Paddle Boarding California's Central Coast
Have you ever dreamed of paddle boarding along the California coast? How about a paddle board road trip? While most of our time at Jarvis Boards is spent helping others create DIY paddle boards and completing our own wood working projects in the studio, it's hard to beat a great road trip, especially up the California Coast.
With the current state of lockdown orders and limited travel, we are reminiscing about a recent Californian road trip and dreaming of the next one.
This one started when my buddy Stewart came up with the crazy idea to road trip to California to "shoot some content for the website."
"But I'm not a photographer", I rebutted. "And who are we going to photograph?"
"You worry too much. I can be the model and I'm sure we can find someone else along the way. It will all work out.....", assured Stew.
Before I knew it, we had a plan to spend a couple of weeks road tripping the California coast. Little did we know what fun and adventures would lay ahead.
If you've never made the road trip across the country or from Texas to California, it's pretty terrible. To get out of Texas you are driving for at least 10 hours through desert scrub brush before making your way west through New Mexico and Arizona. We decided to push straight through, alternating 4 hour shifts. After what seemed forever we made it landing in SoCal just in time to hop out before the sun set and get our DIY paddle boards in the water.
The next morning we push on up the California coast at a much more relaxed pace with our eyes set on spending some time in Santa Barbara. Almost immediately Stew's road trip idea was making sense. While we love our home state of Texas, there is something special about the sunsets on the California coast. Somehow I managed to snap some pretty decent images while Stew tried as hard as he could to muster his best modeling face.
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Things were looking up on this trip and we spent a few days catching waves, and exploring beaches and surf breaks on our DIY wood paddle boards at Morrow Bay, Pismo Beach and beyond. The California paddle boarding was on another level. Our "plan" if you can really call it that was to slowly make our way as far north as San Francisco passing through Big Sur.
While we were nearing the end of our trip, and had some great images thus far, Stewart decided to go up to a random stranger on the beach and ask if she'd like to be his wife.....for a photo shoot.
Shockingly she said yes! And even more shockingly, all of us laughed until our sides hurt thanks to our terrible Texas jokes. We didn't realize it at the time, but our new found friend turned out to be a sports reporter that had spent time covering the NBA, NFL and more working for ESPN, the XFL and a host of other organizations. Rather than boring you, we'll just share some of our favorite photos from our time on the water including many of the outtakes of us laughing uncontrollably at Stew's terrible dad jokes.
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All around, I'd say this was a trip worth taking. If you are working on your own DIY paddle board or dreaming about it, make a list of your favorite road trip destinations where you'll head and dream of the fun experiences you'll have along the way!
