Monday, September 6, 2010

Non-Labor Day!

I have today off! WooHoo! I'm so excited that I made plans too watch too much TV, and do too much laundry. I bet you're jealous! ;-)

I spent day one of my two days off in a row visiting lovely, beautiful, ridiculously crowded, Santa Cruz with Miss Jenny. What started out as a plan to meet in Elk Grove for lunch a Noodles & Co turned into a full-blown road trip. Despite our many stops along the way (my work, Starbucks, 99 cent store, and a random hole-in-the-wall for a bathroom break), and the insane traffic, we managed to make it to Downtown SC without dying--which is a good thing. Our last out-of-town adventure almost ended when a deer darted in front of Jenny's car. No bueno! We narrowly escaped with our lives--though I'm sure the deer felt the same way!

Downtown Santa Cruz offered us the things we love--Pizza my heart, The Italian market I adore, interesting people, interesting signs, and perfect weather. We had lunch, then ate coconut chips until we felt like vomiting, and laughed until we couldn't breathe. We have the craziest conversations! After realizing that there was no way we would make it to the boardwalk, due to the sheer amount of people, we decided to drive Hwy 1 until we found a beach that wasn't insanely busy. We found a beach we had visited on our last trip to Half Moon Bay! We headed down to the shore, took some pictures, got far too close to a dead sea lion carcass (there was so much dead wildlife we just called it carcass beach), when we finally found a safe place to sit, we were almost swept away by a wave--so we headed back to the safe, warm car.

We continued on Hwy 1 until we reached Cameron's Pub--by far my favorite spot in HMB! We were far too full from lunch to eat, so we took advantage of their bathroom, bought some chips from England for one of my co-workers, and took far too many pictures! Down the way from the pub is a great trail, so I had the bright idea to walk the trail to the rocky beach cliffs. The idea came to an abrupt end when Jenny *thought* she heard a snake in the grass and actually RAN back to the car. Oh Jenny. :-) Before we left for home we made one more stop at a little fruit stand. We purchased figs, cherries, and peaches. Soooo yummy! Once we got to Pleasanton, we made our second Starbucks stop of the day. WELL worth it. The Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate has been playing my heart strings as of late. It feels a lot like love!
Today, my stomach still hurts from laughing so hard! Great way to spend a day!