Beach Boys

I've previously mentioned that one of my favorite things to do is to go to the beach. Ordinarily, I only end up making it once or twice a year, sometimes on or around my birthday, and sometimes when I'm on vacation.

It so happens that surrogate son also happens to love going to the beach, and since I've had some latitude in my schedule these days, I've been able to go several times this summer!!!

I think this may have been on the trip I'd previously posted about. Surrogate son was forming perfect spheres of the sand!!!

There's a pile of them in the foreground, in the shadow.

This was another trip we made to Horny Corner, with surrogate son's sister and another friend. I think his mom may have been there that time as well.

I know one time, maybe two times, my younger and surrogate son had gone when I had something else I was doing. We have a large duffel bag that has our beach towels, swimsuits, and sunscreen in it, and he'd taken a smaller bag with just his towel, suit, and sunscreen. One of the times, he didn't get the sunscreen swapped from the smaller bag, and got a sunburn. This time, he looked like he'd been slapped on the shoulder by someone with a lot of sunscreen on their hand, and that area didn't burn or tan!!!

This is the sand structure that we made on that day. I started out by drawing the moat, then removed the sand and piled it up in the middle. The moat wanted to cave in. The setting sun made for a cool effect on it!!!

Something else I'd not mentioned, Grill 'Em All has relocated down to Horny Corner!!! They used to be next to a theater in Alhambra, and I'd been there at least once. I was familiar with Grill 'Em All because they would help out at the Oinkster during Burger Week, and I think Oinkster may have featured some of their burgers during it.

They've still got the metal theme going, but now with a beachy locale and vibe!!! I may have been craving a premium gourmet burger... Anyway, on the same day, we ate there, and it was awesome!!!

I like the picture of surrogate giving his sister the side-eye!!!

Surrogate son got the Behemoth, which is served on two Texas Toast grilled cheese sandwiches!!! It was too much for him!!! I got the Witte, which has cream cheese, deep fried bacon, sriracha, malt vinegar aioli, and grilled onions. It was glorious!!! Also got an order of Primate Fries, basically In-N-Out's animal style fries, but the fries are better.

Got this picture of the seagulls in the run off channel from the showers on another trip to Horny Corner. In the background, you can see the inflatable play floats they've got set up out there. They only let a limited amount of people on at a time, of course, and depending on the day, there can be a line to go on it. We went one time, and on our most recent time down there they'd taken them down for the season.

We've also gone a few times to Santa Monica beach. I like it a little better, it's got some surf. The first time we went there, surrogate son had wanted to walk out on the pier, so after the sun had gone down and we'd changed, we did. It drops down on the end for a fishing platform, and when we were heading down, one guy had his pole bent down, so we had to stay and see what he caught. Turned out to be a spiny lobster!!! I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to catch them with a pole...

Got a nice sunset picture...

And the fabled pier...

Last time we were there, a Coast Guard chopper doing maneuvers. It was kicking up a good amount of vapor with the rotor wash!!! Stayed around for a while.

Another beach selfie with another friend!!! This was on the time before the last time we went to the beach.

Oh, I had a cooler that I would usually take that came with our house. It was old, and as it got used more, the plastic on the edges and the lid started cracking. I bought a similar size replacement, and then a couple of weeks later, I was taking a walk, and one of our neighbors had a give away pile that had another similar sized cooler, but with a split lid, so now I've got two. They also had a nice boogie board that I grabbed, but we only made it to Santa Monica one time since I got it, and the surf wasn't great for boarding, the waves would crash as soon as they formed.

We stopped by a Taco Bell on the way back. Next door was a donut place, and on the side wall, they had the donut angel background!!! It has a little curb that you have to hop up onto, and it's not easy to balance. Took pictures of surrogate son and myself in front of it, but we were both off center. I moved the donut on his picture!!!

Going Back to Grandview

A couple weeks back we took another vacation. I'd had the week sceduled off for some time, and leading up to it, I was considering where to vacation. The Disney parks are doing a locals special where you can go 3 days for less than $100 per day, and it's been years since I've been there, so I was thinking of doing that. My wife was on board, but when I ran it past my son, he was less enthused. See, for several years his school had gone on regular outings there, so he's had a pretty good fill of them. He opined that for himself, Legoland was some true nostalgia. It's been a while, and I've always liked it, so we decided to go there.

The first night we were in the area, after we ate and checked into our lodgings, the boy and I headed over to Encinitas to revisit the beach we'd gone to five years ago, and this time to take some pictures!!!

Once again, it was dark by the time we got there, but the stairs are illuminated, and phone cameras actually do an amazingly good job of gathering the available light!!!

The tide wasn't at it's highest this time, but there still wasn't a lot of beach showing.

After taking several pictures, we stashed our phones and put on our swim trunks, but didn't do much more than getting wet up to our knees.

The water wasn't nearly as warm as last time we were there, but we still enjoyed it.

One of my favorite pictures is this "shadow selfie", that I hadn't even realized I'd gotten until I looked at it later!!!

Night Surf

A couple weeks back, we went on a vacation with extended family down towards San Diego. We actually stayed in Encinitas, a ways north of there, just south of Carlsbad. Our hotel was only a block from the ocean, which was a good part of the reason we'd stayed there.

