And of course no long drive is complete without a pit stop for frozen yogurt!

Finally we arrived in Monterey, and our first stop was the Dennis the Menace Playground.

One of the cool things about this park is that they have an actual steam locomotive that the kids can crawl all over. It was fenced off for renovations, though. This made our kids sad.

After the park, we hit the beach. It was kind of a chilly afternoon, but that didn’t stop Sam from stripping down and running right into the waves. Ali was smart enough to bring a swimsuit.

After that, it was back to the hotel to get ready for a big day tomorrow!

For dinner we found an English pub nearby. All the mugs on the ceiling were meant for the regulars. When you come in, they bring down your mug and fill it up.

They put my photograph on the cover.

Early last year they reached out to me to submit some photos for consideration. They always try to stick to local photographers, and the work I do here at Around Carson caught their eye. So I went around the area trying to find something that could represent Carson City. I photographed deer running on the west side, I took pictures of the Capitol and the Laxalt Building, I got snow and pogonip and expansive skies. But then I remembered this lonely flag along Hwy 50 heading up to Spooner Summit. Someone put this flag up a few years ago and I always wanted to stop and get a photo, but it’s tough to stop along that stretch of highway. Last winter the flag disappeared and I thought I lost my chance, but when summer came around it came back. So it’s not just some forgotten flag; it’s kept up by somebody. I finally did pull over along the highway and took some photos, mainly to capture an image of the flag in case it ever went away again, but also in the back of my mind I was framing the shots so they would look good on the cover of a phone book. You know, just in case.

Fast forward a few months, and what do you know, the flag was the one they liked best. I think it works well for a cover photo, much better than last year’s dismal shot, that’s for sure.

As usual, more pictures can be found at Flickr. And let’s hope that it doesn’t take another size weeks to go through the second set.