CARLSBAD! (The longest post EVER)

Jeff and I spent the past week camping at Carlsbad State Beach with my family and it was glorious! Spending a week at Carlsbad every summer is a tradition in my family that I look forward to all year round. We’ve been doing it since I was about 13 and nothing beats it! But this year was even better than previous years because I got to combine a couple of my favorite things: Carlsbad AND Jeff. It was so awesome to have him there! I’ve never had a significant other come to Carlsbad, but it is quite the romantic location so having my husband there was so fun. We got to wake up early every morning and look out over the ocean together from our campsite and watch the sunset every night (although the first couple of nights were a little cloudy). And what made this trip even sweeter is that my generous parents spoiled us once again by paying for the whole trip, including our plane ride! We love them.

The view from our campsite on Tuesday when it was still a little overcast

Jeff and I flew into Long Beach Sunday night via JetBlue. Jeff had never flown JetBlue before so he was pretty excited about the personal TV’s and Direct TV channels (we don’t have cable at home). I discovered a show on the Food Network that was a competition between food stylists (the people who make food look really good for menus and ads/commercials). They use crazy techniques to make food look mouthwatering, but as a result it often wouldn’t taste as good as it looks. I remember hating it when my best friend Jackie would put on the Food Network at her house when we were kids, but I got really into this show and was so bummed that I missed the final judging when the plane landed. Jeff made fun of me.

That night Jeff and I got to meet my older brother Patrick’s girlfriend, Ashley. I had heard such great things about her and she definitely lived up to them. She spent the whole week with us at the beach and my whole family really likes her. She definitely has my approval (and of course mine is the most important ;) ).

Monday morning Jeff and I went for a hike with my parents in the nearby hills. I spent the entire time chatting up a storm with my mom, while Jeff and my dad stayed a few feet behind us enjoying a long conversation of their own. We drove down to Carlsbad that afternoon after loading up the truck with all the essentials. Jeff is constantly contending for the position of my parents’ favorite child. I think he may already be my dad’s favorite. He is just so wonderful and helpful that they can hardly believe their good fortune in inheriting such a perfect son-in-law. He and my dad loaded everything into the truck and strapped it all down with little help from everyone else and the minute we arrived, Jeff immediately began to unload and set up camp. I think we made record time in the areas of packing up, unloading, setting up, and taking down this year, with Jeff’s help. Jeff and I set up the tiny one-man tent that we shared all week. My mom bought three of them a while back and forgot how small they were. It ended up being the perfect size for me. Jeff was a little tall for it, but we managed. Right after set up, we headed down to the beach. I was a little too confident and neglected to put on sunscreen. I guess I forgot that I’ve been living in Utah for the past year and haven’t been to the beach once in that time. Usually, by now I’d be brown and sunburn proof, but since that wasn’t the case, I learned my lesson with a slight burn on my back. I joined Jeff and wore sunscreen everyday after that. I was surprised that it took me a little time to regain a feel for playing in the waves. I had a hard time staying upright and keeping control of my boogie board at first and my sense for timing the waves for boogie boarding and body surfing had dimmed. This made teaching a very excited and new-to-the-ocean Jeff kind of difficult at first. He got so disappointed every time I told him to “kick, kick, kick” on his boogie board and he didn’t catch the wave. Patrick took over teaching him while I got my footing. That didn’t take long and Jeff was a natural so soon we were catching waves together left and right!

Kelsey, Ashley, Patrick, Jared, Me, Jeff

Body surfing - Patrick on the left, Jeff on the right.

I was cold.

Many of you know that I LOVE frozen yogurt, but my absolute favorite is Golden Spoon. It is by far the best! But sadly, they don’t have any locations close enough to us in Provo yet so I’m very excited to go every time we’re in California. Conveniently, there was a Golden Spoon just a 15-minute walk away from our campsite. Of course, I had to go the first chance I got so Jeff and I went as soon as we came back up from the beach (the campsites are up on the bluff looking out over the ocean and ours was right next to a ramp that leads right down to the sand). Golden Spoon never disappoints. It was delicious! Jeff was patient with my addiction and kindly went with me to Golden Spoon 4 time during the week.

That night, for dinner, we had barbequed chicken, mashed potatoes, salad, and watermelon. My mom pre-cooks meals for Carlsbad and then prepares them on her little kitchen and stove each night. We are such spoiled campers! Each night, we had a delicious meal consisting of a main dish (tacos, chili and hotdogs, spaghetti and garlic bread) and a delicious salad and fresh fruit. Later, we would have a fire and s’mores for dessert. Even Jeff managed not to lose any weight on this trip!

