I’m at the Santa Barbara Public Library right now… there’s this long line to use the computers with internet access, but I GOT ONE! WOO!
I might as well recap the Southern California trip so far so I don’t post some short inaccurate CRAP writeup when I get home. I’ll do the day-by-day recap-o-rama.
Friday:
My mom and I drove over to Mountain View in the south SF Bay Area, and we picked up our Volkswagen Vanagon, in which we would sleep for the next 5 nights.
We drove our pretty selves down to Santa Cruz, where we stopped off at the boardwalk. Santa Cruz’s boardwalk KICKS THE MOTHER OF ASS. Unfortunately, while we were there, all the rides and restaurants were closed. The arcade, though, was open, and my mom let me show her the magic of DDR! She even tried a game out, and after the third one-footer, she started to get the hang of it. Me, on the other hand, I was having a bad DDR day and I couldn’t even pass a four-footer. James, please don’t kill me.
We arrived at the Graham Hill campgrounds and set up our Vanagon for “SLEEP MODE.” In sleep mode, the cute little “Westfalia” top is raised to reveal a hidden bed, where I would sleep. HOORAY!
Sat’day:
We found ourselves in UC Santa Cruz, one freakin’ beautiful campus. We missed the scheduled tour because of crappy directions on the signs around the campus, but we ended up just driving around ourselves. Wowee.
INTERMISSION: I just noticed that there’s some bird crap on my jacket. GOD DAMN IT!
We saw some signs around the campus, inviting us to challenge “JOE,” the master of Super Smash Brothers Melee. I was actually allowed to go to this tournament, and I found myself in the midst of about 30 college geeks. Holy crap was it fun. And for someone who hadn’t ever played Super Smash Brothers Melee before, I did rather well. I mean, I wasn’t the first player to be defeated in a 4-man brawl. Using Kirby. 😀
After having seen enough, we drove over to our next campground, a parking lot for RVs and trailer homes (um, I hope that wasn’t redundant). We walked along the beach, watched some Friends (as the main office had a TV) and… SLEPT!
Sunday: Bleah. It was Easter, and almost ALL of Monterey was in Church. So we were able to walk around the city without THAT many awkward looks, as we were about the only people not in formal clothes. Boo hoo, Jesus died. I’d been to Monterey a few times, but we visited the same places anyway… the Dennis the Menace play park, a Chinese-Japanese Antiques shop which had closed shop since the last time we were there, and the Cannery, where the Monterey Bay Aquarium is.
We drove to Point Lobos, where I explained to my mom the wonder of Final Fantasy X (I still can’t believe she’s letting me do all this video game stuff), and I compared our race’s relation to nature to the Al Bhed… or something. I just felt like talking about FFX.
We stopped in Carmel, where we had camped out before, and tried to look for a restaurant that was open (ugh, I hate Easter.) Well, we found one, ATE~!, and drove to Big Sur, where I beat Sonic Advance a few times, and went to t3h b3d.
Monday: Big ol’ driving day. No video games, but a few pretty awesome sights. We drove along Highway 1 and saw the coastline. Although it was foggy and I had to concentrate on the road with the big, sluggish Vanagon, it was a sight to behold or something. We stopped at a few beaches, and one was cluttered with elephant seals. Pretty awesome animals.
We drove through San Luis Obispo, and stopped to look at Cal Poly. Buh, I didn’t know that a college could be so agricultural. And to think it was at the top of my list of prospective colleges. Not only do all the alumni look like horses (hey… those WERE horses!), but San Luis Obispo itself is a pretty ugly town.
Driving driving driving! Odometer hits 350 miles. WOW!
And we arrive in Santa Barbara, which is by far my favorite city on this trip. Beautiful harbor, great shoppin’ (I finally got to use up some gift certificates from the holidays), and nice atmosphere… it seemed like everyone was smiling, or had some bounce in their step.
We found a motel since we were sick of camping out.
And that brings us to today. Yup. I have to go to UC Santa Barbara now. I’ll be back to haunt you all again on Thursday.
HI HO Ag, AWAY!!!