Summer Vacation: Sacramento & Half Moon Bay

Alright, I know it’s October. If there’s one thing I’ve established since starting this blog, it’s that I’m inconsistent with my post scheduling – I’m sorry! Despite how late into the year it is, I realized that I hadn’t yet posted about my vacation back in June – and I was about to start typing up a post about my vacation from last month beforehand, oops.

This past June, my boyfriend flew all the way from Ireland to visit me – Shane’s first time in America! I wanted to pack in as much stereotypical Northern Californian tourist-y stuff as possible, so I made us an itinerary and we spent three weeks visiting museums, eating American food, and lots more! It was a bit too warm for my preferences but otherwise, the trip was great and I loved it!

I’ve been meaning to share photos from the time he was here, but didn’t want to force them all into a single post – so I’m splitting it up into two! The first post will be about the time spent in Sacramento / where I live, and the mini-trip to Half Moon Bay, a small and creepy town outside of San Francisco. The second post will detail the actual visit to San Francisco, since a majority of the photos from our visit were taken there (I always get carried away at Alcatraz, sue me!).

I let Shane pick some of our restaurants and activities. This turned out to be a mistake. 😛 First, he chose the gun range. Guns are terrifying and shooting them in real life is not like the Resident Evil video games have led me to believe my entire life.

Luckily, after the horror, Shane agreed with me about how scary they were – I think he was maybe even more put off by them than I was! 😂

When I get to pick locations, we go to places like museums! This particular museum isn’t far from where live, but it took me almost 2 years of living here to visit it. Oops!

We also hung out with a few of my local friends, and we went for a walk on the Johnny Cash Trail (which is another place near where I live that I’d never visited, I’m a bad tourist).

The walk was super scenic and nice, and it bled nicely into our activity of visiting the Folsom Prison:

Aside from the above, we did a lot of general hanging out in Sacramento and the cities surrounding it. We ate Denny’s, chili dogs, and lots of Dutch Bros. We also went to all my favorite nearby places, like the library and Barnes & Noble! The trip to San Francisco was a bit more eventful (and stressful at times, that city is busy!), but the time spent here was nice to just sort of see normal stuff.

During the visit, Shane bought me a ukulele, and I’m proud to say that I’ve learned over a handful of songs (I’ll eventually post about that)! It was also really nice in general just being able to spend time together; we work together and have for a couple of years now, since our company has offices where both of us live, but being 5,000 miles apart from someone you love is rough! Especially when that includes 8 hours of time differences.

After some Sacramento adventuring, we drove a few hours up to Half Moon Bay – a little semi-creepy town that reminded me of Silent Hill, or maybe one of those horror movie towns where the townsfolk sacrifice you and everyone’s in on it except the transients? Yeah, it was kind of like that. Very quiet and remote, and everyone sort of looked at you like they knew something you didn’t – but also I am maybe just paranoid, lol. 😛

The Airbnb we stayed in was cute – it was nautically themed and the owner had a big dog that I was allowed to pet! The house was a short walk from the beach, and although it was pretty foggy and dark, it wasn’t the worst weather ever and it ended up being sort of atmospheric. It reminded me of being higher up in the pacific northwest – an area I love to visit but probably wouldn’t want to live in for fear of missing the sun too much.

The beach bordered against these little cliffs, and there was a small tangle of trees nearby with low-hanging branches big enough to climb and sit on. There was also some weird abandoned furniture, which added to the spookiness of the town.

Obviously the town’s creep factor did nothing to dissuade my inherent need for selfie time! 😛

Overall, it was nice having the quieter parts of the trip. Everything in San Francisco was so busy that I was grateful for the ‘boring’ time we got to spend together. I probably won’t go back to Half Moon Bay anytime soon – there really wasn’t much of anything to actually do while there, which seems like a plus if you want some chill time, but I’d rather not drive several hours for chill time personally!

I’d definitely recommend visiting the Crocker Art Museum if you’re ever in Sacramento! It’s not huge but it has a lot of really diverse, interesting art. 🙂