santa cruz for the fourth

For the Fourth of July we were invited to a going away party for a new friend here. She is moving to Philadelphia for law school and we were invited to share in the time to send her off on a beach in Santa Cruz. It was a chilly day on the beach but we hung out, learned a new card game (that was created by this group of people) and then watched fireworks.

And by watching fireworks this can include but not limited to: watching them in the sky, watching them aim straight for where out stuff is, watching the drunk morons shoot large fireworks horizontally instead of vertically and watching people shoot of giant fireworks right next to us then move into our area to shoot them off. Needless to say it was a hilarious experience to share with a fun group of people and we all were safe and made it home safely. Here are some pics of said fireworks. 

whale watching!

We were lucky enough to get the chance to go whale watching!

Ben's 2nd cousin, Jeff and his wife Nicky, took us out to dinner a few weeks ago. We then made plans to check out Santa Cruz the following weekend. Well, we got an email the night before saying change of plans, we're going to watch whales. And holy wow, was it cool!

Not only, did we get to see the humpback whales (which is typical) we got to see GOBS of blue whales (crazy rare we're told). We even saw a humpback jump completely out of the water right in front of our boat. It was one of the coolest experiences I think I've ever had and we were so so grateful to get to do that.

After whale watching, we ate some lunch then explored the pier of Santa Cruz to get some ice cream. :) We have yet to see and do all that the boardwalk entails but hopefully soon. Here are some pics:

 Jeff, Nicky, Ben and me before setting off on the boat. The fog was still in so it was a little chilly.

 Sea lions on the buoy (I can't remember if this was the mile out buoy). You can see the fog has totally cleared, which aided in Ben and me getting very sunburned faces.

 These sea lions were hilarious. There was a giant one circling in the water, trying to find a place to get on. In the meantime, these guys looked straight at me as if asking for their picture to be taken.

 You can see the big guy finally made it up, which is why there are a few small sea lions in the water.

 Humpback whale.

 Two blue whales.

 This was the splash the humpback whale made after jumping completely out of the water. It was one of those moments I was too shocked to capture the jump but managed to get my brain working quickly enough to capture a little part of it.

 Humpback tale.

 On the boat it was CRAZY windy.

 A look at the Boardwalk from the Pier.

 I love these seagulls. I feel like they are slowly replacing my adoration for pigeons. :)

 This guy was taking fish from a guy's hand! I was afraid the hand was going to get crazy injured. Apparently the human does it pretty regularly.

And to top the day off, as we were leaving the pier we saw this seagull with its two babies. Adorable.

All in all it was a fantastic day. There are more pics of whale humps and ocean on facebook but I figured for here I would just post my favorites. I have a few more posts that I have yet to blog about so hopefully I'll be getting around to those too.
Happy Friday!