Waiting for more waves to come

One of the more memorable and best days of our crazy California vacation was our day at Huntington Beach. After checking into our hotel, we decided to go do some sightseeing since this was one of our only free days with no prior plans already made. Andrew was pretty set on going to the beach, so he basically set himself to drive west until we hit the ocean. It would have worked well enough if California’s roads were on a grid system like we’re used to. Since it isn’t, we ultimately turned to Google to search for a beach and found Huntington Beach not too far from where we had driven to.

Isabelle loved chasing the birds and scaring them off

Andrew loves the ocean and he was really excited to introduce the kids to the ocean for the first time. (When we first went to San Diego Comic Con, we visited a beach at night and Andrew had to go touch the ocean once before we left even though it was dark out.) The spot we found on Huntington  Beach was uncrowded and we were able to let the kids dig and run around like crazy. Isabelle loved when the waves would rush up. She’d scream with delight when the waves hit her and laugh her head off when it was trying to pull her back in. She was completely oblivious that she’d easily get pulled in if Andrew and I weren’t holding onto her. Jadon loved wading into the water with Andrew and digging in the sand. He would’ve dug for a lot longer if we’d let him.

Jadon’s massive canal from the beach to the ocean

We didn’t stay at the beach for as long as we could have just because we needed to get dinner before heading back to the hotel. For dinner, we ordered take out from a Vietnamese restaurant called Thuyen Vien that turned out to be a vegetarian restaurant. We’re familiar with Vietnamese food, but this was our first experience with vegetarian Vietnamese and it was yummy.

Andrew and me

Huntington Beach was an absolutely beautiful start to our California vacation. This first trip to the ocean with the kids is definitely one of the happiest memories from our trip. The kids had the time of their life and we can’t wait to head back next time around.