Finishing up the left over chili after dinner like a champ

The next morning, I was excited to get up early and go for a barefoot run on the beach. My favorite! Even though I never set an alarm, I consistently woke up within a few minutes of 5:30 every morning. My dad and I were typically up at the same time closely followed by Jeff and my mom, but everyone else slept in a couple extra hours. Most of them would still be asleep until after I got back from my run and Jeff and I were dressed and ready for the beach. I ran a few miles down the beach and back each morning and Jeff ran stairs (the ones leading from the campsites down to the beach). There seemed to be more little smooth rocks and seaweed on the beach this year than in years past and dodging these obstacles made my runs a little more interesting. One year I got a really bad blood blister from coming down on a rock with my bare foot during a run so I was careful to avoid that this year. Jeff and I both ran into some interesting people during our morning workouts. One morning, when Jeff was coming back down the stairs after running up them as fast as he could, a little old lady told him, “If you run up those stairs again, I’m gonna trip you. Show off!” That same day, Jeff met me at the end of my run and we jogged the last few minutes together. A couple passing by us noticed Jeff's BYU shirt and got really excited. They yelled, "BYU!! YEAH!!" and some other unintelligible excited mumblings while they pumped their fists in the air. And one morning, I could’ve sworn I saw Robert Downey Jr. walking down the beach in a wetsuit with a surfboard! A portion of my run is along a stretch of beach that is open to the public, but not easily accessible because the entire bluff is lined with really nice houses with personal stairs leading down to the beach and anyone coming from one of the public parking lots would have to walk a ways down the beach to get there. For this reason, it is pretty secluded and barely populated. When I saw the actor (or his identical twin!), it was just me and a man with a dog on the beach and two surfers in the water. He had just gotten out of the water and was walking in front of me. When he heard me behind him, he turned around and I got a glimpse of his face before he quickly turned back around. Maybe Robert Downey Jr. owns a beach house in Carlsbad. On Saturday morning, I was just finishing up my last beach run when I had a strange encounter with a rather creepy man. He was walking toward me with a camera and asking me something about taking a picture. I wasn’t sure if he was asking me to take a picture for him or if he could take a picture of me. I tried to be friendly in case it was the first one (even though it was unlikely since he was alone) and said, “Sure.” But I kept jogging since I had a feeling this was just weird guy wanting to take a picture of me and it turns out I was right. When he got closer to me, he said, “You’re out here every morning with me. Look at you,” as he snapped a picture of me. I just kept running.

Tuesday morning, Jeff and I built a magnificent sand castle with lookout towers, a moat, a drawbridge, a seaweed door and seagull feather flags. Katrina (my younger sister) and her friend Taylor (she was there all week) thought they wanted to challenge us to a castle building contest until they saw our skills. No contest!

That night, my high school friends Shelley and Sara came to visit. I was so excited to see them after so long apart! We stayed up till midnight catching up by the fire and spent the next morning down on the beach together before they left that afternoon. Lucky for Jeff and I, Sara is a fantastic photographer and my parents have a nice camera so she got lots of good pictures of us in the water that morning:

Jeff emerging from the water like the Swamp Thing

For your viewing pleasure, an imitation of the lift from Dirty Dancing:

I can't jump so Jeff didn't have much help getting me over his head like this!

At this point, I would be dropped on my butt. Once, Jeff just moved out of the way and let me do a belly flop.

Wednesday was Friends Day (it kinda rhymes). For some reason, that was the day that everyone's friends decided to come for a visit. Shelley and Sara were there in the morning and Katrina’s boyfriend Dylan arrived along with her friend Courtney around noon. My mom’s friends Leslie and Silvia also came down that day to go walking on the beach. We realized earlier that week that it was BYOB (Bring your own blonde) that week and our friends almost kept it up. I brought Jeff, Patrick brought Ashley, Jared brought his girlfriend Kelsey (she was there all week except for the last night), Katrina brought her friend Taylor, my dad brought my mom (she’s not really a blonde, but she has lots of blonde highlights these days), Katrina’s boyfriend Dylan brought her friend Courtney, my friend Shelley brought Sara (a natural blonde though she had been brunette for a while), and on Thursday night when my parents’ friends the Kalines came, Chris brought his wife Diane. Crazy! The only exception was Leslie and Sylvia, who are both blonde. We were also lovingly referred to as the “couples’ retreat” by our friend Larry Sparks (the Sparks came down from Utah and were camping right next to us) because our all-week regulars were all couples except for Katrina and Taylor and we could often be seen coupled off together out in the ocean or sitting in the campsite.

