a life more awesome: Halibut Point State Park and the Beginning of Summer

Other than my Lake Willoughby post (which gets billions of hits), my next most popular post is the one on Halibut Point State Park. When my old roommate Joe graced Massachusetts with a random visit a few weeks ago (he moved to Colorado), we were trying to figure out where to meet for a relaxed hang session. He wanted to show his new lady friend Mariko a nice spot in Mass. I figured, although I wasn't planning on going until much later in the summer, a visit to Halibut Point made a lot of sense to someone who doesn't see a lot of ocean. I drove the hour and a half (the afternoon after I drove to Cambridge and back for a Receiving End of Sirens reunion show) to Rockport, MA and met up with them.

It looked pretty much the same: glorious.

If you never read my first post (get on it), Halibut Point State Park is pretty much this: you walk like 1/8 of a mile into the woods and are met with a giant rock quarry surrounded by rocks and a small section of woods, and then the ocean. It's at the most north point of the north shore, so when you stand on the edge, you're at the very tip of Mass, looking towards Maine. You first look at the beauty of a rock quarry with the ocean behind it, then walk to the next view point looking over the ocean from huge rocks, then walk along the ocean. It's awesome and beautiful.

Joe and Mariko dug it.

Look at this hipster poet scumbag!

Here's Joe taking a picture of Mariko in the quarry- it's fun to walk around/climb around in it.

Unlike my first time here, we walked along the coast a lot too, looking for ocean friends. I've always enjoyed wandering around on rocks, so this ruled.

This is my artsy shot of seaweed.

The ocean was raging too, and splashed us nicely at this spot:

Mariko slipped and slid like 8 feet into a rock crack at one point. Pretty hardcore. Here's the view looking towards the huge pile of rocks you stand on:

Here's a nicely cleaned up shot of the left side of the quarry:

Here's the visitor's center/awesome lighthouse-esque building on the property from the ocean side of the quarry (this is kind of the opposite view from the above picture). I love this shot:

And here's looking west towards most likely the Plum Island area of Newbury. The light reflection freaked out a little bit, but hey, what can you do. I'm pretty psyched all of these shots were taken with my iphone. Yea iphoneography!

We left and drove around a little, trying to find a place Joe said his dad took him when he was a kid. We never really found it, but hung out on a pier with this view for a bit. I really like this area. Growing up on a lake, it's both oddly familiar and interestingly alien to me to drive around ocean towns.

Before we even went to Halibut Point, we walked around Rockport in search of ice cream. It was the first day that really felt like summer, and it felt niiice.

After, we met up with Naro and Sara at the Amesbury Ale House. They have a lot of weird beers and some pretty awesome food. I hadn't seen Naro and Sara in way too long either, so this was the perfect cap to a great day with old (and new) friends.

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Just a few days before this visit, I was in Maine, playing golf with my parents for Mother's Day. My mom suddenly loves golf, so visiting home is pretty much a guarantee of golf.

It poured the night before though, and I nearly got a par (of course blew it and got a bogey) on this hole, barefoot. This hole is always wet and I was sick of having my shoes get wetter and wetter, so, after I hit it right in the wettest part (as I always do), I said fuck it and took my shoes off. I've never played golf barefoot, but my chip shot was perfect and I had a nice 2-putt, so maybe I should stick with it. Certainly felt weird though...

I sucked as always, got furious sporadically and was generally extremely inconsistent, but it was nice to be out on the course swinging a stupid club at a stupid ball.

the rents

It started to get real sketchy out there on Mother's Day though- rumbles of thunder and doomclouds on the horizon. Here's a completely ridiculous shot of the clouds through the wonderful world of iphone editing (HDR + Snapseed):

Nice to see the parents, nice to get out on the course in May. Thanks for global warming Al Gore, it's working out nicely for me.

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And lastly, on this tri-post of mostly photography: after a huge 3 peak hike, then a visit to the parents for golf, then seeing Joe at gorgeous Halibut Point State Park, just 2 days later, I had a day of double barbeques.

Newer friends Rick and Lisa invited a bunch of people over to their relatively new house for a graduation party for Lisa graduating nursing school. They also got a new dog on the same day. We showed up at about 1 and I stayed until about 7.

Lisa and Mouse the dog

Rick the fireman setting fire to things nobody should set fire to

It was nice- there was a lot of family there that I didn't really speak to at all (except for super offending someone's grandmother), but we hung out outside for 6 hours with solid people, had some freshly grilled food, drank some brewskies, and threw the B. This was the first real B of the year as well as my first BBQ, and it felt fantastic. Winter never really showed this year, but my winter doldrums certainly did. I've been coming out of it nicely by trying to embrace spring with some hiking, but spending the whole day outside just hanging out in beautiful weather felt fantastic. It felt like summer. At last.

soooo green

And what better reason to leave a BBQ then to go to another one? I literally came home, changed my shirt, grabbed some more beers, and headed south to Naro's house for an entirely different BBQ with an entirely different group of friends. It was AWESOME. I recommend this to everyone I know- if you ever have a chance to go to 2 different BBQs in one day, do it.

I knew everyone here and have for a loooong time, so this BBQ won for the day. Pog and Simone showed up at like 11:30, Mysterio and Masha drove up from CT for it, everyone got to see (and see off) Joe and Mariko (they were leaving the next day), there were like 5 dogs running around, I finally got to see Naro's new house (which is very awesome), and we sat around the fire and ate a 5 pound bag of hotdogs Primus Dan brought while drinking beers, throwing a glow in the dark frisbee, playing Naro's emo collection, and generally having an awesome time until like 3 in the morning.

Bud Light Lime + douchebag mustaches= summer

I ended up literally BBQing/hanging outside with friends for nearly 13 hours that day. I went to bed EXHAUSTED, and I loved it. Not only did I get to see a ton of awesome people, but I really finally felt like summer was here. And my god, that's a wonderful feeling. I hope I can have a lot more days and feelings like this over the next few months. Here's to summer!