Costal Starlight

Dear Readers,

Today is Monday, March 21. Today was the day we started biking. 

It was great, and will make an excellent blogpost for another day.

Let's catch up though, shall we?

Since we last wrote, we headed west to the coast from Yosemite to Santa Cruz. We stayed with Will's culinary school friend, Andy, in his beautiful (totally what we imagined as very California) casita. Andy is the guy in charge of the kitchen at a restaurant nearby, the Cremer House. He brought us tons of delicious food, and the bartender was fantastic. We had local beer, really tasty food, and great times in general.  Thanks for the bike tour fuel, Andy!

Will finally got to feed his disc golf addiction! The Banana Slugs at UC Santa Cruz have a great mascot and really fun disc golf course, but I did say goodbye to my favorite of all time disc. Rest well, Wolfie.

We returned our rental car in Salinas and took the beautiful Costal Starlight Express Amtrak train along the coast to Santa Barbara. We ended that night in Carpinteria and camped on the beach. We finally stepped in the mighty Pacific.

Anyone know what plant this is? Portulaca maybe?

Carpinteria is a really fun town, and we had a great time waiting until our evening train to LA the next day. We stumbled upon (and then proceeded to sit on and ruin my jeans on) a natural tar pit and had a few great beers at the Island Brewing Company.

We arrived in LA on Friday night and had an amazing time with Abby and Dan that weekend. We brought a big crew including us, Abby and Dan, Scott and Katie (Will's high school buddy and his fiance), Larry (our college pal), and Larry's friend Dan. We hiked in the beautiful Malibou Creek State Park all day, bouldering and scrambling over rocks in an incredible canyon. 

Afterwards we had seafood at Malibou Seafood and tried to figure out if anyone around us was famous, and Dan taught us that by expanding those little white ketchup cups by the dispenser, you can exponentially increase their volume- a trick that will come in handy on the tour, no doubt.

Hanging with Larry on Saturday night. B.

Abby took us out to The Griffin, the bar that is the setting for the bar in the New Girl!

On Sunday we took a similar group, plus my high school friend Brida and her partner Joe, to Griffiths Park Observatory and the Hollywood sign.

Tons of thanks to Abby and Dan for their hospitality. Dear readers, they show their guests quite a good time.