Katrina's friends Taylor and Courtney

Katrina and her boyfriend Dylan

Mom with her friends Sylvia and Leslie

Jared, Kelsey, Me, Jeff, Courtney, Taylor, Katrina, Dylan

Katrina, Dylan, Ashley, Taylor, Courtney, Kelsey

I could live there

Wednesday night, when Dylan was at the campsite with Katrina, my dad decided to scare him a little bit; such is his way with the boyfriends. He got Patrick, Jeff, and Jared together and while they were all standing around him in a very intimidating manner, he told poor Dylan that if he wanted to stick around any longer, he would have to go through the same thing Jeff did (Jeff didn’t). Dylan would have to go down to the beach with them and try to run through all of them with a football for as long as he could until one of them tackled him. Dylan looked a little nervous as he glanced around at these guys who were all much bigger than him, but my dad finally let him off the hook and told him it was a joke. Later that night, I got my sweet husband to agree to taking a couple of pictures at sunset, but we had some time to kill so Jeff taught my parents and I how to play a card game called VC. We played round after round frustrated that Jeff was winning every time and ended up missing the sunset, but at sunset the next night we got a couple of great shots compliments of my dad:

Thursday, we were out playing in the water as usual, when Patrick got stung in the toe by a stingray, reminding us all to be aware of the wildlife out there. There has always been more sea life at Carlsbad than at the more populated beaches like Huntington that I spent many of my high school days at. Most mornings we see dolphins and/or seals pretty close to shore and in years past, there have been stings from both stingrays and jellyfish. Now, my mom and I are the only ones who have never been stung by either and I spend a lot more time in the water than her so I’m more likely to be next. I’m pretty careful to shuffle my feet and drag my toes on the sea floor as much as I can though so we’ll see. I’ll hold out as long as I can. Taylor got stung by a stingray on Friday and Jeff felt one flutter under his feet, but moved in time. He later stepped on a fish. There were quite a few of those around too. Jeff and I saw a spear fisher come up on the beach with a speared fish and hide it with a previously caught fish in a pile of seaweed. It was pretty cool.

When you leave the campsites, you are immediately in civilization. Beach camping isn’t the same as camping in the mountains. By Thursday, we had gotten enough sun that we were ready for a little break and Jeff, Katrina, Taylor, Kelsey, and I went to see Harry Potter. It was nice to be out of the sun for a couple of hours.

Friday was our last full day at the beach and it was a good one. In the morning, my dad rented a surfboard and taught Jeff to surf. The water was freezing so I spent most of my time on the shore. Jeff stood up on one wave before they called it quits, but sadly I didn’t get a picture of that. He did though. I promise. Since the water was so cold, I suggested to Jeff that he and I go for a walk and come back when the day got a little hotter. We go out to dinner on the last night every year so Jeff and I went to scope out possible restaurants. It was a very very long walk. There is an outlet mall a few miles from the campsites that we used to bike to all the time as kids and I knew there were several restaurants in the area so we set out to walk there. I got in a little bit of trouble though when I led Jeff to believe that the walk would be much shorter than it actually was. It went so fast on bikes that I underestimated the distance. It was probably about 8 miles walking there and back. Yikes! Jeff wasn’t a happy camper towards the end, but he cheered up quick once we were back at camp. I had already run about 8 miles that morning so I was pretty tired by the time we got back too. We discovered an Islands restaurant, which made for a delicious dinner that night though so it all worked out. After we got back from our walk, Jeff and I ate lunch and headed down to the beach to find that the waves were stellar, the best they had been all week for boogie boarding. We spent hours down there living it up catching wave after wave and loving every minute of it, even though the water was still pretty cold. Eventually we got our fill and went back up to the campsite, where we cleaned up and hung out playing cards and killing time to dinner. Jeff and I had fun teaching Katrina and Taylor how to play VC. Dinner was fantastic! Most of us enjoyed a variety of big tasty burgers and fries. Then we came back to the campsite to enjoy a breathtaking sunset and watch some dolphins and a seal playing in the waves. Jeff and I went for a walk on the beach while the sun was setting and it was absolutely perfect out there. I never wanted to leave. I get used to being without the beach in Provo, but when I get to see it again, I remember how much I miss and love it. After the sun went down, we headed back up to the campsite for a fire and s’mores and then fell asleep one last time to the sound of the waves crashing on the beach in our snug little tent. It was a good day.

Dad and Jeff heading out with the surf board

The next morning, I got up early as usual and went for a run, and by the time I got back, everyone was awake and starting to take everything down. We packed up in record time, I said goodbye to the beach, and we were out of there at 7:59. After we got back home and unloaded, Jeff and I took showers, did our laundry, went to Golden Spoon one last time, and then spent the rest of the day napping and watching a couple of movies until it was time to leave for the airport that evening.

All in all, it was a fantastic vacation. We loved spending time with the fam (I’ve missed them) and at the beautiful beach without a care in the world. And we are very grateful to mom and dad for making it all happen (and at absolutely no cost to us J ). Can’t wait till next year!