Sand Castle Mania

Stanford and Berkeley came together this past weekend to have one majorley cool activity. That would be, Sand Castle building. As young adults, I think many of us were in for the competition, but being YSA, I think we all forgot about the competition and were just in it for the glory. So we built, nothing was judged and some very cool sand castles came about it. We had a professional sand castle builder come and teach us how to build sand castles. It was amazing, the things you learn from a guy like this is amazing. Also, we experienced some major attention from the public as we were learning the lesson and as we were building. Everyone asked what it was all about, and many people just walked around taking pictures of our master pieces. And when I saw masterpiece, I really mean masterpiece. These are the sand castles that vacation photos are made of.

This is where we started, with buckets full of water and sand, and this was the beginning process, watch it grow!

This was Turner's bridge, of course he would make some over the top bridge that looked like a highway ramp from dubai.

This is the castle that the instructor made in a 15 minute lesson on how to build sand castles, what technique to use and what tools make great castles.

Every corner of our castle has a different theme, probably because it was different people building it. The castle was like Hearst Mansion, different houses for different views. This was my attempt at an arch through the entire "building".

Leave it to Naug, our own personal artist/sculptor, who missed the entire lesson and whipped out some amazing paving skills, he would probably make a great brick layer one day, or cementer (if thats a job). He smoothed that sand out and made steps that rivaled the great pyramids and Myan temples.

And oh yeah, he made this Eiffel tower looking thing, apparently its something out of Epcot. Not sure how that reference correlates.

This thing is finished, scary huh? Those dirt mounds became this. What 4 hours, a handful or artists, engineers, and computer geeks can do with sand.

After finishing the castle, it turns out our geeky boys decided to dig. A moat. Yep, thats right, I said it, the three amigos here spent a good 30 minutes digging a 3 foot deep trench that hit actual water. Water was actually filling this trench from the ground below because they had gone so deep, and this was the goal. Let Boys, be Boys.

Here are some other castle building projects, this would be the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. I was starting to notice there were a lack of actual castles.

This castle was built by a bunch of kids and like 2 adults. Pretty amazing!

I think this was supposed to be gotham city? Not sure, it was apparently the first castle to have all its builders quit to do something else.

And last but not least, my favorite. This was an homage to Berkeley. Its San Francisco with the Bay Bridge connecting to Berkeley. Apparently Berkeley didn't get built because the Campanile (big UCB clock tower) kept collapsing, but thats a building that people recognize as apart of the city of Berkeley, so it works out perfectly.