Link to the vacation photos

I haven’t been on a real vacation ever since I went to Japan, which is roughly 2 years ago. I was looking forward to this one because I was going with my girlfriend. We went on a trip last summer to Minnesota, but we didn’t spend much time with each other because she was running around doing activities with her cousins. 

This vacation has been a couple of months in the making. I know my girlfriend needed it and I just wanted to unplug from the ‘9-5’ and relax for more than a weekend. So we picked California, particularly Oakland for a night, and then off to the Mountains (about 2.5 hours away). The drive through Northern California was satisfying, probably because I wasn’t driving, I was also soaking up all of the fresh and breezy air. Oh yeah, we went to California because my girlfriend’s friend husband was celebrating his 30th birthday. 

As we were driving, all I was thinking of was looking over the balcony from the beach house and drinking as much as possible. I didn’t care about the scenery. I wanted to chill, eat, drink, have sex, and that’s about it. But, as I was day dreaming I started paying attention to the road. We drove over the Bay Bridge, which consisted of dirty, nasty, gray water. We went through this one ritzy town, where the locals looked like they enjoyed there quiet, but happenin habitat. We kept traveling on highway 80 or 580 to finally take a detour to the mountain side. The land was clear and flat, as if it was used for farming, as there were cows everywhere to eat, shit, and to look at the cars, trucks, and RV’s pass by. I didn’t know how much longer we had to get to our destination, but I stopped day dreaming and paid attention to the scenery. It was like something from a movie; the elevation kept rising and noticed their were deeps, turns, and mountain passes on both sides of the curvy road. It seemed there were at least 200 turns to get to our destination, I so badly wanted to take over in the driver seat to experience something I have only seen in movies or the television screen. But I stopped acting like I was the best driver ever in the world and enjoyed my time in the passenger seat. 

We continued climbing up, in order to beat the birthday boy, we continued to see only mountain and cattle. But, as the elevation increased, I noticed a spot of blue on the left side of my shoulder. We were roughly 30 minutes into our elevation pull until I saw more winding roads and houses along each bend. We finally reached Bodega Bay to learned that it was possible to ride horses on the flat land and able to stop and admire the beaches. We passed where the Russian River and Pacific intwined, we noticed people walking haphazardly on the shallow water, and canoeing on both sides of the two body of waters. We caught eye of guardrails, we were frighten to see various shoulders that required no effort at all to end one’s life. We passed a stretch of land that had a film crew with police aiding traffic to make sure nothing happen to the commercial. We nearly made contact with cattle that were a couple of feet away from the road.

I became sick because the driver was maneuvering around hairpin turns at 5 miles per hour, consecutively. But we didn’t stop, we kept driving. We started paying attention to our markers. All we knew of was what the shore house looked like and the marker 38-32. We were on tick 24 or so when the driver started to notice them. As we were getting tired of the turns and the redundant beautiful beaches, roads, and mountain side (how can this ever get tiring), we continued on. 30.15, 31.98, 33.45, 34.6, the tick marks read, we were almost there, we were finally going to be able to live for a short time at the place we only saw pictures of. We got out of the car, we looked around, we couldn’t believe we were there, we had a good stretch, and started to take the luggage, food, alcohol, and ourselves into the house. 

We looked around for a couple of minutes, we had time to spare because the birthday boy wasn’t their yet. I quickly got out my expensive camera to start the photo session for the weekend. I looked at the room my girlfriend and I were occupying for the weekend, the kitchen, the picnic bench, that was in the house was a hoppin place, it was probably because our meals were eaten here, or hovered to when we were tired of a spot in the house. I went downstairs to look at the other bedrooms, I opened the doors to the deck, where the jacuzzi and entrance to the cliff line deck was. There were plenty of foliage everywhere, there was a gazebo present on my right side as I continued forward and downward to the end of the deck (there was a bell at the end of the deck). On the left side there was a cliff, a strip of land that was stretched out to the Pacific I kindly called, The Sleepy Dragon, and saw in the distance RV’s camping and people out enjoying the day. 

Everyone was anxiously waiting for the birthday man and his wife to arrive. I know it was a surprise party for him, but I was looking forward to some much needed vacation. The surprise was not so much of my girlfriend and I being their, but Marcus, the birthday boy, to see his brother, Philip. From what I can tell from everyone, they haven’t seen each other in some time. They have another brother who wasn’t able to make it, but the surprise and shock on Marcus’ face when he saw everyone and then his brother was priceless. I was able to get most of it on camera. They hugged and had their first beer, too. Everyone continued to look around and start the weekend on the right foot by drinking, playing Nintendo Wii, eating tuna steaks wrapped with bacon, and see what else the rest of the weekend had to offer.