Monterey Bay

We decided to spend the day at Monterey Bay. During our travel through Big Sur Cara spotted an ad for whale watching and thought that it would be a cool little way to spend the day in Monterey. I happily agreed and we called them up. Unfortanately we didn't get to see any whales while we were out but we did get to see some other marine life. Here are a couple of photos from the day.

This is the little Chiuahua named LuLu. She was a rescued dog that was owned by a former marine. She is very popular with all of the little kids around the marina where she goes for her walks.
Me, chillin' out on the little fake boat while we waited for the whale watcher boat to depart.

The pelican's were very used to human interaction and would let us come within feet of them on the dock.

As soon as we departed we saw many sea lions laying on the rocks sun bathing.

Here is a sunfish that we saw while we were out looking for whales. It got scared off pretty quickly and went for a deep dive. I don't think that I could tell you what parts of the fish are what ;)

This is what Zeke looked like in his life preserver. Cara and Zeke spent much of the time inside the boat. We had very rough waters with a lot of splashes and such but it turned out to be very fun.

www.awakenedimages.com . David & Cara Williams . awakenedimages@yahoo.com

Hearst Castle in San Simeon California

Our next stop after the Highway 1 beaches was the Hearst Castle in San Simeon. We didn't think that we would be able to find this place but we did happen upon it after a little while of following signs. This was quite an awesome place! As you pull into the driveway you can see a huge Castle on top of the mountain up a 5 mile driveway! We learned that this Castle was referred to as the "Little Ranch in San Simeon" by the owner William Randolph Hearst. He actually owned about 7 similiar pieces of land and all of them had just as extravagant of buildings. Here are some photos of the "Little Ranch in San Simeon".

Here is the entrance to the Castle.

This is the "Guest house".

Here is the "Neptune Pool". He actually had those Roman Ruins shipped over from Rome while he was on vacation.

Here is a look inside the guest house.

This is the Main House where W.R. Hearst stayed. He intentionally patchworked different pieces of history into all of the buildings from all over the world. I can't remember half of the details but if you look closely at the stonework you can see different shades and tones of stone where he pieced it together.

This is what it looks like at ground level when you look up at the massive Castle. This is entering through a side courtyard.

This is the fireplace in the main room. I love the contrast of warm tones and cool tones in this photo and the detail and intricasy of the stonework.

This ceiling here predates the travels of Chistipher Columbus by about 30 years. It was shipped over to San Simeon from Spain.

Here is the indoor swimming pool. The floor here is lined with with real gold!!! I'm not joking!

So there it is... The Hearst Castle. I want to end with a serious note about W.R. Hearst. With all due respect I kinda feel bad for the guy. They won't tell you this during the tour but after prying a couple of questions out of the tour guides I came upon some further information. W.R. Hearst was not really successful as a father or a husband. He mutually seperated with his wife after having his 5 sons and he moved in his new "mistress" shortly after. In Hearst's words his sons grew up "Lazy and Spoiled". Apart from his financial success he didn't really have much. I don't mean to sound pessimistic but I do think that all of us need to keep a close eye on our priorities in life. I would rather be a poor, God-Loving / God-Fearing, good husband, good father... than to be a spritually lost, relationship-less, and filthy rich "Success".

We will be posting more from our trip soon. Keep checking in.

www.awakenedimages.com . David & Cara Williams . awakenedimages@yahoo.com

California Beaches and Highway 1

We left Orange, CA to visit some friends of ours around the Newport beach area. Kristi Klemens and her fiancee Paul Bennett ... a super-fab orange county photography team made some time in their very busy schedules to have brunch with us and chat photography. Thank you guys for hanging out with us for the morning! If you haven't checked out their work you need to do so... http://www.klkphotography.com/ and http://www.blueskyvideos.com/. Kristi also has a blog that we follow regularly... http://www.klkphotography.blogspot.com/ .They are very inspiring sites! Kristi and Paul also gave us directions to one of their favorite places in Laguna beach at "The Montage Resort". Here are some photos from that visit.

After The Montage we headed up Highway 1 to see the very scenic cliff side highway. The drive was awesome!!! We made the trip over the period of a couple days. One morning, waking up in a Wal-Mart parking lot, Cara spotted a great photo opportunity of the silhouetted palm trees framing the morning moon with the colors of twilight in the background. She has a very good eye for those things :)

As you can see here, Zeke is more than happy to travel in the R.V. He has been happier on this trip than he usually is at home in Michigan. He loves all the time with Mommy and Daddy!

