Last Friday, after coming home from the gym, Randy said, “We need to go somewhere, let’s do something! How about whale watching??”

Ummm … HECK YEAH!

So we did some research, and ended up booking a whale watching adventure in Newport Beach with Davey’s Locker, bright and early for Sunday morning at 6am. We thought it would be wise to drive down on Saturday and stay the night somewhere a bit closer, since we had such an early morning; we threw caution to the wind, and just drove down. We scoped out the area where we had to go the next morning (to check for parking and make sure we knew where we were supposed to be, etc.) and sat through what felt like 79 hours of traffic before we even started looking for somewhere to stay for the night. Of course, we’re all starving at this point so we pulled over for a late lunch of burritos and tacos by the beach … and started trying to find a place to stay.

You guys. Shiz got real, real quick. We spent almost two hours on the phone, on various apps for booking hotels – little did we know that every single hotel within a 30-minute drive of Newport Beach was completely booked. We were even looking at AirBnB’s and hotels that were $800 or more per night – nada, nothing, niente! Right when we were about to give up and buy a tent and camp somewhere (assuming, of course, that we could find a campground that was open) … when our heroes at Hotel.com found us a place to stay!

So we headed a little over 30 minutes BACK inland to Buena Vista, to stay near Knott’s Berry Farm … it had a pool, it wasn’t in the ‘hood, had a place for us to lay down, and a shower. We didn’t even care. Just get us a key!!

It basically was amazing. We didn’t take any pictures at the hotel swimming or at Denny’s eating pancakes for dinner, but, we DID take pics of our adventure on Sunday!

Noah is clearly not a morning person and needs a cup of cocoa before dealing with mom’s camera shenanigans.

Sunrise from the harbor was UNREAL. So orange and pink and beautiful – and fast!!

A small pod of dolphins came to say hi!

Blowhole spotted! Can you see it?

The humpback whale came RIGHT next to the boat. It was absolutely majestic to see this magnificent creature.

After our whale watching adventure, we took a drive up PCH to go check out Crystal Cove beach … and it was amazing! We saw a seal (or a sea lion? Not sure which one?!) out in the surf, the kids loved jumping in the waves (total parent fail forgetting the bathing suits in the car and bringing no towels).