I'm ba-ack! ;) My trip was quite fun, and I will now tell you the highlights. It can in no way compete with the rulingness of Sam's travel-log, but it's interesting. I hope.

I and my four best friends went to Monterey, CA. It's only about 2 hours from our hometown, but sometimes the most interesting things are closer than you think. So... yeah.


The Rumble

Okay! Now this wasn't actually a real rumble, BUT it could have become one, and we were VERY glad that it wasn't. That night, we went to bed at around midnight... and were woken up at 3 AM. There were people standing in the hallway outside our room. YELLING AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS. More specifically, having a conversation while yelling at the top of their lungs. Even more specifically, having a conversation stuffed with cuss words while yelling at the top of their lungs. Oh, goody.

Well, we'll wait it out, right? We tried. They did NOT stop their yelled conversation. There were four voices, that of 2 guys and 2 girls, and one girl had a REALLY annoying laugh. We tried to ignore it, because there was no answer at the front desk and we were nervous about going out there. What if they were drunk, or something?

But finally, after about 45 minutes of this, one of my friends just stomped to the door, opened it (while keeping it deadbolted, though) and asked them to be quiet. And they apologized and were quiet! But we smelled sweet smoke. Yup. They were smoking pot out there. Then, about an hour later, they came back outside our room and started yelling AGAIN! Ugh! But then we heard some stomping, and heard a man yelling at them and totally chewing it out. It went something like this:

Man: "You all need to SHUT UP!"
Pothead 1: "Sorry."
Man: "I have had WAY too many complaints about you!"
Pothead 2: "Sorrry... whoa...."
Pothead 3: *annoying laugh* "Like, we're leaving tomorrow!"
Man: "GOOD!"

Heh. After that things got quiet and we could all get to sleep. Sweet. ;)

Some other stuff we did that was fun -


Lighthouses

On the first day, we stopped at Pigeon Point Lighthouse. I love lighthouses, and this particular one is very cool. It was the inspiration and model for the lighthouse and some other stuff in the older Sierra adventure game Lighthouse, which rules. So that was cool, because you could see how the game designers took cues not only from the lighthouse itself but also from the scenery, and incorporated it into their game world.

Our hotel was also right next to a lighthouse in Monterey. That particular lighthouse, the name of which escapes me right now, is the oldest working lighthouse on the West Coast, AND it still has and uses the original Fresnel lens. Fresnel lenses are so cool.


Spooky Hotels

In Monterey (where we stayed for 3 nights) our hotel was cute, although there was one little eeny weeny detail that the brochure forgot to mention. Our view was an ocean view, all right, but there was a CEMETARY between our room and the ocean! We could easily walk off of our patio, walk about 20 feet and be in the cemetary. Um. Well, we did actually go for a walk in there. There were some headstones that were from the turn of the century and older. Very interesting to try and guess at the stories hidden there...

The entire trip, we joked about the zombies coming to get us, and prayed pranks accordingly. It didn't help that I slept in the rollaway RIGHT next to the glass patio doors that opened on the cemetary, which we fondly referred to as the 'zombie bait bed'. ;)

The place we stayed in on the last night (last night) was even richer in history. It is in the Santa Cruz mountains, in Boulder Creek, and it's called the Brookdale Lodge. The Lodge's main attraction is the beautiful restarant, which actually has a REAL brook running RIGHT through it. You can fish out of it and everything. It's really, really pretty. The Brook Room is also supposedly haunted by the ghost of a girl who drowned in the brook. And, in the 1930's, the Lodge was home to many gangsters, who built such things as the Mermaid Room (a room that has HUGE windows that look into the bottom of the swimming pool, so you can see people swimming from under the water). The Mermaid Room was used by the gangsters for two things. One, to watch their... er... paramours swim. And two, to watch people sleep with the fishes. O_o

The Lodge is also riddled with secret passages and hidden rooms from the gangster era. There was a balcony near our room with no apparant means of getting onto it. No ladders, stairways, doors, windows, NOTHING. It reminded us of the Winchester Mystery House, which is a whole other story unto itself.


Wildlife

The cemetary across from our first hotel had not only zombies (*eg*) but also a TON of mule deer. We also saw lots of seabirds on the coast. While on the famed 17 Mile Drive (near the more famed Pebble Beach), we saw a lot of Harbor Seals, some of which had pups. The pups were SO cute. They were a silvery color. And the way all seals move on the land is hilarious. They just sort of bump along in a jello-like fashion.

We also saw sea otters - once floating in the water off of Monterey's Cannery Row, and one was on the beach sleeping on a rocky outcropping.


There's more, but I'm tired of typing (*g*) and I don't know how much more you want to hear. So I'll leave it at that. :)

Sosi"travel fun!"qui