SHREDDING, NATURALLY.

With one of my littler dudes puking all through the night this past weekend, Cooper and I took a "big dude day out" down to Cardiff, to get out of the house and check out the 4th Annual CAMP SHRED. This ain't your run of the mill beach camp. Camp Shred reigns as the "World's Largest Surf Demo", and takes place at San Elijo Campground.  We've got a proper camping reservation there later this summer, but we thought it would be a good opportunity to vibe the place out, while checkin out some cool surf gear. 

We arrived just in time to grab a Banzai Bowl (they've got a shop in San Clemente, too) and throw down a towel to check out a live music set from Montalban Quintet. We were bummed to have missed Teenage Burritos (best band name, ever?) the day before, but the vibes were appropriately mellow and introspective with the Quintet playing on the bluff directly over the waves breaking below. 

After the set we wandered around the demo displays checking out some of our favorite stuff. Saw some rad new soft top surfboards with checkered bottoms from Catch Surf, some big ol' fins from Captain Fin, and grabbed some of our favorite sun blockin' Sun Bum sunscreen. I gotta admit, we were also looking to play some games and win some stuff! Every other booth had a cornhole game set up waiting to be played, so Coop and I had a traveling tournament through the campground. Coop also scored a hat from Spy Optics on his first throw, sinking a ball in a bucket. "BOOM," he said, "first try."

We hit the beach to do some bodysurfing, and then made our way back up to the snack bar for a shaved ice before hitting the road homeward. Made a note for myself that they have a Bull Taco built into the snack bar, which may come in handy when we're camping there and I've had my fill of veggie dogs. The snack bar's patio has the perfect view of the beach, so we ate our sugary ice, watched some pelicans and decided to hit Pizza Port in Carlsbad on the way home for a "proper" lunch and some video games. 

Big dude day out, definitely a success. Hoping we'll make it down next year for the 5th Camp Shred a little earlier, so we can jump on some of those Catch Surf boards.

On our way to the car, we decided to start off a new photo series... "Cooper takes pictures with cool VW Buses that we wish were ours". 

Here's number one... 

 Thanks to Surfing Magazine for helping put together CAMP SHRED, and for everybody being so dang cool. Til next year!