South of the border

We got back yesterday from a six day "vacation" in Rocky Point, Mexico. The Walcott clan has been going there for something like 30 years. The last 10 years or so we have stayed in the lovely Madre del Mar. That's right... 30 people all crammed into one house. It's a good thing we all get along.

The Tucson and Phoenix folks met up in the booming metropolis of Why, AZ (population 113)...

...and then the convoy rolled out south towards the border. Thankfully our kids got a good nap in on the way down (unlike our last Rocky Point trip, which involved projectile vomit the entire car ride down... and the whole time we were there.)

Once in Rocky Point, we passed under the famous giant road sign. How long does it take you to find which direction to "Las Conchas?"

Rocky Point vacations involve pretty much the same routine that has occurred for the past 30 years...

We sit around and eat too much junk food all day.

We discuss pretty much every current event in politics and religion. Even though most of us are on the same side of the political and religious spectrum, we can still find plenty to argue about. This is pretty much a standard activity at any Walcott gathering, and has to be one of my favorite activities in Rocky Point.

We scour the beach for pieces of any dead animal that happen to wash up on shore. By the end of the trip there were crab shells, a bird skeleton, a fish head, and various feathers gathered in Ella's "treasure" bucket. Luckily the seal carcass up the beach was too heavy to haul to the house...

We play in the ocean. (Paige commented that she would like everyone to pretend those are her skinny legs behind Luke... and not my cousin's...)

I didn't get any pictures of Levi and Noah in the ocean. But they were fearless. Swimming lessons definitely reduced their fear of water, but not in proportion with an increase in swimming ability. They would strap on their life jackets and arm floaties, go crashing chest deep into the water, and promptly get pummeled by the next big wave. Then come up spraying seawater from their nose... and loving every minute of it.

We watch awesome sunsets...

We play in the ocean some more (usually the waves in Rocky Point are fairly anemic. This year there was a pretty good wind howling most days, and the waves were actually a little bigger...)

We rented some kayaks this year as well. We took them out the first day... and got beaten up by the waves (or at least I did.) Got flipped over several times, worked way to hard to paddle out, and lost my only pair of glasses to a wave. Luckily my cousin had a spare pair that was a close enough match that I wasn't blind the rest of the weekend (thanks J!)

We also managed to get really close to a dolphin. We see them every year swimming off shore, but I don't think we have ever managed to get very close (although I do recall a few times trying to swim out far enough and never making it.) This year one curious dolphin got close enough to the kayaks for us to get a good look. Close enough that I could have poked it with the paddle a few times. It swam around the kayaks, under the kayaks, between the kayaks, and surfaced within about 30 feet. We paddled around with it for a good 20-30 minutes before it got bored and left. Very cool.

We beat each other with sticks (or at least the younger cousins did. Apparently I am becoming an old fart...)

We scour the beach for crabs. Now we just catch them, but when I was a kid we would generally blow them up with cheap Mexican fireworks...

Ella tried a new activity this year... tatooing pretty much anyone who would let her. I think she spent a good 2 hours applying temporary tatoos to all the aunts and cousins and coloring them in...

Even her baby brother got all tatted up...

We drive around without seatbelts. You would think that when visiting a third world country with a marginal health care system, you would use more caution than normal. Apparently not. Luke wasn't sure what to make of it...

But Levi and Noah thought bouncing around the back seat unrestrained was pretty much the highlight of their short lives...

We visit smelly semi-maintained aquariums. Like Sea World... only cheaper!

We let our children stick their heads and appendages (holding tasty fish bits) through a rusty chain link fence...

...while a large, very noisy, untrained and probably dangerous sea lion launches himself out of the murky water to grab said tasty fish bits (and hopefully not heads or appendages...)

And we launch fireworks from the beach, while trying to keep all of our fingers attached. Now we go for the bigger (and more expensive) ones. But when I was a kid I would buy bags of these cheap Mexican fireworks, with fuses that lasted anywhere from 18 seconds to half a blink of an eye (and you never knew which it was going to be.) These would be used to explode any sea creature we could find on the beach (living or dead) as well as lit at any random time for no apparent reason. This year I believe someone asked me if I was going with for the fireworks so that they knew there would be "at least one adult there." Apparently I have now become the voice of caution at the fireworks show. Not sure exactly how that happened...

We made the long drive home on Tuesday, and collapsed back into the house around 3 PM. Vacations with four kids are far more exhausting than not-vacations. But if our kids have the same good memories from Mexico that I have... so worth it.

And as if our kids didn't get enough sand in strange places and seawater up their snouts... by approximately 4 PM they were already playing in the backyard... in the sandbox and water table. Sheesh...