When I Met My Cousins
Black Mountain
I sit by the window, excitement building up inside of me as I wait for my cousins to arrive for a family reunion. I stare out the window and see the cars go by 1 by 1 with a fast woosh of their motor, hoping that one of them will turn into our driveway. As every second passes I get more tired of waiting, so I decide to go and read a book to take a break from all the watching.
A couple hours later, I hear the doorbell ring. It’s my dad coming back from the airport with my great uncle. My family and I start to get to know him better and a couple hours pass when the doorbell rings again. I quickly run out back and tell my dad that the cousins are here.
My three cousins, my aunt who is my dad's sister, and my uncle stand at the doorway waiting to be let in. There is Peyton, she’s 15 years old, then there is Hudson, he’s 16, and there is Owen who is 18, just a few months older than my sister. My dog comes bounding into the room and gets excited because there are new people, so I grab him and put him into the back yard so he can’t annoy them.
My mom and dad show them around and give them a tour of the house. Around thirty minutes later we get ready to leave to go to In-N-Out and they follow us to the nearest one.
Once we get there we park, get our food and sit down to eat. A bit later in the evening, our grandma comes with my dad’s other sister, her husband and their 9 year old son Bryce. We order pizza and we all chill in the back play room to talk. The next day, Bryce and his family come over and my dad drives to pick up my great uncle Rich from his hotel. They come and chill at our house for a while, then I ask my mom if we could show them Half Moon Bay, because Bryce has never seen the ocean before.
We drive down to the beach. When we get down there, a thick blanket of cold gray fog is covering the sky. We start to walk around and down towards the beach. Once we get there, Bryce and I take our shoes off and walk towards the water, feeling each grain of sand touch our feet as we take a new step. We step a little closer to the waves and our feet get bathed in a cold wash of ocean water. Bryce starts to smile as he realized how pretty the ocean is. We go in a little further so our whole feet are submerged, watching the surfers gliding among the waves as if they knew how to do it their whole lives. I feel something touch my toes and get scared, even jump a little. I Look down and realize that it is only a piece of seaweed. I pass it over to Bryce who drops it because he thinks that it is kinda gross.
His mom and my mom call us from the water and say that we have to go back to the car. We get back to the car and brush the sand off of our feet. We get in and start to drive back to the house. Once we get back, my family goes and starts to pack because we are leaving soon. Once we have packed we all load it into the car and start to drive up to the house that we rented for the week.
We drive over the Golden Gate Bridge and see all of the boats gently gliding over the ripple of the water. An hour after we went over the bridge, I start to see farms and vineyards as we drive past them. Another hour passes and I am watching something on my phone when we pull onto a small one-way road up in the hills.
We pass a couple of houses while going up the hill and soon there is just the side of the hill on the right and a sheer drop off on the left. We soon came upon a small house, and a little bit past it a large rustic pool house comes into view. It's a wood panelled house with stone pillars holding up the awning and metal sheeting covering the roof. There is also a little wooden play structure with two regular swings and a baby swing, it also has a faded orange slide. I spot a hot tub to the side of the house, and the pool in front of the house is big with a tiny part sectioned off with stone for younger kids to swim in. We keep driving up the road and little further up we see the main house. It is a two story white wooden house with white wood posts holding up the balconies. It has a big wooden deck out in the front of the house with a table and chairs set up on it. We go a little bit further so we are behind the house and park the car in dusty dirt-like sand. We get out of the car and there is a very pretty view in front of it. From where I was standing, I could see 11 windows, 5 on the top and 6 on the bottom. There are two windows on the top that are in doors and two windows that are in one big door on the bottom level. We walk in and me and my sister have to go around the house and open all of the windows because it was really stuffy. After me and my sister check out bedrooms that we could sleep in and we find a room with a bunk bed then a single bed across from it. So we bring all of our stuff upstairs and claim a bunk, and let Peyton have the other bed to herself. Me and my sister change into our swimsuits and go down to the pool and swim for about 1 ½ hours. After the 1 ½ hours pass the rest of our family comes.
Owen, Hudson, and Peyton's family come the latest because they were exploring San Francisco and then Bryce’s family came right before them. Then they all came and joined us in the pool. So that whole day we all just swam around in the pool until it was dinner time where my mom made couscous salad and some of the other parents helped make some pasta with red sauce. They got all the ingredients from the store beforehand and then made it after. We go and sit down at the table and put out the citronella candles to keep the bugs away while we eat. We all finish and then all of the kids go back into the pool, owen and Hudson brought a tennis ball and start throwing it to each other and sometimes to other people. After we all clean up we go back up to the main house and get ready for bed. Me my sister and peyton go to our room and get ready for bed. Once we all get into bed we all start to talk to each other and start an airdrop wars. Airdrop wars is where we all turn our airdrop on and send eachotehr eally random but funny photos Then we all just watch stuff on our phones because the main house only has wifi and the pool house does not, but you have to be downstairs for it to work really well.
The next couple of days fly by as we are staying at the house with just swimming as the only activity we are really doing. When the last day comes we decide to go geocaching right after dinner. The one we chose has multiple clues you have to find. But we used the final clue the owner posted to see if we can find one that has multiple steps in it. We get the clue and we look it up on a map but we can’t find it. So we drive to a local bar and my uncle walks in and asks if anyone has heard of a place called that. But the people in the bar say no so we keep searching and drive back towards the house. We start to go up the road but instead of turning right to go to the house we turn left and go up a road we have never been on. We keep going and by this time the sun is getting lower and lower on the horizon, so we are running out of time. We keep taking random turns, some will lead to private property or some will lead us to dead ends. But we keep searching.
My sister says “Let's go up this one that we passed while going up a different road.”
“Ok sure we can try that way if you guys want,” my uncle replies.
“YA!!!” we all chorus together.
We all agree and decide to go the way she said. We start to drive up the way and get to a house with a sign that says the word we were looking for. We all start to literally scream with joy, because if my sister had not suggested this road we would have not found it. Then we all decided who should go and knock on the door.
My uncle and owen go and knock so it's just me, my sister, and Hudson sitting in the car with it slowly starting to get darker outside. We all start talking about what we would do if we heard a gunshot or if they did not return Hudson would drive the car. Then we had decided that in 15 minutes if they are not back we would go and look for them. But they are back before then and tell us what had happened. So apparently the person's house who we found was the owners of the cache. This person created the cache, and we told him that we did not have time to do the whole thing. Then apparently the owner had it where you had to get water from somewhere. Then you had to find different clues and find codes. But it also had the Pythagorean theorem, and this was all to open the box. Then he said he put up no parking signs along the road, that had his geocaching name and a code on teh back. He also said that there would be a green pole on the side of the road that had the cache on it, we found the green pole and looked and it did have the cache. After we found the cache we went back to the house and packed all of our things up.
The next day we cleaned up the house and got our stuff ready to go. We drive back to our house and they drive to their hotel and wait till late in the night when we are all going to a Giants game with the Borens who have Owen, Hudson, and Peyton. When we get to the game, we all find our seats and settle down. At the end of the game, the Giants won and we all get together for a picture. Then we say our goodbyes, and for the last time they go back to the hotel and we go back to our house. We are all very happy to have spent time with each other but also very saddened because we don't know the next time that we will see each other.
