It’s Friday! But I’m bringing it back to last weekend when we took a mini get away to Clear Lake. We stayed at our friend’s Lauren’s parents lake house for a weekend of sun, swimming, food, and fun. (rhyme)

This is our second trip up to Clear Lake this summer, with significantly better weather this time (although, I didn’t mind a cozy weekend at the lake a few weeks ago either). Lauren, her boyfriend, Ian, Mike and I left on Friday evening after a quick dinner at BierHaus. The lake is only a ~3 hour drive from Mountain View and we were lucky not to hit any traffic. We arrived at the house around 10:30pm and after quickly catching up with Lauren’s parents, retired to our room for the night. Lauren and her family are gracious hosts and let Mike and I stay in the other master bedroom the house has, complete with en-suite bathroom, a king size bed, and access to the deck with a beautiful view of the lake. I sleep like a royalty every time we go!

On Saturday we had a quick breakfast of bagels, melon, coffee, tea, and booch before taking the boat out on the water. Mike and Ian did a bit of wakeboarding and Lauren water skied. I stayed on the boat and was the Flag Girl; which means anytime someone is in the water and they aren’t being pulled by the boat, the flag has to be in the air to signal to other boats one of our people is in the water, watch out.

Sounds easy enough but there were a few times when I was too absorbed in watching that I forgot to hold up the flag when someone went down. Luckily, Deb (Lauren’s mom) is a pro and would remind me every time.

After a while out on the lake, we headed back to the house. We grabbed an array of tubes and one particularly giant swan and hit the lake again; jumping off the dock and chilling out but avoiding the seaweed (lakeweed?) at.all.costs.

Starving after all of our activity we headed inside for a nom lunch. Deb put out a delicious spread of shrimp, chicken wings, avocado, local tomatoes, bread, and black bean and sausage soup. I wish I’d snapped a picture but hunger took priority.

We let our food digest and then it was back out on the boat. This time, for tubbing! Lauren and I were scared to go with our S.O.s, in fear that they would think it was funny to push us off, so we insisted on going together. The boys went first and it was pretty funny seeing how small the tube looked under these 2 grown men.

Lauren and I were next and, omg, what an adventure! We basically just screamed the entire time, hoping not to drift out of the wake; where there are rollers that either send you flying or catching air and slamming back down on the tube. It sounds aggressive but it was fun! After we each went individually, Lauren’s dad expertly driving the boat each round.

We watched the sunset with glasses of wine and bottles of beer on the deck. Then had a delicious dinner of fish tacos and black beans. Dinner was later and I didn’t stay up much for much longer after, exhausted from all of the time spent in the sun and water.

The next morning we got up early and took the boat to breakfast. I wish I could commute everywhere by boat! There’s something v meditative about being surrounded by water.

Breakfast was delish but the service was soo slow. Like, they didn’t charge us for our drinks it was that slow. Oh, well. We packed up and headed back right when we got back. Making record time on the way home too.