A day of summer fun is worth the sunburns

BY Spencer Massicot

In Canyon Lake, there are many opportunities for summer fun with friends and family.  Just recently I invited some of my friends that don’t live here in Canyon Lake – Riley, Mimi, Nana, Cassie and Jacob – to experience the exciting and welcoming community first-hand.

I heard about the Flick-n-Float event through a The Friday Flyer article and I thought of how perfect that would be for me and my friends.  The Flick-n-Float is at the community pool at the Lodge with an amazing view of the lake at sunset right behind. They put up a giant movie screen on the side of the pool so everyone can swim while watching the movie.

We wanted to get there early so we could save seats, so we all met at Sunset Beach at around 6:30 and the parents talked for a while before my dad took us into the pool. The movie was going to start around 8 p.m., so that gave us plenty of time.

We were sitting down by the pool waiting for the movie to start while connecting to the Lodge wi-fi to play the very popular Pokemon Go, when we saw pizzas getting delivered from the restaurant down to the pool. We all got really excited and pooled our money to order one for ourselves.

We walked around the surrounding area of the Lodge, looking at the tennis courts and the marina for fishing and boat docks. While we were walking around, we saw a marriage proposal near the entrance to the Lodge restaurant and my friend yelled out, “What did you get?!” thinking that all of the people clapping for them had found a really good Pokemon.

When we got back to the pool, we enjoyed our pizza as the start of the movie became closer and closer, while still making sure that we weren’t missing anything on Pokemon Go. It started to become dark and we all started getting ready to go swimming and watch the movie “Dolphin Tale.” We got in the pool and had so much fun swimming and laughing. Only one of us had ever seen the movie before so we were all trying to pay attention, but that was kind of hard to do while swimming. Plus, it doesn’t help that all of us get easily distracted.

We played games in the pool and just kind of swam around taking in the experience we were sharing. Once the movie started to come to an end, we got out and finally payed attention to the ending of the movie while feasting on candy and popcorn. We cleaned up our area when the movie was over and walked out onto the beach while waiting for everyone’s parents to come. That night was so much fun and I would really like to do it again in the coming months.

Teenagers having summer fun can also take place in several places outside of the Canyon Lake gates. A couple of weeks ago, some other friends and I took a day long trip to Huntington Beach. The day was full of swimming, burying people in sand, and all around fun.

We got there in the early morning to reserve a fire pit for ourselves. We all immediately went swimming for a couple of hours and then had a lunch of hot dogs and burgers made in our very own fire pit. We then spent time digging in the sand and completely burying people, until the tide got really high and people in the sand got scared.

In the later afternoon, we started boogie boarding and bodysurfing and one of my friends who was trying to bodysurf got swept up into the middle of a family and came up from the water just sitting on the sand in between them. When everyone was done swimming for the day we took a walk to the Huntington Beach pier that was maybe a little over a mile away.

On the walk over there, everyone was playing Pokémon Go, not even paying attention to the fact that they were at the beach with so much going on around them. When we got back to the camp, it was starting to get dark and we all got the s’mores stuff out and put our chairs around the fire to prepare for our bonfire.

After we ate s’mores, we spent a little more time standing down by the water before it was time to leave. We packed everything in the cars and, after a late night stop at In ‘n’ Out, we made our way back to Wildomar. Getting up for practice the next morning was a little hard from the sunburns and being tired, but it was worth it for a full day of summer fun with some of my closest friends.