Agate Beach

Since we just got our new car, we thought a good way to break it in would be to go on a road trip. After perusing one of our "CA-with-kids" books, we settled on Agate Beach, which is about an hour and a half to the north, past San Francisco.

After going over the Golden Gate bridge the route takes you onto CA 1, which hugs almost the entire coast of the state. This part was notable for its windiness, weaving in and out of deep notches in the coastline. Megan got sick a couple of times, and even Maura started feeling ill in places.

Agate Beach is a small, fairly rocky beach that's known for its tide pools. The kids had lots of fun finding snails, fiddler crabs, seaweed, shells and crabs. There were a few fish and even some sea anemones. Gavin, as usual, was a handful. We didn't bring bathing suits as it was pretty cold, but that didn't stop him from sitting down in the tide pools and enthusiastically splashing about. He was pretty messy by the time we left, but he seemed quite happy about it.