spring break beachapalooza ::part 1::

I just want to begin by saying I LOVE SPRING BREAK.

Saturday morning we met bright and early at six in the morning outside of my apartment. As I was standing outside, admiring the moon (it was the largest its been in awhile due to its proximity to earth), a man exited his apartment across the street and stood there, staring at me for a full five minutes. In a display of notoriously bad timing, I had watched Halloween the night before with Maddie. I stood poised and ready with my pillow clutched in my fists, ready to start smothering him if he dared to go Michael Meyers on me. Luckily, he went back inside (and later I realized he was probably also looking at the moon) and Claire and Kristen came to pick me up. We barked, howled, and squealed with delight at the idea of our dreams actually culminating into a beach trip and then went to pick up Maddie. We started off the morning with an Einstein's trip (must have morning bagel fuel) and then were off!

Cue road trip adventures. Claire made us an awesome playlist titled California that had a bunch of amazing songs on it, many picked out when she was trashed the night before. This is why, when Mbop came on by Hanson, everyone else in the car groaned while I cranked that shit up and sung my heart out. There were a lot of naps, considering that the night before most of us hadn't slept very much (or at all) due to excitement and (in my case) fear of murder by Michael Meyers. For lunch we stopped at the same McDonalds we stopped at on our way to Disneyland, and afterwards I read The Giver aloud to Maddie while she drove. I had forgotten how incredibly messed up that book is. In the middle of the book, I saw that we were getting low on gas AND we were approaching Baker. Baker, my dear friends, is home of the WORLD'S LARGEST THERMOMETER. I have stopped in Baker many, many times throughout my life, but have never thought to actually document the largest thermometer in the world. This time, I was getting a picture. Which I did as we passed by.



Hurray! We finished The Giver, took some more naps, and it was my turn to drive. At this point, we entered territory that legitimately looked like New Zealand material. We all felt like we were in The Lord of the Rings. There were gently rolling hills absolutely covered with lush, green grass, craggy rocks, and multiple, fairyland-like trees with umbrella foliage. I could feel the magical presence of California. I could smell the ocean air beckoning me toward the coast from hours away.

On a completely unrelated note, at about seven AM I saw a sign that said Something Dining, I can't remember what the something was because, from a distance, I saw it as "VAGINA DINING". This started a game of epic proportions where every word of every sign was replaced with vagina. My favorite was this sign.



Home Baked Vaginas

As we neared the coast, it started to rain. Hard. The wipers of the car we were driving were terrible, so as it started getting dark, I started to panic a little bit. We were driving on a tiny road that wound through the many hills between us and the ocean, large crevices on each side that dropped off into oblivion in the pitch black darkness. Needless to say, my anxiety levels were shooting through the roof. However, once we found our way into Cayucos, I calmed down a bit. The only problem was that our google map directions were leading me astray and I could not remember how to get to the beach house. At one point, I saw a road that I thought looked familiar.



The next day I saw that I had driven us into a lookout that was right by the sea. It was just high tide and pouring rain, so that's why the ocean had come up so far. I finally remembered which way to go and we arrived at the beach house. Glorious, glorious love swelled in my heart as I inhaled the amazing, musty smell of that house. It's a smell that remains on my blanket and pillow even now, mmmmmmmm. We called 411 information to ask if there was a pizza place nearby that would deliver to the beach house, and for some reason the lady was a complete bitch and told us there was no such thing as a pizza place and that we should go to hell if we wanted her to do her job and give us information. Or at least that's how I perceived it. Instead, we were forced to venture out into Morro Bay in search of a pizza place. We found Sabetta's, a delicious, tiny shack that made homemade pizzas and twelve piece garlic bread was only $3. Heaven. We ate in a coma-like silence and then headed back to the beach house to go to the beach in the rain. Unfortunately, it was high tide, so we only got to stand on the stairs in our hilarious beach gear (puffy coats from the closet) and look at the ocean. Just the sight of it though made me so happy, as well as the smell and feel of the rain.



Claire and Maddie walking through the rain. Maddie made a comment that this was pretty much our vision for the rest of the trip...

Speaking of which, we drank all of the beer in the house as soon as we got back, talked for a little while, and then passed out.





The next day, we woke up late and then went down to the beach. We frolicked in the surf, clambered over rocks, fake tide-pooled (fake meaning most of the pools had no creatures in them, they were just pools of water that I was obsessed with checking), and made sandcastles. Specifically, we made sandcastles of MIDDLE EARTH.



