Back Home In California

Alright so we have never really lived in California, but sometimes it does feel like we are coming home when we reach the San Diego area. We were so anxious to reach our 2 month home at Santee Lakes, that we actually left Yuma when the sun was just rising. This is unusual as we rarely, and I mean rarely, get up early enough to see sunrise.

Soon we were in the land of my favorite flower. This one looks a bit beat up but I still love its unique shape and colors.

As we have done so many times before, we headed up to Point Loma on one of our first days. And a couple of days later, we were there again as we gave the Grand San Diego Tour to Lael and Doug, our friends from Cleveland, MN. It was high tide, so there was no exploring of tide pools.

But it was a clear day and the Mexican islands were easy to see. The "new" lighthouse is at the bottom of the picture. This new lighthouse is only 100 years old.

I managed to find a new perspective from which to photograph the old lighthouse - this is a place of which I never tire.

The second stop on that Tour was Coronada and the famous red roofed hotel - The Del. We enjoyed walking the beach and admired the gold flecks in the sand. And we enjoyed the dude building the sand castle near the hotel.

This is Lael and Doug posing for their "I was there" picture.

Another day this past week, we headed out to Venice Beach near Los Angeles. This is a most interesting location that Lael remembers visiting years ago. Paintings on the buildings, (not so easily imitated)

medical marijuana doctors advertising freely,

art that looks like reality,

all combine to make Venice Beach a very cool place to visit! We enjoyed lunch at the Sidewalk Cafe, a place that was "active" during prohibition and has been a haunt of important people in years past... still is - we ate there.

From Venice Beach to La Brea Tar Pits... it is hard to believe the history that this area has enjoyed. Go back tens of thousands of years ago and you will find prehistoric animals roaming the area.
Some of those animals stepped in the tarry oil produced from ancient sea life and were preserved for all time. Archeologists have unearthed these remains, reassembled them and that is what you see at the Page Museum. This is the skeleton if a bison.

Nearly all of the displays are real bones of real animals. Volunteers continue to work at the labor intensive process of cleaning the "finds".

This was a quick stop but a very interesting one. From there we headed to The Walk of Stars and downtown Hollywood. This time of the year, it seems there are back to back award shows. The day we visited, the red carpet was out for the 3D Award Show... Down the road, we saw where the X rated awards were being given.

Mike had an easy time finding his favorite with which to pose.

Later we had dinner on Sunset Strip at Mel's Diner, which was featured in American Grafiti. Doug's nephew joined us. We didn't get home till 10 pm which is late in our current life, but the day was worth the effort - L.A. is a very entertaining place!

Yesterday we went whale watching and tomorrow we are off to the Centennial Celebration of Naval Aviation. A post about air and sea will be coming up shortly.