Finally, I saw the beach . . . sort of

Today was the last day of the conference and the day we were supposed to go to the beach.  After the conference ended, we drove to Santa Cruz to look at a hotel for tomorrow and go to a beach.  Right after we arrived in Santa Cruz, we decided not only to not go to that hotel, but also to not go to that beach lol. 

Actually, we jumped out of the car and looked at the beach and I did get some pictures.  I didn't get any pictures of the first beach we went to.  But, here's some pictures of the second beach.

I wasn't really going to talk a lot about these pictures because they're pretty self-explanatory.  But, I just thought I'd say that I love this one--it's really pretty.

Oooh, this is a pic of this really cool rock island that had a huge tunnel in the center.

Here's me in front of the island.

 So, yes we ended up driving to two different beaches before just deciding to go to this one beach at a state park . . . and none of them had any shells :(  Dad said that we would just keep driving until we found a cool beach that we liked--one with lots of shells and no people.  So we went on this road really close to the coast . . . but it had no cell phone reception!  Seriously!  And (wait it gets better) so we were talking about what would happen if someone's car broke down or they were attacked and they were no where near a call box . . . then dad realized that we had almost no gas.  That's right, the nearest town is like more than 10 miles away, we're in a no service zone, and the gas light is on and the meter is like below E.  Haha, amazingly, thank the Lord, we actually made it to a gas station just in time--it's a good thing my dad noticed when he did or we would have been stuck!  After that we decided that we would just stop at the beach right there because it was past 8 already.

The beach was really secluded--no people.  But, it had very few shells (just a couple bivalves . . . nothing really that cool).  It was really pretty as well.  And this is the beach that we drove by earlier and turned down lol.

This is the view on the way to the beach.  It was a ridiculously long trail to get there!  But it was pretty.

 Here's my dad on the beach :)

Here's a blurry pic of me.

 The path up to the beach.

This is the beach before going down the steep rocks to get to it.

Me on the beach again.

 The moon was pretty . . . and there's no zoom on my camera so it's that little white speck in the sky.

We were really hungry then so we drove back to Santa Cruz and walked around for a long time before deciding what to eat.  We ended up eating at this cute little place called Joe's.  I had a picture of my dad, but his eyes were closed lol.

I look awful because my hair exploded at the beach lol.

Then we got ice cream from Coldstone Creamery.  I had white chocolate ice cream with Heath bar, Butterfinger, and KitKat mixed in with carmel and chocolate sauce.  mmmmm that was good.

Now we have to move out of the Hilton tomorrow morning so we'll be going to some cheapy hotel lol.  I'll let you know how that goes tomorrow.  Thanks for reading!

Fisherman's Wharf

Yesterday it was finally warm all day!  I think the high was somewhere around 90, yay!  So, after my dad's conference was over we went to fisherman's wharf.

Oh here's a picture of the conference place.  Haha, and when I took this picture I waited until there was no one in front of the door.  But there were some people about to walk in front and one engineer was like "hey do you want me to pose." lol  he actually isn't in the picture though :p

Well, first off, you should know that the power went out in the entire hotel . . . for several hours (there was a big power outage downstairs.  So there was an emergency generator that kept some of the hallway lights on and one elevator working.  Lol but everything else was down.  It seriously went off the moment I unplugged my computer.  Right after I unplugged it (when it was plugged in it said it had power) I went to the bathroom and the light wouldn't turn on.  At first I didn't notice anything because the light takes forever to turn on anyway lol.  Then in the parking garage it was pitch black so they were giving out glowsticks so you could find the way to your car.  At least that was right before we were going to leave anyway.  And they had power in Monterey! 

When we first got there we walked around the harbor and looked at the beach for a little bit.

Here's some boats :)

A panorama . . . a really crooked panorama.  I really need to stop trying to take panoramas when i'm in a hurry!

More boats.

And, um wow what I surprise!  more boats.

Guess what this one is!  haha it's not boats.  It's the beach.

This is the pier and the beach as well.

Dad and me on the pier

This is me on the pier.  I put my sunglasses on my head for just a minute and they got caught in my hair . . . that's why there's a weird spot sticking up on the right side (or my left side . . . but in the picture it's to the right).

 A boat up close!

We walked around fisherman's wharf for a couple of hours.  There were some pretty cool shops there.  I went into this one store and they had something really funky that I knew Laura would love so I got it for her.  And then in another store my dad bought some fleece jackets to replace the one he bought two years ago and I found something really pretty that I knew Natalie would love so I got that for her.  And in this other store it looked just like a normal touristy gift shop, but the second floor was full of historical recreations of guns and medieval and fantasy swords!  I am SOO glad I went up there--I almost missed it!  So I am now the proud owner of a really cool medieval short sword . . . now I just have to figure out how to get it home without it being confiscated at the airport.  Anyway, Cat, you would have loved that place!  So I also saw something really awesome that Catherine would absolutely love so I got it for her :) (sorry, cat.  It's not a sword . . . but it's still really cool).

