Camping in Santa Cruz!

In honor of my accomplishment (see previous post) my mom and dad treated us to a weekend camping in Santa Cruz! Erik and I love camping and haven't been since our trip to Half Dome with our friends the Steers.


We headed out on Friday after work. Erik got off at about 4:00 and we were off by 5:30. We were headed down I-5 when ominous clouds started gathering from the west, and drizzling rain on our car. This made us a little worried as we were tent camping, but luckily it stopped and we meet mom and dad at the campsite around 8:30. After setting up our tent, we busted out the Hot Links and prods and sat around the fire for the rest of the night! Oh to be out doors! I love it! We could see Orion and the Big Dipper, the moon was super bright, but as we went to bed the clouds were rolling in again. It rained off and on all night, which made it a little tough to sleep, but we all stayed warm and dry!

Saturday morning we got up to a foggy morning, we made breakfast and hot coffee. There is nothing like camping coffee! It is the best! The sun started to peak through the clouds as we were leaving but on our way down to Santa Cruz the clouds burst and unloaded on us! We were so thankful we were in the car and hoped that our campsite wasn't washing away. We headed out to Natural Bridges State Beach and checked out the tide pools. They are by far the best tide pools I have ever seen! We saw so many anemones, starfish, muscles, barnacles, limpets, sea slugs, crabs, and urchins. As you could imagine I was in heaven. ( for all my Biola Buddies this just so happened to be the same beach we visited in college of the Sam McClendon trip. It was a serious deja vu when we got there) Then we headed down to the Board walk and got distracted along the way by a surf kayaking competition! So cool. We grabbed a late lunch at this awesome hamburger and beer joint called "99 Bottles"; it was awesome! After lunch we headed back to our campsite stopping by the tallest covered bridge in the US on our way. For dinner mom and dad made steak and we had smores for dessert! mmmmmmm good!

Sunday morning we had my Dad's famous skillet breakfast burritos, and then packet up. before heading out of town we took a trip on the Roaring Camp railroad in Felton. We ended our visit by touring the Giant Redwoods (yes Biola Buddies the same place we all went to at the end of our trip too) We ate lunch at this random Mexican restaurant called Don Quixote and headed home in the sun!

It was an awesome weekend. And we are officially offering to meet anyone half way for a weekend of camping! Any time and place! You name it, we'll be there!