Honeymoon!

After the wedding Kylie and I rode the tandem up to her mom and Dennis' house. We changed, packed the car and then headed south, back to Monterey where we had reservations at The Sanctuary Resort. Kylie's mom decorated our car! Due to how hectic things had been for the couple months leading up to the wedding we were both exhausted. So while we did get up when our breakfast was delivered at 9AM we slept, read, ate and slept some more until 4:30! The latest either of us has ever stayed in bed. We enjoyed the fireplace all night and all day but it made the room too hot so we opened the patio door too keep the room cool. The bonus was since we had an oceanview room we could hear the waves crashing on the beach the whole time - a VERY relaxing sound. Here was the view of the ocean from our room:

Once we finally did wake up we went for a walk along the beach. We enjoyed the sand dunes that are are actually protected in the area, checked out the surf fisherman and everything that had washed up onto the shore, including this jellyfish!

That night we went into Monterey and had dinner at one of the seafood restaurants on the pier. The following day we got up early and rented kayaks to explore around Monterey Bay. We paddled around the pier and in front of the aquarium where we had stoppped with my family just days earlier. We were able to see a LOT of different sea life including sea otters, sea lions, seals and even dolphins! Initially we just saw the dolphins jumping a little ways off, in front of the jetty by the harbor, but on the way back we decided to kayak into the harbor and ended up coming across two dolphins. One actually jumped within 10 feet of my boat and VERY cool. Here is Kylie in front of a number of sea lions sleeping on the jetty.

After enjoying more of Monterey we headed back home to Redlands, so we could pack the next day for stage 2 of our honeymoon. This was to fly to Canada for our Canadian reception with all of my family and friends and then race a half ironman!

Upon reaching my dads house, they had a sign hanging outside the door welcoming, Michael and Kylie Donia. We visited with my dad and step mom that evening and the next day she took some more pictures for us. Including some very beautiful ones at a conservation area near Apsley. We then drove through Algonquin Provincial Park which was just beautiful, but unfortunately we were a little early for the fall colors, and did not get to see any moose. The next day we stayed with my brother as he lives close to Huntsville so we could get registered for our half ironman race and check out the race course. We were pleasantly suprised to see that our picture had been used on the front of the race program put out by the local newspaper! They had done a story on us because we were coming up to to the race from California for our honeymoon. :-)

We then headed back to my dads house the next day for our Canadian wedding reception. When we arrived we found a cool direction sign my dad had put up for our guests! They had a HUGE spread of amazing food. Many of my relatives and friends from college came out to celebrate with us. It was great to see everyone and we are thankful they were able to be there with us. The next day was our race, which I will save for its own blog post.

After the race we spent a day in Muskoka before heading into Toronto where we did some sightseeing, including the CN tower and dinner at Wayne Gretzky's restaurant to finish off the Canadian experience;-)

The final shot for this post is a picture Gisela took of us in their front yard.