Adventuring // Impromptu Golden Tee Mini Golf with Janelle

^ Is that super Californian or what? Those palm trees, man. ^

^ Shadow selfie! And group picture, too, cause Janelly's shoes are right there! :P ^

^ Celebrate! ^

^ I never realized how derpy/dorky these dragons looked until now. From afar, they're iconic Castro Valley. Close up... O.o ^

^ This hill. Ohmygerd. {Janelle would like to point out that I did get a hole in one here, but... still}. ^

^ Gorgeous day, no? ^

^ Tickets! All the tickets! ^

About six months ago, the madre bought some mini golf tickets-- four were for #STSSWinterAdventure2014 and two were for whenever. Earlier this week, we realized that those last two tickets would expire Tuesday and that we had to use them or *dundundunnnn* lose them forevahhh.

Since the madre had things to do and the padre had to work, I needed a mini golfing buddy. Thankfully for me, Janelle was free and responded to my "Mini golfing today? Yesyes?" text at one in the afternoon with "Like, right now? O.o How about in an hour?" She's the best.

Both of us have lived in Castro Valley for years and have gone mini golfing previously {occasionally together!}, so we're familiar with the more popular course that I'd say 85% of people do when they're here. The quieter side, closer to the street, looks less exciting and everyone's heard it feels shorter {even though it isn't}, so it's got a lot less traffic. HOWEVER. Since it was just the two of us and there was no one to really impress with our ahmazing mini golf skills {O.o} and I trusted her to not laugh too-too hard if I knocked the ball into the bushes and/or down a hill, we decided to try that course out for the first {for me} and second {for her} times ever.

It was fun. Both of us agreed that if we're taking out-of-town friends here, we'd still go with the more popular course, but the quieter side isn't too bad. You can take your time, no one's rushing you, and while there are less pretty structures and obstacle things built into this course, the holes seem a bit more technical than the popular side... like there are a lot more sneaky slants to this side that make your ball roll in directions you didn't hit it. D:

The wind was majorly blowing Tuesday afternoon, which made our mini golfing attempts even more hilarious. At one or two of the holes, I hit the ball almost all the way to the hole and it was looking really good for me and then... instead of stopping inches from its destination, the ball would catch the wind and seriously roll ALL. THE. WAY. BACK. TO. ME... SLOWLY. It was killer. I was like, "No... no... no... nonononononoNOOOOOOO," while Janelle laughed her head off next to me. So bad. *sigh*

We didn't keep score {well, we sorta did, but we didn't tally it up in the end and we weren't really trying to beat one another} and it was pretty nice to just play for the sake of playing. Watch out for the eighth and thirteenth holes. Those are the tricky ones.

After finishing the course, we went inside to the arcade to use our game tokens. Similarly to when I came midnight mini golfing during #STSSWinterAdventure2014, Janelle and I solely played skee ball and Harpoon Lagoon. And guess what?!? She got the jellyfish during a round of Harpoon Lagoon and got a ridiculous number of tickets! Pooling our pile together, we ended up with enough tickets to get 17 Gummi Hamburgers. Whoot. :P

I'm so so glad Janelle is available to play and work and keep me company right now. We've seen a lot of each other recently since we're helping plan Ruth's wedding party bonding day {it's coming up soon!} and it was so fantastic to get together and not have to think about any of that {long story short, the plans for the day keep getting more and more elaborate (not our fault-- we're not in charge) and it's kind of stressing us out. A lot}. Thanks for hanging out with me on a random Tuesday, Janelly, and acting like it was normal that I stop a lot to take photos of things! :D