Abalone Cove Calamity

Imagine my excitement when I heard about tidal pools in Rancho Palos Verdes! I looked it up on the internet, saw the great reviews and the information about it, and Brooke and I made plans to take Kailey and Hannah out for a fun filled day of sunshine and sea life. Although the website mentioned walking down a trail to the beach, I figured it wasn't bad so I wore flip flops-the first mistake of the day. We drove up to the parking lot and asked the attendant for one of the maps. Of course they were out, but "its easy, just follow the trail down", he assured us. Confidently, we parked the car, ate lunch (so Hannah could finish napping) and headed out. Walking down the trail was fun at first as we watched the lizards run across the path and joked about snakes. Unfortunately we came to our first big problem-the path split off into two paths. I forgot to mention that this was not a typical beach path. Think of canyons and trees and high weeds galore and you'll get the picture.
We headed toward the beach, which looks like this. (Yes, that is all rock)

This seemed to be the only way across to the tidal pools, so across them we went. Besides a hurt seal (or sea lion), there really wasn't much to see but rocks, rocks, rocks. There was no way the girls could walk on that so we carried them. Did I mention I was in flip flops? After, what seemed like forever and several rests for our beleagured arms, we made it to the pools.
Resting on the way:


Finally we made it to the pools! They were really neat, and we thought all that had been worth it. We saw starfish, sea slugs (which are really icky), crabs, and some really weird creatures that squirt water at you if you poke them or accidentally step on them. It was pretty neat and the girls loved it.




The weird thing that squirt water (or something at us)


Starfish



The Sea Slug


After a lot of fun, we decided to head back-up the trail that apparently we should have been on in the first place. Unfortunately THIS trail branched off into quite a few trails and we had no clue which one to take. After a few dead ends, we had one choice left: To make our way down a steep path with a canyon on one side and a cliff on the other. We picked the girls up and scooted down. Unfortunately, this oh so dangerous trail led us right back down to a jaunt across the rocky beach which we were hoping to avoid having to do again in the first place. I'm sure those of you with children can imagine how exhausted and grouchy we all were at this point. Brooke and I had been forced to basically carry the kids the whole way and my feet hurt. To top it off, we were both sunburned. Don't forget, once we made it back to the path we had a steep incline to hike back up. At that point, the girls decided they had enough and stood there and stared as we walked away. Anyone watching would have assumed we were lunatics (I'm sure the girls did) as we screamed for them to walk and got more and more irritated with them as they refused.
Here is a look at the blank stares that we were receiving from them at this point: Don't you love the look Kailey has on her face in the second picture? It's like she is thinking "mommy has gone crazy!"



Finally I broke down and went to get them. On the way back up the trail we finally saw a sign that we should have seen the first time-rattlesnakes! Since there was no way that we were letting them walk up the trail if there were snakes, we ended up carrying them some more-all the way up the cliff to the parking lot. We definitely got more than we bargained for and learned that while it is a beautiful area it is not exactly a kid friendly place! If I had not been more tired, I would have given the attendant a piece of my mind as well-sure it would be easy to go on the trail if you knew which one it was! The upside of this is that Kailey went to bed at 6:00 tonight she was so exhausted so I get a nice break!
Walking up the path

The view (The rocks down in the ocean in the first picture are the tidal pools)