"Surf, Sand, Sun, and Fun!"

Late this morning I packed up, said goodbye to my grandma and aunt in Carlsbad, and continued North up the gorgeous California coast!!

Though I was feeling very grown up as I drove, that didn't stop me from making a special detour to have some youthful fun here, at the....

Before I could spend some time frolicking up and down the warped wooden platform, I had to execute some rather impressive extracting-myself-from-the-car maneuvers. Basically, that means crawling across the front seats of my car and exiting from the passenger side door, because the car on my left was hugging the line so closely that I couldn't get the driver's side door open wide enough to squeeze through! There were actually quite a few idiot-parking jobs, including assholes who had parked crookedly, thus putting perfectly good, available parking spaces out of commission.

But anyway, I emerged from my car after a few strategic minutes, attracting only a small audience (a family of 5, all of whom were watching me curiously). I had two hours to play, and I was determined to make them count!

I rode the carousel...

The Pier carousel is 100 years old!

(Yes I rode by myself. Yes, I'm sure it looked strange. No I don't care, because yes I had fun!!)

A nice lady took this picture. It was pretty impressive actually: she had her toddler in an air-borne headlock and was trying to hold on to her, but she still managed to take a good picture of me!

(if you're wondering why my face is so shiny, it's because it was unbelievably humid today! Yesterday was actually worse!)

The Ferris wheel)...

The lady who took this picture is the reason I even got to ride the Ferris Wheel...they weren't going to let me on because I was a "single rider." How lame is that? But she and her two daughters were my compartment sharers.

We were very high up...

The pier!

Can you tell I'm not a fan of heights?

I also rode the roller coaster...

But the souvenier pictures were like $15 dollars each, so I took the liberty of re-enacting my facial expression for y'all. I know that those of you living vicariously through me wouldn't want to miss out on that!

Yeah, that looks about right! Too bad I couldn't duplicate the nervous lady sitting next to me. She finally lifted her arms up when she realized she wouldn't fall out if she let go of the safety bar.

When the time came for me to leave, I was both sad and excited. Excited because I was resuming the trek to my newest destination, but sad because I'd been having so much fun! When I got back to my car, the same two cars were still parked on either side of me, so I had to crawl in through my passenger door again. Oh, well.

Good bye, Santa Monica!

Tune in tomorrow to learn where I am now!!