive as well but we had to pretend to be garang to show Caleb that it's ok to do it. Once Caleb saw us touching the star fish, he overcame his apprehension and he fearlessly picked up a starfish and started digging and rubbing it. Me and Daddy were a little taken aback but we were glad that he was willing to explore. For those of you who are curious, well, the star fish feels really hard and stiff, just like a rock.

Doing the 17 mile drive at Pebble Beach