We always joke that Maddie lives in Mordor, I live in The Shire, and Claire and Kristen live in Isengard. A majority of our morning was spent creating these works of art and chasing birds, barking. We also created Minas Tirith by placing a small piece of wood on top of a rock. By this point, the tide was coming in and I was getting super wet, so we headed back up to the house and showered and hung out, videoing us doing stupid things for awhile. Then we went to the store. The best part of our storeventure was that we decided to send Claire back in for the alcohol after we were done buying all our food. She first went to get toilet paper, which we also needed, so as not to seem so suspicious. Then she went for the booze. Approaching the register, she smiled sheepishly and said, "Whoops! Forgot something!" The cashier looked at her suspiciously (not surprisingly, considering who forgets alcohol?). She searched Claire's ID forever trying to find her birthdate, obviously wondering if it were a fake. Claire finally got away from her evil eye, however, and we took off. Maddie and I were joking that, if Claire had come out of the store with a police escort, I would GTFO and crash into any car on my way out.

By the time we'd gotten home and put away our groceries, it was 2:30 and still raining.



So of COURSE we started drinking! In probably one of the proudest moments of my life AKA an entire day, I spent EIGHT HOURS drinking. STRAIGHT. We started out with playing King's Cup (our favorite game, of course). After all of the Coors were gone, we started in on the Mike's (which were also being sipped prior to the game) and then decided to go on a drunken beach walk.



Hats were essential. Maddie was the only one without a hat :( But it's okay, because her hair is so luscious. We started out on our walk and had many adventures. We ran through the waves, traversed rocky territory, zig-zagged a lot, waded through a river that had appeared due to the heavy rains, and then played on the Cayucos Pier.







Basically this is what our drunken walk entailed



Plus this



After playing on the pier for awhile, we swung on the swings right by the pier and then headed back to the beach house. Once we'd arrived home, we started to drink again. This time we specialized in Screwdrivers, or as Michael Scott calls them, Orange-Vod-Juice-Kas. We had a couple of heart to hearts out on the porch in the rain while smoking, some of which were about topics I will not divulge. But they were amazing. I can't remember anything past my second drink after my second shot. All I remember after this point is waking up at three in the morning wondering why I was in my pajamas and why there was sand in my bed. Apparently, we went on another drunken walk at midnight to the beach when the tide was high. Even though it was high, that did not stop me. I plunged straight into the ocean, screaming, "I LOVE YOOOU!!!" and Maddie had to retrieve me. At one point I also apparently toppled over like a pine tree being cut down in the forest when allowed to walk on my own. We also went to bed at 10:30 (it had been an exhausting day of drinking).

The next morning was a morning of recovery. I felt so sick after our eight hour binge that I seriously stayed in the same spot for several hours. We watched Animal Cops straight on through the morning, which I believe is one of the most entertaining shows on television. At one point there was a kitten stuck in a drain that was hilarious. It was just staring at us from the depths of the television. They got it out by suctioning its forehead with a vacuum and dragging it out. Another cat had been impaled on a metal rod. Oh the memories of Spring Break (don't worry, both survived). We finally decided that maybe we should leave the house, if only to get greasy hangover food, and headed out to Morro Bay.

In Morro Bay, there's a road along the bay called the Embarcadero. It's mostly a tourist attraction, which is why I like it, but I've grown up walking that same street for most of my life, so I always have to go back to it. We ate lunch at a delicious place called Rose's that serves the best garlic fries. When we first entered the restaurant, however, we could not find the waitress for the life of us. It was pretty awkward with us just standing in the middle of the restaurant.



Maddie just checked out of that awkward situation. It was hilarious. For the rest of the trip and for the rest of our LIFE we made fun of her for it. We finally did find the waitress though and got to eat our delicious fish and chips and GARLIC FRIES!!! Yuuuuum! Our waitress hated us though. After the food, we walked some more and visited some of my favorite spots like The Shell Shop, where they sell thousands of shells and tacky shell figurines. We talked about liberating the sea lions that live in the cramped conditions of the "Morro Bay Aquarium" and blowing up the smokestacks that tower over the city. We finally reached my favorite place, THE SHIP PARK!!!



I love the ship park. We played there like bosses to the extreme.



AHAHAHA I love this picture of Maddie. She loved that whale.



This picture is so amazing, especially with that bird in the background. Epic.



Strike a pose. I love these dolphins.



Love.

We basically just frolicked there forever and loved everything ever. After we played at the park, we went back home and spent the rest of the day recovering in front of the TV some more. I did not drink anything because my stomachache got increasingly worse as the night went on. The night ended in me curled up on my bed super sick :( But the good news is that THE MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM was the big event planned for the next day!



Coming soon! SPRING BREAK BEACHAPALOOZA PART TWO! DREAMS COME TRUE!