Skip to main content

Its Monarch season!


It's Monarch season!


Monarch - A beautiful milkweed butterfly in the family Nymphalidae. These are simple yet so beautiful butterflies that migrate to California and can be seen in Oct through Nov...

They travel at a speed of 25 miles/hour and can go upto a height of 10,000feet(Woah!).

These butterflies make Natural Bridges State beach natural preserve area their home from Oct through Nov. The park ranger have weekend free-1 hour tours at 11am and 2pm. These are great tours, they give you lot of information and are very kid friendly. The rangers were so friendly and make the whole tour so kid oriented with butterfly costumes and Q&A.

You can then follow the trail and visit the preserve and watch butterflies. 

Trail leading up to the area for butterfly watching
They have some binoculars setup that can help you see the pods. (The picture isn't all that great but observe the butterflies hanging on the milkweed leaves. They look like dried leaves on the tree but they are monarch butterflies.)

Watching the butterflies on the milkweed plant 





We then went to the Natural State Bridges Beach and enjoyed nice sunny California day! 

You can make it a day trip with some butterfly viewing + Beach day with picnic lunch!
The beach doesn't have any shade so you may wanna take a tent or something. 


 OR Santacruz downtown is very close and you can choose to have nice fancy lunch at a near by restaurant. We went to the Laila, a contemporary Mediterranean place.




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kid friendly wineries!

Visiting wineries with a toddler, it is a requirement to look for wineries that are kid friendly! As we continue our wine adventure, I plan on sharing kid friendly wineries as we explore! Napa Castello Di Amorosa A Tuscan style castle winery with beautiful views! Plan on making reservation during summer, holidays or weekends - It’s a popular spot and guided tours can be sold out. If you don’t plan on doing a guided tour, they offer general admission for two levels of the castle and wine tasting. The castle has grass area outside with some trees. Trees are great on hot summer day to sit and relax. Winery comes with emus, peacocks, goats, sheep and chicken. Great for kids to run around, and play with the animals. The coolest dungeon tasting room, lets you enjoy some wine tasting while the kids are kept happily occupied with breadsticks and grape juice. A knight’s suit of armor in the corner completes the ambiance.St Helena downtown is just
Post a Comment
Read more

How do I setup an open ended play space?

Navigating our way to building a "yes" space with has endless possibilities! Once I got rid of all the passive toys(milder way of saying battery operated, self entertaining toys), I started thinking of what can I add.  I wanted to be cautious that I don't make this an expensive affair. Be more reasonable understanding this is an experiment but also knowing that I should try! Reading through a lot of article, experiences etc, there was a very common theme in all of them. RE-USABLE!!!  I am learning as I go too, so from how I have interpreted this is - You want to add things that are natural can be re-purposed in various different way in various different types of activities. Here are some examples : Play Dough Wooden blocks Sand Water Paint Sticks, leaves, pine cones etc They are sounds simple, doable and things that make sense. These don't cost a fortune too, so I started with them. I already had some like play dough, sand, etc. An
Post a Comment
Read more

Endless Possibilities! - Our introduction to open ended play.

Starting our journey with understanding, building an open ended play environment! Well, it all started when I felt like kids are meant to explore, be curious and NOT necessarily just follow instructions. Most of the toys today are very instructions based, match the shapes, color within borders, follow the path etc etc.  I saw that my toddler was getting good at following instructions and doing exactly what it said! Shouldn't this be like a win! I actually started feeling like I was taking away the creativity, making more instruction following kid. I am not in any way saying kids shouldn't follow instructions, they absolutely should learn too. And in many things they should, but while they play, do things, maybe NOT.  That's when I started exploring what would it be like if we weren't into these toys and having kids follow instructions to create things/play only in a certain way. The first thing I noticed was these battery operated toys. They ar
Post a Comment
Read more