The Getaway

We celebrated our anniversary by going on a little road trip just recently. My wife was saying we should find a place not too far from home that's on the beach.

She thought we should try and stay at the Hilton in Huntington Beach where we'd been a couple of times for the company Christmas party, and stayed one year when they had a decent price for rooms. Turns out that decent price is long gone!!!

I kept looking, and found a nice Best Western in Dana Point. It turned out that they are in the process of a bit of much needed renovation, but our room was truly outstanding!!!

I had spent a little more than some of the standard rooms to get one with an ocean view, and a balcony. Didn't really spend a whole lot of time on the balcony, but the view was great. It's on the far side of Coast Highway, and then it has the rail line before it's actually to the beach.

We arrived and got our stuff in, then headed down (it was on the next level down from us, you can see it from our balcony)to the hot tub to soak for a while. Of course, with the time change the sun was going down not long after we arrived, and it was setting as we soaked. The weather the whole time we were there was really nice!!!

Second shot is just after the sun had set, and the next one was after moonrise through the sheer curtains.

After we'd checked in, I asked the desk clerk if they had any restaurant recommendations. She said the place next door has good pizza. It's a pub with pizza, she said. If you'd like some good Mexican, though, there's a great place about 10 minutes south in San Clemente. Sounds good, so that's what we did!!! It was very good!!!

Our room featured an electric “fireplace”. Fired it up, it's OK but I'm not buying myself one just yet.

Being a Best Western Plus, they have a decent breakfast. One thing I generally don't care for about places with included breakfasts, they usually end before I'd like to get out of bed when I'm on vacation, but this one has breakfast available until 10!!! Nicely done!!! Also had check out at 11 instead of 10 that seems to be the standard at most places. I complimented them on both these while I was checking in!!!

I'd been thinking we could re do the whale watching excursion we'd tried a couple years ago (you know, where we didn't see whale one, in hopes of actually seeing whales this time) when we were staying close to the general area, but when I checked the night before, there were none out of Dana Point running the day we would have gone. Could drive up to Newport Beach or down towards San Diego and taken one from either of those, but San Diego is kinda far, and Newport Beach kind of sucks for driving to and parking, in my humble opinion. We had seen a thrift store in San Clemente when we were heading for dinner the day before, so we headed back and went there instead. Turned out there were two right near each other. My wife found several things (including a new large black leather purse) and I got a couple T-shirts, a 16- or 32-bit look Rick and Morty, and a Lynyrd Skynyrd shirt (not because I'm a big Skynyrd fan, but because I'm a bit lacking in brown shirts!!!).

Another shirt post could be coming, I did get a cool shirt while we were in Catalina (surrogate son also got one of the funny Stinky's Fish Tacos shirt there) and I found a pretty funny Michigan shirt at a local thrift shop.

My wife remembered our last anniversary finding Monster Shakes and wanted to get ice cream somewhere. I looked it up on the map, and on the same street as the Mexican place was, there was a place that was touted as the best in Orange County. Close enough, and highly touted, so that's where we went. It was tiny, with just a little table outside. We both got shakes (up to your choice of 3 flavors) and sat out at the table with a nice older couple and enjoyed visiting and our treats.

Since we were in San Clemete again, I thought we ought to get a little beach time in. We drove down to the shore and walked out the pier. The first shot of the wave, I like the quality of the light shining through the water, giving it that green hue.

There were fishermen on the pier (really not a lot else, other than a lifeguard station and a bar and restaurant at the beginning of the pier) and one of them brought up a little fish, but tall through the middle, and tossed it on the pier by a seagull who was perched on the railing. My wife shot a lengthy video of the gull eyeing it for a long time before flying down and grabbing it. I didn't think it would make it past his beak, but he got it down!!!

By now the sun was heading down again, and we got some good shots from the pier, and an awesome one from the parking lot!!!

Tried to do a raid in Pokemon GO at the start of the pier, but there were constant reception issues and we gave up on that.

Headed back to our room for a bit, and then we looked for a place to eat that evening. My wife was up for pizza, and checking the map found a Chicago Pizza place!!! Turns out it's something of a chain with 3 locations in South Orange County, Selma's Chicago Pizzeria and Tap Room. Not sure how they did it, but our pizza came out in what seemed like a fairly short time, and was excellent!!! I'm making myself hungry thinking about it!!!

Before we left on the final day, I hoofed down to the bridge that crosses the tracks to check out the beach we'd done nothing but seen. It was rocky. It's south of Doheny Beach that I've been to before and may still be considered part of it, and I remember it being rocky. Took pictures of the waves with the wind whipping the spray back out to the ocean, and pictures from the bridge both ways down and up the tracks. Side note on the train, I knew the Amtrak Surfliner would be going up and down those tracks, but our first night a freight came through in the middle of the night, blowing his horn three times and shaking the place.

Speaking of Pokemon GO, there were no stops or gyms reachable from our room. There was a gym you could reach from the south end of the hotel, and you could see a couple of gyms at a park south of there and up on the bluff. On our way back from the Mexican restaurant I went by there to put some 'Mon in because they had been yellow and that way for a few days, but when we arrived they had been turned blue, the team my wife is on, so she got to put hers in instead. When we left, they were back to yellow, and we went by and I did my put ins and took the final picture.

