Laguna Beach

The final destination of our trip was Laguna Beach, which is about an hour south of Los Angeles. We got to stay in at the home of one of Charles' college buddies who was away on family vacation that week. We were sad not to spend time with him and meet his family, but it was kind of a dream to have a beach house to ourselves for the week.






The house was adorable. Like many of the houses in Laguna Beach, they had their own botanical garden in the front yard, and beautifully groomed fruit trees in the back yard. One day after dinner Charles walked over to a tree and reached up to touch a ripe looking plum. The plum basically fell into his hand and we ate it- I'm telling you- we were in paradise.












One of my favorite parts of our stay there was their golden retriever Genevieve ("G") & cat Topanga. It felt so homey having a very affectionate dog, and pretty likable cat. (I don't typically like cats)


















The house was literally 2 blocks from the main street of Laguna, packed with cute shops, restaurants and art galleries. About a block and a half further and you were ocean side at a nice little (at least it was little when we were there) reef break. Charles surfed every day that we were in Laguna, getting up before the sun (and before me) and heading down the street. I surfed 2 days, not as comfortable surfing over rocks as he is.








This is one of the tide pools in Laguna Beach. The panorama is the view of the beach from the Brooks Street access (which is where we surfed).








The gratuitous self portrait beach picture is from the northern end of Laguna Beach.











Charles has another college friend who lives across the street from where we stayed, but unfortunately he was away in Iraq for most of the summer, so we spent a little time with his wife Sarah and newly adopted daughter Cora. Check out Cora's faux shoes in this picture. Every time we saw her she had on a different pair that color coordinated with her outfits. We're hoping to visit Laguna Beach again sometime soon in order to actually visit with Charles' friends (at least that will be the excuse we use)














We spent several days with Roger, who fits right in to the laid back southern California lifestyle. He and Charles even got to surf together one morning. We brought Roger to a barbecue at Sarah's house, and afterwards they were talking about fixing him up with a friend of theirs from church. What can we say, he's a likable guy.

















We also got to visit with my high school friend Dave, who somehow escaped without getting his picture taken. I'm not sure how I allowed that to happen. The only thing I can think of is that he visited both days after we had been biking in the Canyons and I was way too tired to think about a camera. It was great to catch up with him and remember why we had been such good friends.
Speaking about biking- Charles and I got to bike two days in Laguna Beach, both times we were able to ride from the house through the streets to the Canyon. Our first ride was a brutal climb up Laguna Canyon Road. We had to hike much of the climb up the sandy steep canyon road. The only redemptive fact of that climb was that we had a view of the ocean the entire time and a nice cool ocean breeze. When we were almost up the climb, Charles shocked me when he said we had to find another way to get down because this way was too steep to descend. I thought I was just struggling, but we spoke to bikers in town and they said that even the locals don't go that way because the climb is impossible. That made us feel better.

Our second ride was much longer. We started almost ocean side, and climbed on the streets up to 1000ft above sea level. Again, we had many views of the ocean as we climbed. Then we descended a really steep windy bumpy canyon road, which I tumbled down ending up underneath my bike. I was soaking wet from the climb, and then tumbled in dust, and by the time we finished our ride, we had to scrub my back with washcloth to get the dirt off it was so caked on. One guy we passed on our ride thought I had intentionally rolled in the dirt as a means of sunscreen. Hmm...right. We descended down to 200ft above sea level, and then climbed back up the other side. Altogether we probably climbed a total of 1800ft.

When we returned to Atlanta, all we could talk about for days was how we could get back to Laguna Beach, to visit, to live in a shack, whatever- just how can we get back to Paradise? Is it wrong to want to live somewhere just because it's beautiful? My heart longs to be by the ocean, but who knows if we will ever be able to.