Every single day we did some sort of touristy thing, which was quite a drain on my parents. The second day we went to Legoland, and my parents and my wife had had enough by late afternoon, and were ready to head back. I could keep going, and my youngest and niece and nephew were all good to stay until closing, so they split and we closed that place down. On the way back, we talked a bit about going to the beach. There are houses all along the coast, so I checked and saw that there was a beach access just a couple blocks north of where we were staying, and, of course, that block over. We all decided that the four of us could go for heading over and checking it out when we got back.

It was a bit different than we'd expected. Instead of the block over sloping down to the shore area, it rose up quite a bit. At the end, it came down a bit, but not as much as the rise. From there, it starts off with a concrete path, with areas of steps going down at intervals. From there, it transitioned to wood steps heading down. Straight down, at the end, and DIRECTLY INTO THE OCEAN!!! Well, we weren't expecting THAT!!! Turns out, we caught it right at an extreme high tide!!! The beach has bluffs that rise up from the back of it pretty straight up.

The waves would recede and reveal the sand of the shore, and just to the right around 50 feet, there is a lifeguard tower, backed right up to the bluffs. My niece was the first to decide that she would make a run for it when the waves receded. She made it, of course getting splashed a bit in the process. The rest of us headed over, and stashed our gear on the tower and did a bit of shore wading. The water was very mild, and the evening was pretty warm, too. My niece had brought her purse (go figure), and among the things contained therein was a GoPro camera, which she broke out to shoot a little bit of video. Don't know how that came out, but I'd like to see.

Of course, I didn't bring a camera, so the two actual "beach" pictures are stolen from the web, and the first pic is image searching the title of this post. By the way, said title was lifted from the Stephen King short story that spawned "The Stand". Grandview Beach is what this beach is called... I cannot attest to the view, but even from the shore area, you could see a lot more stars than back home.

Good times!!!

Water Park Pics

Here's something kinda cool. At the Disney parks, there are staff photographers wandering the park, taking pictures and handing out the number to find your picture online. This was especially helpful for me at the water parks, because I wasn't going to take my camera in the wave pool!!! Funny seeing them wading in the splash down pools with these REALLY NICE digital cameras, completely wrapped in plastic bags except the lens.

The other day I found the two little bracelets I'd gotten from the photographers at the water parks. Just in time, it would seem, it said that the pictures would only be available online for 30 days. I thought I might be too late already, but I wasn't. Of course, their deal is to try and sell you prints, a 5x7 for about $13 if I remember correctly. They have it so you can't just get the digital picture, but we have our ways, oh yes.

The top picture is on the end of the The Crushin' Gusher at Typhoon Lagoon, and the bottom one is on Team Boat Springs at Blizzard Beach. I don't believe I had made mention of this slide, but each water park had a variation of this slide, a giant tube raft for up to six riders at a time on a huge slide. Typhoon Lagoon has Mayday Falls, and Blizzard Beach has Team Boat Springs. Of the two, the latter is the best. It has a much longer slide, and it has a conveyor to haul the rafts to the top. On Mayday Falls, you have to lug your own raft.

The Sleep Deprivation Experiment

The flight out to Florida left of Saturday night, arriving a bit after 6 AM on Sunday morning, with a couple of hours layover in Las Vegas. Of course, there was a some delay leaving, but still in time to make the connection. Just enough time in Vegas to get a couple mini pizzas and bread sticks, go to the bathroom, and eat before getting on the Orlando bound flight.


Of course, the theory on travelling at night was that we could get some sleep on the plane. The youngest complied with this on the second leg of the journey without any encouragement. They did push the drink and snack cart through, and they had Shrek the Third for an in-flight movie, which the older boy and I both watched. I did a little bit of snoozing, as did the older boy, but wifey got none. I think she was too excited.



We arrived at Disney's Pop Century resort right at daybreak. Moved our stuff into our room, and then the boys and I decided to go to the Typhoon Lagoon water park during the first part of the day, while mom got a nap in. That didn't last long, the younger scraped his knee in the wave pool right at the beginning, and didn't want to have much more to do with that. We rode tubes around the outer river for a bit, then he was ready to go back to our room and nap some himself.

He fell asleep on the bus heading back, but when we got back he was ready to go check out the bowling pin pool. A little bit of that, and then back to our room (on the opposite end of the resort) through the buildings to check out some of the theming. Everyone was ready to eat by the time we got back, so we did that, then proceeded to the Disney World's Magic Kingdom park.



It was the featured park for Disney's "Extra Magic Hours", a plan where resort guests can remain in the parks for an additional two or three hours in the evenings, or get in an hour earlier in the morning. The featured park changes daily.



One of the first stops was to buy the Pal Mickey of which we had heard. He is pretty cool, but his volume is so low that you need to hold him to your ear to be able to hear what he says. The youngest wore him on the neck of his shirt almost every day.



We rode the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, shorter than the California version, but other than that virtually identical. The youngest was up for riding Thunder Mountain Railroad again, even though he didn't care for it when he got off last time.

Disney World has an area that Disney Land doesn't have, a Liberty Square, and the cars run four across instead of two by two in California. Also, they still have the People Mover ride there, although they don't call it that. Neither of my boys had ever seen that, it was before their time.

We never got a chance to ride Splash Mountain. It differs from the California version in that, instead of riding front to back, it has side by side seating. Interestingly, the older and I rode Space Mountain, and it has front to back seating, whereas the California version has side by side seating. It seems to be a quicker, better coaster in Florida, too.

And, look at this!!! Disney World has a rollable sphere, too!!!

I think it was around 1:30 AM when we left. Too much fun to do any sleeping!!!