Emergency Vacation Planning
N.B. This was also written at the same time as my last post, at the beginning of May, but took forever for me to finish getting the pictures added. (Can you sense a theme with my blogging?) I am happy to report that Enoch is doing well enough I am not worried at all about the accessibility of camping, although we will still need to take it easy for him on our activities.
I desperately want to be able to go on a vacation this summer, but I have been waiting until we better know what Enoch's capabilities are before scheduling one (do we need a wheelchair accessible camping site? Are the planned activities wheelchair accessible? Do they need to be?) I absolutely love planning for and going on trips and vacations, but have been holding off because we have had to cancel so many of them in the last two and a half years, ever since I got pregnant with the twins and was completely sick the entire pregnancy. Since then between their NICU stay, Rowena's feedings - first through an NG tube and then her g-tube, combined with Enoch developing Functional Neurological Disorder of 2023, I have had to cancel vacations several times.
We have actually planned on going to San Diego four different times (including having our camping site booked at the KOA and everything). I am hoping to go this summer, but I don't want to schedule it until we are 100% going and nothing will come up to ruin it. My children are convinced we are cursed and have told me to not give them any advance knowledge at all but just pack them up in the car and take them to San Diego one day so they won't get their hopes up just to have them dashed again.
We have managed a few vacations even with the chaos of the last few years. In August of 2023 we went to Mesa Verde National Park and other state parks around it.
Over Fall Break that year we visited central Utah. Spring of 2024 we went to Dinosaur National Monument in Eastern Utah. Memorial Day we went to St. George for a few days. August 2024 we camped in Yellowstone when Enoch was doing much better with his FND. And over President's Day weekend this year we went to Arches National park (and a little Canyonlands). I am glad we did each of these trips. I have a lifetime goal to visit all of the national parks, and I love visiting new ones. The process of planning for, going on, and then remembering family vacations is one of the principal joys of my life. Some of my favorite family memories are of family vacations.
But I also remember all the ones I have planned and scheduled that we have had to cancel. They are like phantom limbs, that I can almost remember if I half close my eyes in a certain light, and they carry a soft ache where the memories should have been, but never were created. Besides all of the cancelled trips to San Diego (whale watching! The San Diego Zoo! Tide Pooling at Cabrillo National Monument! The Maritime Museum with real, docked sailing ships! Fresh Baja fish tacos and churros!), I have had to cancel other vacations as well. We were going to go up to Spokane to visit my sister and her family and then go camping in the Cascades National Park and in Mount Rainer National Park. We were going to spend several days in Seattle and spend one day taking a ferry to an island. We had a trip planned to our favorite vacation spot ever at Monterey Bay aquarium on the California Coast and visiting Pinnacles National Park and camping along the coast next to the ocean, plus spending a few days in Sacramento on the way home. That was supposed to be this summer, but we are so far behind (and we have prepaid for activities in San Diego that we need to use up) that we are doing San Diego first instead. We were going to camp in Kanab, Utah and visit the coral sand dune state park and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park. Thank goodness for cancellable reservations, but I would have rather have taken the trips.
Throughout life we all have paths we don't take but always remember, and I know (I know!) that lost vacations are nothing large in the grand scheme of life. I have had true tragedies and difficulties (not the least having these special needs kids these past two years, and these are not them. But I also think it is still okay to mourn something even if it isn't a grand tragedy. Of course (of course!) I am grateful that my children's health difficulties are not life threatening and in the case of Rowena will be completely gone in the future. Enoch will always have FND, but his long term management prognosis is good. But I also know that we only have so much time left when all of our children are at home with us and can take vacations with us, and I want to do as many together as possible.
Currently we are going to do San Diego this summer and probably Kanab in the fall (but maybe somewhere else???) and then for our Christmas presents as a family go to Monterey for the week after Christmas. We won't be able to do the camping on the coast nor Sacramento, but we do all love Monterey the most. I would live on the California coast if I could live anywhere.
UPDATE, written on subsequent days
I wrote the foregoing while I was waiting for my kids at the dentist, and at that point of writing decided to look up camping at the KOA in San Diego to see which dates were still available for the Summer. And surprise! There were none. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. Suddenly my plan to just make reservations once we had everything figured out was stymied. Of course we could get a hotel, but the way we afford to take so many vacations (especially with just buying a house last year and being a bit house poor at the moment, not to mention the multitudinous medical bills from having kids with health needs) is by camping along with hotels, and the KOA resort in San Diego looks particularly fun, with a large resort style pool and bouncing pillows and fun activities for kids. Plus I actually really like camping.
I talked to Avram and it clarified two things for me: we definitely couldn't go to San Diego this summer, but instead it would have to be the week after Christmas. Three of the four times that we have cancelled going there have been at Christmastime, 2022, 23 and 24, so it feels scary to plan yet another Christmas trip in 2025. But I have faith that this one will actually come to pass! Secondly I knew that since San Diego was out for the summer, it made the most sense to do our Northern California/Monterey trip this summer. I ended up tweaking a few things about the original itinerary, like taking out Sacramento and doing it another trip. This both saves us money because big cities cost a lot per day to visit versus other areas, but also lets us spend a lot more time around Monterey than we have the other two times we have been there. We absolutely love Monterey and the surrounding area, so this is a happy move for us.
