[INSTALLMENT 3]
As the temperature slowly creeps into the 80’s, the universal pattern of abandoned jackets heralds the coming of summer. I, personally, love summer. To me, summer means lazy days and exciting adventures, complete with visits to the beach. Don’t you just love the idea of hanging out with your friends in the sand?
Just south of the Bay Area lies a small town called Watsonville on the coast. With a population of about 50,000, Watsonville boasts beautiful beaches and a great ocean view. Sunset Beach– admittedly a basic name— remains a popular attraction for beachgoers, especially as the weather starts warming up.
This issue, I will not be accompanied by any members of The Shield, but rather with close friends from the numerous theatre shows I have participated in. Buckle in while we travel to Watsonville for a “relaxing” day at the beach— complete with sand, sea, and sky.
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Welcome back travelers, to The Daily Explorer. In this series, I travel (often with Journalism guests) to inexpensive and entertaining places within the Bay Area. With these accounts, I hope to inspire the readers of The Shield to explore their hometown and demonstrate that there’s always something new to explore.
Keep an eye out for some of your favorite writers from The Shield, as some may accompany me on these adventures in the future. If you have any favorite places, restaurants, parks, etc, please email me at 558971@my.cuhsd.org to issue a recommendation. Your name and input about the place in question will be credited.
Without further ado, buckle up and enjoy the blog-style ride of The Daily Explorer!
MONDAY, May 27 (Memorial Day!)
A charming yet frequently freezing landscape awaits beach-goers after a 45-minute drive from San Jose to Watsonville. Here, shrubs like mock heather and brush lupines decorate the dunes before a wide beach. Bathroom amenities, trellises, and picnic benches further elevate opportunities for celebration. Throughout the trip, I frequently saw gigantic pelicans soaring through the air in stark comparison to the minuscule mole crabs burrowing just beneath the sand. Albeit gorgeous, I was constantly shivering under my numerous blankets.
7:30 am, San Jose → Watsonville
Thanks to my friend Devin Ching, a junior from Leigh High School (he insisted that he be included by name), and his generous mother, I was able to carpool through the Santa Cruz mountains to the beach site. Being an exceptionally unskilled early-morning riser, this was a struggle, especially on a holiday. Nevertheless, with a packed trunk and a flip-flop + sneaker switcheroo later, we were on the road with musical theatre blasting through the stereo.
8:42 am, Strawberry Fields Forever
Sunset State Beach hides behind miles upon miles of strawberry fields, with a singular throwaway road on the right leading to the park. Behind an (unfortunate) $10 entrance fee lies a short web of winding roads that eventually spools into a small parking lot at the base of the hill. The moment we stepped outside, the wind and the road hit us like a slap to the face.
Some may call me a spoiled Californian living in California’s mild Mediterranean climate. To that, admittedly, I have no retort. But standing before the ocean on a cloudy day at a modest 52० F in overalls, I could consider my timbers shivered. As we unloaded the car and trudged down the dunes, we met with other friends within the theatre community and set up a hub of blankets and chairs. Though I was convinced I would be productive, the miserable weather motivated me to do nothing more than curl up on a sandy blanket with my blanket and try to warm up while others caught up to our early start.
I only found out later that I had completely fallen asleep for an hour and a half, curled up in a tight little ball near the mosh pit of our “hub.” After 15 minutes of playing Stardew Valley, of course.
10:36 am, Frigidaire, Au-Naturale
At this point one of my best friends, Jack, and his amazing mom, who made a long journey from Gilroy, joined us! Through the (almost) three years that I have been involved with theatre, I met so many people who have changed my life. Though some live insanely far away, I always look forward to opportunities to hang out outside rehearsals.
When the others arrived around 10:30 am, we set off on a walk down the beach. We found a whole sand dollar intact on the shore. I saw some funny bones on the inside, but my friends insisted that they were not, in fact, the deceased creature’s internal organs.
For some god-forsaken reason, the group decided to strip down to their swimsuits and walk as far as possible into the waves without getting swept away. As the 50-degree water lapped at our hips and thighs, our faces started to turn purple in tandem with a loss of feeling in our legs. Suffice to say, there was a lot of screaming. Even still, we powered through until waves constantly soaked our face and hair. Finally, we decided to call it quits and move back up to the shore.
11:45 am, Freezing
For the past thirty minutes, I had been shivering with gusto under several blankets and a cabana. One of my friends expressed concern for my state, because all of the other wave-bravers had already dried off. But I was stuck on a sand-ridden tarp, quavering involuntarily every couple of seconds. Eventually, my friends coaxed me out of the cabana and under the sky, where it was inexplicably several degrees warmer, even though the sun wasn’t out. My friend Jack had a matching blanket, and we ran around our site with them wrapped around our heads.
This blanket was doubtlessly my greatest companion on this beach trip. It was my only defense against a desolate and freezing landscape.
1:17 pm, Chilling (literally)
At this point, we decided to take a break and eat from the communal pool of snacks the group had accumulated. I watched a game of 13-person UNO, and watched my friend Devin wash his hands in the ocean for 15 minutes after accidentally touching a dead seal. At about 1:30, many people had to leave, so I decided to curl up in the slight warmth of the sun just out from under the shade at the cabana. Though I intended to take a nap for just 20 minutes or so, I completely passed out.
3:33 pm, Lightly Toasted By the Sun
I woke up with a burning sensation on my nose and cheeks as I opened my eyes to a clear blue sky. As I slept, the sun finally peeked out from behind the clouds, raising the temperature to 62० F. “It’s time to go, Emi.” Devin’s mom gently told me. I was horrified, worried that I had held up their plans to leave early, but she assured me otherwise. “You just looked so tired,” she said. After a frantic couple of laps around the site, I had successfully collected all of my belongings and lugged them to the car.
P.S. The traffic home was horrible. I’m half-convinced I could have reached home by ditching the car and booking it through the Santa Cruz mountains.
PHOTO ALBUM:
(Error: Very few good photos because I had slept for approximately 4 out of the 8 hours of this particular adventure)
THE VERDICT:
- Unlike the idyllic and tropical beaches that Barbie and Ken promote, Northern Californian beaches are cold enough to give you hypothermia.
- Bring more layers of clothing than you think you’ll need.
- Plan for a day when it’s sunny. Cloudy and cold days at the beach are miserable.
- No matter how miserable the conditions are outside, it will always be a good time if you’re surrounded by people you love.
Join me in the next issue for yet another adventure, hopefully one that I’m awake to experience.
Signing off until next issue,
The Daily Explorer
