Half Moon Bay - Part 1

For our date in Half Moon Bay, we started by driving in 2 hours of traffic to get to our destination. Since the pumpkin and art festival was the same weekend, we had expected the traffic to be bad, but it was still painful. Luckily, we were able to get to the spa at Ritz Carlton 15 minutes before our appointments. The spa had special pregnancy services, which were perfect for me. Dave got a much needed massage since he was still sore from a double header softball game.

After the spa, we decided to use the Ritz Carlton shuttle to get to the pumpkin and art festival! It was a great idea since we didn't have to try to park in the chaos and got dropped off right at the entrance of the festival.

Here we are waiting for the shuttle, looking and feeling relaxed.



The art festival part includes around 250 booths that sell random items. Similar to the garlic festival, we found the hat maker who makes pumpkin hats!



After walking halfway through the festival, we found the food section. There were all kinds of pumpkin infused food like pies, bread, ice cream, rolls, mac and cheese, churros... After looking around, we decided to start with clam chowder in a bread bowl, sauteed artichokes and brussel sprouts in marinara sauce. Since we still didn't know what pumpkin dessert we wanted, we finished walking the other half of the art booths.

As we passed the food stands again, we finally decided on some pumpkin ice cream. It was delicious!

One of the activities that you could watch was "Farmer Mike" carve pumpkins. He carved and colored MegaMind on the pumpkin to the right and was working on a witch.

We didn't wait in line to take a photo with the heaviest pumpkin at 1725 pounds because it cost $14 for 1 photo! Instead, we took photos with the runner ups for free.

We aren't sure what the weight of these pumpkins were, but they were gigantic. I love the fact that the pumpkins are so big that they end up having to grow on their side.

Our last item that we ate at the festival was pumpkin mac n cheese. We would have eaten it earlier, but we couldn't find it! They ended up taking regular mac n cheese and putting pumpkin seeds and pumpkin pie spice. The mac n cheese was delicious, but I still don't know how I feel about the pumpkin additions.

After the festival, we headed back to the Ritz and relaxed on their terrace until our dinner reservation.