There is Trouble With the Trees

Happy New Year!!! I can hardly believe I haven't done ONE post this year so far!!! That changes NOW!!!

WHY?

Question: Were you threatened by the trees beauty?? Were you?

Why? Why, oh why? would someone, ANYONE, chop down a perfectly 200 year old healthy beautiful tree, that was a home to animals?? Why?

Dear tree, on behalf of stupid humans, I'm sorry

That's the text from the sign hung on the fence by the stump of said tree. This was back in July of last year, and I've been meaning to post since that time regarding this. This is heading into the tract I live in, and I'd noticed the lack of tree driving past prior, but one day I actually stopped and got a look, as well as these pictures. You can see the candles and shrine made up in the middle of the stump.

So I took the shot a little wider... and maybe THIS has something to do with it!!! You can see the damage it's done to the curb, raising it and offsetting it more than it's own width and height!!!

And that's not all, folks!!! Farther along you can see more damage to the curb, and the whole street past there!!! You may have noticed there's a manhole cover there, too, so I'd bet it's encroaching and damaging that, too!!! This is one area that, if there's no opposing traffic, most drivers will swing wide around to avoid excessive wear on suspension parts. This was prior to an election, of course, when they start doing a lot of tearing up roads to prove how effective the use of your tax dollars really is or something. I had the idea that they were probably going to fix up this section of road and sidewalk, but around nine months later it's exactly the same. Of course, the election is over, so... Of course, we all know how quickly municipalities get things done. At any rate, I think that is a pretty answer to the question "WHY??"

Oh, and my neighborhood was built around the mid 1930's, and there's a lot of those trees at regular intervals along the original streets, so I'm thinking probably the tree is around 80 years old.

We're all sorry you didn't get to hug your tree one last time.

13 Shots from Petersen

I've lived my whole life in the Los Angeles area, and I'm a car guy, but here's something I've never done. A visit to the Petersen Automotive Museum!!!

My dad's car club managed to get a group trip there, including a tour of the vault. It was pretty awesome, but they don't allow photography in the vault. The three things that I remember from that part are one of the three gold DeLorians ever produced, a Pantera owned by Elvis that he put three bullets into when it wouldn't start for him, and a 62-63 Comet that was under construction. The Comet got my attention because one of the cars I'm always looking around for the similar but much cooler 60-61 model.

All the pictures are from the levels above the vault. I considered attempting a sneak vault photo on my phone, but never did.

Right out in the lobby they had this auto show superbike with a Dodge V-10 engine.

This Mercer was pretty cool. Whoever heard of a monocle windshield??? I was a bit mystified by the gear drive to the front wheel. The most likely thing I could think of was a speedometer cable take off.

Motorized bikes were well represented.

I liked the green car with the white hard top. Don't remember what it was named, but it is a trike, has a removable top, and seats four across the bench seat!!!

There was a design school that had done wood mock ups for the next generation Minis. I like that they used a 5 gallon bucket for the center gauge cluster.

A lot of auto show cars that never saw production.

The huge black Rolls Royce in the lobby has a perfectly round door, although it's not so easy to see in the picture.

Finally, on the way out, in the parking lot was a cool dune buggy!!!

Slipping and Sliding

The video of the attempt to return the way we came from. It didn't work out so well. You can see the windshield crack in this video, so the truck isn't in THAT great of shape. It also has several scrapes on both the front and rear bumpers. It doesn't have a lot of miles on it, despite it's age, mostly due to the fact that it doesn't get great mileage, so it ends up sitting around a lot. Being as we live in an area where snow isn't a factor, there really is no reason to have a 4x4 unless you're going to do this kind of thing with it, or you are a poseur.

The Road Less Travelled

Know what that first picture is??? It's the front bottom edge of the rear differential on my dad's Durango. Here's a set of pictures from our off road excursion.



The trail we took was very dry and deeply rutted. Second shot is the descent where we put that mark on the diff. Crawling down with it in 4-low, and there's a meaty clunk on the suspension. Set the brake and take a look, and the rear end is hung up on this rock hanging out of the ground. Get back in, and try and back it out. It does nothing but spin the wheels on the dry dirt.



Put it back in the forward gears, and pull it over with the front wheels. Of course, gravity is in our favor going this direction, but it's still a bit of a grunt to get over. We pull up a few feet, set the brake again and take a look at the damage. It pulled the rock right out of the trail!!!



We get to the bottom of the descent, where there is a wide spot (actually a dry creek bed) have a snack and bathroom break, and consult the map. The trail loop deteriorates from here, going from a solid black line to a dotted line. We decide that if it gets worse, we ought to try to go back. Getting turned around in the loose sand of the creek bed was a chance to spin the wheels a bit more, perhaps that wasn't the best place to stop. Attempting to climb back up the previous stretch of trail was even worse. A short ways up, and it's nothing but wheel spin. Trying a bit over from there is no better.



Oh well, guess we'll try the other direction. Guess what??? From the condition of the trail from there, either it had changed drastically since the map was made, or they had the line types reversed!!! Second to last picture was scouting the trail forward of the dry creek bed.



Last shot is the only exterior shot I got of the Durango. Not afraid to take it off the highway!!!