As we headed up Highway 1 we took the opportunity to stop by a couple of the beaches. There are dozens and dozens of beautiful beaches up Highway 1! We stopped here in Malibu for some dinner and desided to venture down to the beach afterwards. It was a nice little secluded area and there were only 3 other people out there. We had plenty of time to relax and play and watch the sunset.

The day after we happened upon another seculuded beach in Moro Bay. Zeke had a chance to...

Chase the Seagulls....

Hang out with Mommy in the waves...

and jump off of the sand ledges with Daddy and Cuddles.

Once he got used to the water he started running full speed in the smaller parts of the waves. As you can imagine it wasn't too long before he fell belly down in the water as a wave softly brushed over him. He did a very good job to keep his head up out of the water but he was quite scared non-the-less. We stripped him down to his diapie and calmed him down....

and he was right back to playing in the water...

We will be blogging some photos of Hearst Castle in the next day or two so make sure to check back in with us!

www.awakenedimages.com . David & Cara Williams . awakenedimages@yahoo.com

Sunny Calfornia... Err, Cloudy California

Yesterday morning at 3:30am Cara, Zeke and I, (David) woke up early to jumpstart our Vacation to California. Cara has done such a great job planning everything for this vacation for the last 3 or 4 months and we are finally starting to see the fruits of the labor. We left early Monday morning chauffered by my awesome mother-in-law Chris. The only thing that managed to go wrong was that I accidentally man-handled her Audi while loading up our luggage and managed to RIP her spoiler OFF of the trunk! I swear I didn't mean to do it! Luckily though when I walked into the house with the spoiler in hand to show her she just laughed at the situation and told me not to worry about it. What an awesome mother-in-law!

The rest of the morning went blissfully well. We were expecting Zeke to be incredibly difficult for the plane flights, he was anything but that! He was intrigued and cute the entire time. As we were preparing for our first take-off I pondered over all of the possible outcomes of the flight. A screaming baby, squirming around in our laps eager to run around on the plane or so excited that he would just be jumping up and down on our laps and bumping into all of those around us, or so scared that he would be screaming and crying... well, as the plane just starting to take off I looked over to see him falling into a deep sleep in mommy's lap! He didn't make a sound the entire trip and just as we land and come to a full stop he slowly opens his eyes with a small smile. Cara and I ended the flight saying "that was way too easy". He was sooooo cool the entire trip. Here are some photos of him in Minneapolis during our layover.

Here Zeke is pointing at ALL of the airplanes in the airport... He LOVES airplanes!

The photo below shows what all of the airplanes looked like in Minneapolis, covered in snow and in need of de-icing before take off. The de-icing delayed us by about an hour! But before we get too upset about that we need to remember the words of the comedian Louis C.K. "...and what happened then, did you FLY THROUGH THE SKY!..." haha! If you haven't seen this video yet you have to check it out at this link... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXStPqhLmIk .

Here is Zeke, Cara and Cuddles at the airport.

Here are some photos of our R.V. that we rented. We are going to be living in this thing for about 2 weeks now. It is perfect! We love it! In Cara's words it is "small, cute and perfect."

As you can see Zeke loves driving the R.V. "just like daddy".



Once we got to our R.V. resort OrangePark we realized how many activites that they have at one of these. This park was rated the "National R.V. Park of the Year 2007". It is an awesome place, they have orange trees surrounding every parking spot, pool table in a private room, heated swimming pool, jacuzzi, a cute little market, a golf "putting" range... this place has a lot! There is just too much to list and too much to photograph, including Zeke's favorite... the playground.

David & Cara Williams . awakenedimages@yahoo.com

RaeAnne DeBest : Senior

RaeAnne came to us all the way from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and she was AWESOME to work with! We started in the studio, and then traveled downtown Holland, and then to the beach for a cold, and windy sunset! Luckily, we didn't have to fight for our spots with other photographers, because they were all sane, and stayed indoors :) Just kidding, we ended up with some gorgeous shots of RaeAnne, and here are a few favs!

www.awakenedimages.com . David & Cara Williams . awakenedimages@yahoo.com