Santa Cruz (You're Not That Far)

The Thrills had it right...

This weekend started just like every other weekend: breakfast with Ericka at The Fresno Breakfast House (yum!) and then spending most of the rest of the day running errands, cleaning and putting together my new bed frame (since I FINALLY got my mattress)! A successful day overall, but what made it even more successful was Ericka's 9 o'clock phone call asking if I wanted to go to Santa Cruz-- right now! So her and Billy got themselves packed and picked me up and we headed to Santa Cruz! It was fun to be so spontaneous!

Santa Cruz is about three hours from Fresno, probably a little faster with Ericka driving and the complete lack of traffic so when we got to town and checked into our hotel, Ericka and I spent a while walking on the beach (about a block away from our hotel room!) and the wharf before calling it a night. Funny thing-- on the way back to the hotel there was some sort of surfing... dummy... doll thing on the roof of the building next to the hotel-- I about had a heart attack! It looked like a real guy was on the roof! We felt the need to preserve the memory of our scared faces, as you can see... (yeah, we really like pictures!)

The next morning we got up and had breakfast (Billy and I had these amaaaazing smoked salmon omlettes, even though they got our orders backwards and Ericka had one with..... crab, I think? They were delicious!) before heading toward the pier! We got there early enough to walk around and look at all the rides and booths and stuff before it got too crowded since they didn't open until 11am and when they did open we waited in line for all of 15 minutes or so to go on the Big Dipper-- a really cool roller coaster that's made infinitely cooler by the fact that there's a fantastic view of the beach from it! Riding a roller coaster on a beach is definitely something I'm glad I got to do... ahh, I love the beach.

We spent the rest of the afternoon driving around taking in the scenery. This picture is from our very brief stop at National Parks State Beach (I think that's what it was called) where it was increeeeeeeeeedibly cold! We didn't stay long, just enough to take a quick picture and continue on down the coast. We stopped for a lunch break before finding a relatively un-crowded beach to lay out on for the afternoon. I got some quality napping, book-reading and walking on the beach done... my kind of Sunday!

Overall, a pretty fantastic way to spend my weekend. It's so nice to be able to just pack up and go somewhere for the day and to have great friends to do it with! I think we all came home with sunburns, despite the fact that we used sunblock, but it'll go away soon enough and it was worth it just to get out of Fresno for a weekend-- at least in my opinion!

Oh, and here's evidence of my amazingly retarded sunburn... yes, I was wearing a t-shirt since the weather was supposed to be chilly!

I also can't resist posting a picture of my bed-- I'm so proud of myself for putting it all together myself and excited to finally have the bedset I've been wanting for a year! And, the best part, it didn't fall apart when I slept in it last night! Yay! Now to finally get around to making my room look a little more... lived in. :)