Justin's Birthday on Leo Carrilo State Beach

A few weekends ago, I headed out on a camptastic adventure for my roommate Justin's 26th Birthday. We spent the weekend at Leo Carrilo State beach which is up near Mallibu, California. Along for the adventure was  Justin's girlfriend Emily, and our good buddy Matt. We got up there pretty late on Friday night, but the night still ended up being a blast as we had an awesome campfire and enjoyed some tasty beers. My favorite that we tasted that night was from Deschutes Brewery, and was called "The Stoic." Awesome Belgian style ale. After some drinking and carrying on around the camp fire we hit the hay in preparation for an awesome Saturday.

The next morning, Matt and I woke up early to set up a scavanger hunt for Justin's birthday. The hunt took place around the campgrounds, where he needed to find various items involved in the construction of a certain item... A Potato Cannon! More on that cannon later. After we finished hiding the items we headed to the beach on a photographic adventure.

We immediately were drawn to a man surfing out in the rocky water. After photographing the guy for a while we approached him and struck up a conversation. 

Turns out this guy Marc is starting a surfing label called "Born on the Beach." He had some pretty interesting surf stories to share with us. 

Marc gave us a tip that there was a pretty cool cave on the northern side of the beach which we could check out when the tide was out. We said goodbye to Marc and headed back to the campsite. Justin and Emily were just waking up as we got back from the beach. After some coffee, we started out on Justin's scavenger hunt! He seemed to have alot of fun looking for all the pieces and once the final piece was found he quickly threw everything together! 

After the cannon was put together we decided to postpone its inaugural firing till it was nighttime, so as not to scare anyone, and headed back out to the beach. It really was gorgeous out and the tide had receded enough to find the cave that Marc was speaking about earlier. 

After checking this out we headed over to some really cool tide pools and played with the sealife. Then continued our hike down the beach. We came across a really awesome sight, A heron hanging out and fishing right on the shoreline. What a graceful animal the heron is. We were even lucky enough to watch it catch a few fish. 

After hanging out with the heron and making a sandcastle, we headed back to the campsite so Matt could take off and our friends Lindsay and Dave could come meet us. As soon as they arrived we headed back out to the cliffs on the beach to chat and watch the sunset. 

As soon as the sun went down we headed back to the campsite and gathered around the fire... in wait for the first tater cannon firing! Around 11pm we headed down to the beach and got ready to launch some taters! It was not working very well at first but part of the fun for Justin and I was problem solving it. Finally, after some adjustments and tweaking our method... WHOOM! Flames shot out the end and the tater went flying! We headed back to the campsite victorious and ready for bed. The next morning I woke up early and headed to the beach to shoot a few more photos. I actually ended up shooting a shot which I edited to use as the album cover for my bands next release.

As soon as I got back and everyone had woken up, we packed up and headed back to orange county! What  a great weekend and a great adventure.