This past weekend, on a whim, the three of us went up to Pismo Beach. Lucky for us, we missed out on all the fire chaos. Apparently, with so many freeways shut down, it made traffic in our valley a nightmare. Plus it was in the 90's! In November! Craziness. We stayed (invited ourselves) with some friends who live in Arroyo Grande, which is right next to Pismo. They have a restaurant in Grover Beach...all of these little towns are super close to each other. This area is my absolute favorite place in California. The beaches are shallow, and the waves break five different times before washing up on the sand. Also, the sand is so soft, yet hard packed. It's the only beach you can drive a car on. (It's actually Oceano/Grover Beach). The other great thing is the entire area, including the beaches are all dog friendly. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible to find a beach you can take your dog on in So Cal, which is a huge bummer. The stores even have dog bowls of water just outside their doors. The weather was amazing, high 70's, low 80's in the daytime. On Sunday, even though the water was quite bone numbing, people were out swimming in bikinis!
We got up there on Friday night, and pretty much chatted with our friends, Chris and Karen, and then went to bed. Saturday we went to their restaurant, The Station Grill (shameless plug) and had a wonderful breakfast. From there, Chris and Jeff went golfing and Zach and I went to the beach. I immediately lost my favorite brown Old Navy flip flop in the waves...Jeff was not surprised. I usually end up soaking wet when I go "look at the water", so I guess it was really a succesful beach trip...I was pretty dry, just flip-flop-less. Then I went back to the house and Zach had a lovely 3 hour nap. Jeff met us after golf. When Zach woke up, we drove into downtown San Luis Obispo which has every store known to man, in a cute historic area right by the mission. We didn't last too long there, it was almost 90 degrees and we were HOT! So, we went back towards Chris's house and stopped at Shell Beach. It has super coarse sand, like rocks you'd put into an aquarium...helllllo free pedicure! We looked at tide pools and took turns keeping Zach out of the water. That night, after we put Zach down for bed, Karen held down the fort and we went to the Melodrama. It's a small theater, with sawdust on the floor and a snack bar in the back. We'd been there two years ago and loved it! We were excited to see it again. The show is broken up into 3 parts. The first is the Christmas Carol. That's great and all, but I did that show several times, and when I wasn't in it I'd go and see it. I know the play practically by heart. The second part is a fairy tale opera. They took Jack and the Beanstalk and told the story with mostly singing...but at the same time throwing in pop culture tidbits...like the giants were Ivana and Donald Trump and Jack's girlfriend was from the Valley and all she did was text. So funny! The third act was a holiday extravaganza, where the cast dressed up and sang different holiday songs, while making it tongue in cheek. It was great! We stopped off at a pub where they were doing Kareoke and we felt very, VERY sober. And old. Sunday we ate breakfast at the restaurant again and took off to the beach, took a peek at some campgrounds for future reference and stopped at the small outlet stores. You know you're a mom when upon entering the outlets you no longer look for Gap and Banana Republic. It was Carter's and Gymboree all the way for us!
Oh, during this time in this area, thousands of monarc butterflies migrate here and live in the eucalyptus trees until January. It was like a fairy land!
We also stopped at a small lake and went to feed the ducks and geese with some bread Chris gave us. Zach loved chasing the seagulls! He has a thing for birds right now. I was carrying him toward the gaggle of geese (I've always wanted to use "gaggle" in a sentence!) and I swear, as soon as they saw us, they all got up, jutted their heads forward and with determination they headed our way! It was hysterical! Jeff had brought the car around so he hadn't seen this. He gets out of the car and the geese pivoted and started towards him, because he had the bread bag! I hate to tell you this, but I think I heard Jeff squeal...yes, squeal like a 6 year old girl. He ran backwards back to the car, as I'm telling him to come back, I don't want the geese in the street! Apparently, Jeff has been "attacked' by a goose on a golf course before and was nervous. His words, not mine. Luckily, we all came out unscathed from the goose adventure.
I wish we'd gotten some pictures of the beach, but it somehow didn't happen. Next time!
