Pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere!

Yesterday we went to the the Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival. We had heard that people attend en masse (as in hundreds of thousands of people) so we decided to head out after B's gymnastics (in San Jose) and cut over to HWY 1 as soon as we could to avoid the traffic on HWY 92. We figured that even if it took us an hour or more to get there, at least we'd be driving instead of sitting stock still in our car (just in case you're wondering it usually takes us about half an hour to get to Half Moon Bay from our house). The drive was absolutely wonderful! We ended up taking 84 at about Palo Alto, and it was such a pretty drive.


We found a nice spot along a creek to stop and take photos for T's assignment. J and the kids had fun playing with the rocks and constructing a sculpture for T to photograph a la Andrew Goldsworthy, and T had a blast playing around with the elements and using her new tripod.

B, C & J's sculpture

B's sculpture
we gathered a bunch of white rocks and left our mark

B the photographer

Apparently, Half Moon Bay is the pumpkin capitol of the world, but we still stopped at the first pumpkin patch we saw and we're glad we did. The closer we got to the town, the flashier the pumpkin patches were; that might have been fun for the kids, but it meant three things to us: 1) paying more for the pumpkin, not because the pumpkin is better but because someone has to help foot the cost of the giant blow up bouncy house 2) way too many people, pushing and shoving and driving us nuts and 3) overshadows the fun of simply picking out your own pumpkin. We all had a lot of fun picking out some very interesting pumpkins (seven in total: one for each of us, one for G-Money who will be visiting us the week of Halloween -- we can't wait! we can't wait! -- and two teeny, tiny baby ones for good measure). We got to use a wheelbarrow and there was even an hay pyramid to be climbed.

Coming up from the south we really didn't see much traffic at all, so it was a big shock when we got to the town of Half Moon Bay. So. Many. People! We were starving and had to pee when we first got there, so we roamed around irritably for awhile trying to get those needs met. The first place we tried to eat had a line out the door and people kept cutting in front of us even though J said "We are in line here!" The second place we went was kind of divey, the food did not look good...well, the food we saw other people being served, we never even got to place an order; after awhile we got tired of batting away the flies and just left. The third place was closing at 3 pm. The fourth place was great though; an Italian ristorante with delicious food, clean (and borderline fancy) and the service was friendly...thank goodness!

Bladders emptied, tummy's filled, we commenced strolling through the many, many booths with arts and crafts. T got a replacement for her Mug (there's a story involved in that, we'll try to post about it soon but emotions are still running a little high on that one), B got some new undies, C got a fun pumpkin cap and J got a beautiful glass photo frame (okay, maybe that's not strictly for J, but he didn't want to feel left out). We met some great artists: Mike Taylor, who makes whimsical wire sculptures (Wire-U-Here) and lives in Portland...in fact his kids live in (drum roll please!) Columbia City! We also met Sam Price who makes these amazing dog collage portraits; we're buying lotto tickets now in hopes of winning funds for a portrait of Rhys.

It took us an hour to drive about five blocks out of town, but once we hit HWY 92 N it really wasn't so bad. The slightly slower flow of traffic allowed for some fun camera play.