Memorial Day Weekend, 2013
We love the Ventura and Santa Barbara Coast and were luckily able to secure a fairly last minute campsite at El Capitan State Beach for Memorial Day weekend. El Capitan is about 15 minutes north of Santa Barbara. We arrived on Friday afternoon and set up our camp and left to take a stroll on the beach. We walked North for a few miles and there was barely anyone in sight. The beach was deserted. It was incredibly beautiful.
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| Evening hike along the beach |
We then started up a fire and made smores with strawberries. It was Chelsea's idea of making something with absolutely no nutritive value at least have something a little healthy. They turned out really good. We brought our new air mattress and that made sleeping much easier than on the little pads we have previously used. Having a mattress when camping is a serious game changer in getting good sleep when camping.
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| Cooking up chicken apple sausages for dinner. |
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| Strawberries, roasted marshmallows and graham cracker treat! Tasted like a strawberry shortcake! |
We went for another few mile hike, this time South of El Capitan, early in the morning to another deserted coastline. We couldn't believe on the Saturday of a holiday weekend we had found a completely empty beach! It was awesome and really pretty.
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| Chelsea getting in touch with nature hiking barefoot. |
We then hung out in downtown Santa Barbara at the pier and ate at a cafe nearby. No one in SB was at the actual beach, they were all dressed nice and there for the restaurants and shopping. It was really bizarre. It was an 80 degree day and everyone dressed up nicely as they walked along the boardwalk to get to different shops but not hang out on the sand. Although beautiful, the city of Santa Barbara isn't really our scene, so we made our way to Carpinteria, which was way more like a beach town. We then checked the waves all the way down the coast to Ventura, where we stayed the night. We surfed a slow but fun C-Street the next morning and hung out at San Buenaventura State Beach afterwards. Everytime we're in Ventura we've been able to score fun waves at C-Street!
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| Had to put the full suit back on for Ventura surf. |
We had a ton of fun together on this weekend getaway and would recommend El Capitan as a place to camp for anyone! Here are a few more pics from the trip.
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| Ocean view from our campsite. |
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| Taking a stroll at high tide along El Capitan Beach. |
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| Colorful sand crab |
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| Watching the dolphins at sunset together. |
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| Sunset at El Capitan State Beach |