We have told each of our kids that before they move out they can pick one vacation that we will go on, and have extra say in the activities we do on it. Lydia picked the Dinosaur National Monument for hers, which we did in 2024. Elisheva picked camping on the ocean, where she could hear the waves from her tent. At this late date the campground was full that I had marked in my Vacation Note on my phone, which is how I plan all our vacations. It turns out Kirk Creek Campground is the most popular campsite in California, so unless I had been hovering over the website at 8:00 pacific time six months to the day before we wanted to camp I never would have gotten it. (And yes, I have done that before to get a campsite I wanted). I started looking at other state park campgrounds along the pacific and all of the "best of" ones were taken, but I did find some spots at San Simeon. We camped here in 2022 and liked the lower campground a lot, but only the upper one had openings and it wasn't as nice spots - there weren't a lot of trees, and it is a more exposed and windy location and a lot further walk to the beach. So I kept looking and found one available camping spot for four days in Morro Bay State Park. Morro Bay is further south along the coast, so a new spot to us, but still the same ocean climate that I love. Clearly someone had reserved it and then later cancelled, because it was the only one available for that long for the whole summer. I was happy to take advantage of the opening and went ahead and reserved it. It isn't directly on the ocean but on a bay next to the ocean, so it didn't fulfill Elisheva's dream, but it is still along the coast broadly.
I ended up structuring the trip with three days in a hotel suite in Monterey, then three days camping at the Presidio in Monterey, which is a great veteran's campground next to the base there that anyone can camp in, no need to be an actual veteran. One great thing about the campground is that while you can't make reservations you can only stay for three days. This means that there are always spots available and in 2022 we got a spot right next to a field and playground, so our kids spent every waking moment we were at our campsite playing at the playground with other kids staying there. Athena even ended up with a French friend who was staying in the spot next to ours and they still very occasionally exchange emails together as pen pals.
All the following pictures are from our Monterey and San Simeon vacations in 2021 and 2022.
We also are going to go along the 17 mile drive and visit the lighthouse and beaches and go tide pooling.
With our stay being longer in Monterey we also have time to go to Pinnacles National Park, which is only an hour drive inland, and spend another day going to Big Sur and the state parks around there like Limekiln and Julia Pfeiffer. We have driven before up the coast from San Simeon to Monterey on Highway 1 and love the views and driving through Big Sur, but we have never stopped.
When we are done at Monterey we will hopefully drive down Highway 1 (if it is open, if not we will take the inland route and circle back to the ocean) to San Simeon and spend the night there in a hotel. We like to break up camping with hotel stays while on vacation, and we will be going to Morro Bay next. Although we couldn't camp right at the ocean, we found a hotel right next to the ocean and sprang for the ocean view rooms so Elisheva can gaze thoughtfully out to the ocean and lie down at night next to the open window where the waves rolling can lull her to sleep. (She is legitimately very excited about this, as am I for myself). I love the beaches at San Simeon where there are huge driftwood structures built up by beach goers, and cool shells and stones and tidepooling.
Can you sense a theme? I love the pacific coast beaches when it is misty and grey and there are birds wheeling and waves rolling and I can walk along the coast and feel romantic. It is fun to jump in the surf as it comes in, but I don't mind not being able to fully swim in the ocean.
The kids waiting for the surf to come in at Half Moon Beach along Highway 1.
We also love the San Piedras Blanco rookery where when we have been there there have always been huge bull elephant seals sunning and fighting for dominance. If you zoom in on this picture you can see that all the big blobs are actually male elephant seals.
Finally we will end up Morro Bay for four nights camping and see the beaches, natural history museum, bird sanctuary, and cute town.
This is from when we camped by San Simeon in 2022. It was wonderful.
Planning vacations is one of the chief joys of my life. Avram doesn't love traveling, but does love Monterey (one reason we end up there so often, plus I love the ocean) and he also likes being in different locations and recognizes that our kids love going places. So I am the sole planner for our trips and I love it. I always check with Avram for a second opinion, but I just love planning out all the itinerary and I love dreaming of all the possibilities. I keep a Note for future vacations with planned and possible itineraries and hotels or campgrounds, costs and activities. I also keep a long Note with our camping lists for packing and gear, and with it notes for anywhere we have camped and what campsites were our favorite in that campground. Sometimes we even drive around campgrounds when we are visiting a state or national park just to get a feel for what possible sites we might want in the future.
Now to just hope and pray that Enoch will not just stay where he is and get more mobile again because none of the reservations are for wheelchair accessible rooms or campsites. We have learned we can push a wheelchair over all sorts of crazy terrains, but mostly I am hoping he will be able to walk.
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