Fisherman's wharf!

Oh, that's one of the store's I really like on the far right.  I think it was called Fisherman's Wharf General Store--I got Laura's thing there.

And that pink building (I can't remember the name) where I got my sword and Cat's present.

So the seagull was sitting up there and it scared the heck out of me because it flew away when my head was right next to it.  I wasn't expecting it to stay so close for so long!  Then it landed again and stayed there just long enough for me to take the picture.

We ate at Rappa's Habor View.  I had clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl.  It wasn't as good as the clam chowder at Neptune's Palace, but it was still good.  So, there were three reasons I chose to eat at this restaurant.  1.  It had a harbor view.  2.  I really wanted the clam chowder in a bread bowl (and I didn't want to walk all the way back down the pier and look at all the other menus when I already had my dinner picked out).  and 3. . . . I had to pee really bad. lol Yeah, I was not using a port-a-potty and the closest restaurant was too far away . . . lol  It was funny because every single restaurant had a sign saying that they had the best clam chowder on the wharf. 

I actually don't remember what dad ate . . . I think it was some sort of Tilapia.  I tasted it and it was pretty good (not as good as the swordfish though).

Here's me at the restaurant . . . it's really dark, so i retook the picture.

And yes, those are the earrings you gave me, Charlotte (I wear them all the time).

Here's the front of the restaurant.

And here's me in front of the restaurant.

Then we went and ate ice cream here.  It was ridiculous because it was three stinking dollars for the teeniest little cup of ice cream. . . . pitiful.

Before we left I begged dad to take my picture with the pirate in the pirate store :)  And for some reason he had a lot of trouble with the camera.  He kept turning it to video lol.  FInally, after a ton of tries and a bunch of blurry pics we got this one!

So that's what we did yesterday.  And here's what the wharf looked like in the dark.

This is walking down the pier.

 And this one is the front of the pier.

Thanks for reading!  Comments are always welcome! (and wanted)  God bless!

Hotel Pics and Fun Pics

Ok, so here's some pictures of the hotel and some of the fun pictures I took yesterday.  There will be one or two (or maybe three or four) from the last post, but the majority are new pics.  Ironically, I took a lot of pics of the hotel and outside because I thought I wouldn't have enough pictures for the blog.  But, I ended up having so many that I needed to break yesterday's events into two posts.

Here's the pics of the hotel.  This is the staircase you see when you first come in.

Here's a pic I took of me in the mirror . . . and that's the bathroom door in the background.

Ooooh this is the cool green couch and the cool "art" thing when you first come into the hotel.

This is another view of the staircase and the the hotel restaurant Affinity.  There's this weird sculpture/fountain in front of the staircase (you can see it in the Affinity logo in the far left).  And there's this really long explanation of what it means . . . yeah like I said, weird.  And, i don't know why this pic is in this spot . . . these are really out of order.  oh, and I think that's my dad's arm in the bottom left-hand corner.

This is our hallway and dad is trying to open the door to our room.

Here's the fun pics.  And these are also out of order.  I didn't feel like putting them in the right order . . . and for this post I don't think it really matters.

This is the sidewalk on the way to the brewery.

This is also somewhere near the hotel and the brewery.

This is a building we passed.

Ok, so it was really hard to take all these pictures because I can't stop walking or I'll get left behind.  So it's like pictures on the run.  there was a whole wall full of these lights and I kept missing them because we were walking too fast . . . on the last try (the last light!) I finally got this.  It's in a weird setting called "split" so it put it in all these different frames.

 This is the panorama that I almost got.  The first two frames turned out neat, but then the crosswalk thingy said we could go . . . so I didn't get the last frame lol

This is a really cool clock thing that I really wanted a picture of so I ran ahead and by the time everyone else caught up I had an ok picture :)

I know this is in the other post, but I like the angle.

 This one is cool.  The wall was very textured and then there was this random spot of bricks.

I like this one--it looks like a picture you'd see on a hotel wall. What do you think of this one?

Here's the other one that I really liked.   What do you think? 

 Ok, one more that I actually liked.  The others are just kind of . . . blah.  and I was practically running while taking the pictures lol.

 That's it for now.  I think we're doing something fun tonight, so hopefully I'll get some more pictures.