There's Gold in Them Thar Hills

Our anniversary was last month. For several years now, we've been taking a couple days and having a getaway. For the most part, we usually keep it to a couple of hours road trip. While we were leading up to it, my wife had suggested going up to the mountains again. We took our honeymoon there, and have recently been to Running Springs a couple of times. Early Autumn, I wasn't too sure how it would be. Probably no snow, but for sure it would cool off at night. Also, the amount of activities and dining there are a bit limited.

None of that made it a deal breaker, though, and I was taking a look at places we could stay there. The place we've stayed in Running Springs (which is a nice enough place) was still the best price, but I was looking around for any possible variety. One of the results was a Homewood Suites down in the flatland below the mountains, but it got me to thinking. We've stayed at several Homewoods, and have always enjoyed them, and they have the bonus of a nice breakfast included. Let me take a look at the various other Homewood locations...

There are a few not far at all, but located near airports in the midst of cities, as well as by the Anaheim Convention Center. No, thanks. There's one that claims to be in Redondo Beach, that looks to be on the border of Gardena, that has a price almost double the others. Another Nope. But I found one in Agoura Hills. Agoura Hills... I've heard of it, but couldn't have told you where that is. Turns out, it's the way we would go if we were staying in Oxnard (where we did a couple of years, but the place was taken over and refurbed, and the price is insane) or Ventura. Always looks nice driving through the foothills on the way, it's closer than some of the places we've been, we'll give it a try!!!

Taking a look on the map, one of the first things I noticed was a fondue restaurant, The Melting Pot, just a ways from where we would be staying. I think there used to be one in Pasadena, and I had always wanted to give it a try. Turns out, we weren't the only ones celebrating an anniversary!!! 50 years The Melting Pot has been operating, and they had and golden anniversary dinner offer that had it's last night on the night we arrived!!! It was too perfect to pass up, so that's where we went!!!

It's a four course dinner, with gold theming. Starting off, they melt up a cheese dip with gold flakes, and have bread and fruits for the dipping.

They follow that with a salad course, then the main entree, which you can pick from their regular menu. We both got assortments, with beef, duck, pork, salmon, and shrimp.

Desert course is a chocolate fondue, with brownie, blonde brownie, marshmallow, and rice crispy treat dippers. Once again, the gold makes another appearance, with gold flecked candied pecans, and they set the whole thing on fire!!!

What else is there to do??? Well, not far at all from Agoura Hills is Simi Valley, home of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library!!!

This is another thing that's pretty close, yet we had never been there!!! Reagan was the first presidential election my wife had ever voted in. Because she was an aspiring actress, and she figured it would help her get into the SAG!!!

Out in the back, opposite the entrance, they have a piece of the Berlin Wall!!! One side was brightly painted, the other was plain, makes you wonder which side was to the East and which was to the West sides!!! Also out there are the final resting places of Ron and Nancy.

The library is laid out in a labyrinthine design which you progress through, which tells Reagan's life story. Roughly halfway, there's a full size replica of the Oval Office. Most of the tour is on one level, but for this area you proceed down a few steps. Turns out, the museum had been designed in Spanish architecture, and adding the required height for this area would have thrown the design off, so they lowered it instead!!!

The tour culminates in a large hangar area, which houses Air Force One!!! You are able to go through it, and see the design. In both the Oval Office and Air Force One they had containers of Jelly Bellies.

Beneath Air Force One they have the Presidential Limo (I don't think they had the “Gipper” plates on it when it was in service) and motorcade vehicles, and Marine One. It was a great tour, I was young when Reagan was president, and I'd forgotten a lot of the details of his presidency. He was a great president!!! We met a man from Iran while we were on the tour, and he told a story of how Carter had boned them on some oil deal, and Reagan had said that should have never happened when he became president, and all of the Iranians from his generation had loved him.

The advisement is to allow three hours to tour the library. We were on vacation, so we were taking our time, and it was late when we got there and we didn't have a full three hours, and we could have used the time!!!

The next day was go time. Something of a vacation tradition that we've been doing on several of our trips is to hit a local thrift store. There was a small Goodwill real close that we went to, and I found a couple of tee shirts, the aforementioned King's Hawaiian shirt, and a Detroit Muscle shirt. My wife found a nice pink sweater.

Another thing I'd found in the area, just across the freeway, was Paramount Ranch, which is now a National Park but was originally a filming location for Paramount Studios Westerns. There used to be a whole old west town (well, at least the facade thereof), but most of it burned down back in 2018 during a wildfire. There was a visitor's center, but it was closed on account of the Schumer shutdown. There's a church building that looks pretty nice, and the verdant wooded foothills surrounding the area make for a nice setting.

They (I assume the National Parks Department) are working on rebuilding some of the facade buildings, but it's a work in progress, and the construction area is off limits.

Good times!!!

Instant Art

I've once again picked up a few shirts, and have been taking pictures to share them here.

This is one of them, a Christmas shirt from King's Hawaiian. This was the shot of the front, it has a Christmas tree with the King's Hawaiian logo on the top. Could be a Christmas sugar cookie.

Photos had done one of their “pop out” effects, and I'd been planning on using that when I posted about it.

I enjoy King's Hawaiian, and have always liked the Bing Crosby classic, Mele Kalikimaka, and it has a Hawaiian themed snow globe with a plate that says Mele Kalikimaka on the base. That's probably got a lot to do with what sold me on the shirt!!!

Today, photos offered to do a remix of a photo. This was a new one to me, I'll take a look. It's got several styles to re imagine the picture. The one that looked best to me was the drawing style, so I gave it a try. Came out pretty good!!!

That came out pretty good, I'll try another!!! This style looked nice, but it came out with an outdated Halloween theme!!! Not bad, but I feel like all it kept was my face!!!

Next I tried a 16-bit style one, it also came out pretty good!!! I noticed that it actually kept the Christmas tree, but flipped it to the other side and swapped the King's logo for a star!!!

This one was the last I tried, I feel like it kept my face pretty close, but semi cartooned the rest of me!!! And what's with the arm tattoos???

OK, that was fun!!! Let me see what else it can do... Not long ago, Sid was balled up on the perch, and I went to take a picture. Of course, he doesn't cooperate, but I got a decent picture of him peeking over the edge. Let's see...

Tried the illustration kind of look, and even not seeing his lower part it got the markings location right, but the color was off.

Since I liked the style it had done for me, I tried it as a drawing on lined paper, and once again, it came out pretty good, even though he lost his original pose for all of the generations.

Finally, I had it do it as a claymation kind of look!!! The colors are still off, but I still like the result!!!

Good times!!!

The Ridge Run

Here we go again with the Catalina vacation!!!

This is the post for the ridge tour. It was the last full day we were there. It departs from the plaza. They put surrogate in the passenger seat, or as they called it, the co pilot seat, and the younger and I were directly behind him.

We depart from the plaza, and of course we have to go around the back of town, since Crescent is pedestrian traffic only, something I didn't really even consider, since we normally are the pedestrians!!! Came out Clarissa Ave. right past Green Palace Jr., and I got a picture as we drove by. Onto Crescent to Pebbly Beach Road, past the landing.

You know what else is out a ways on Pebbly Beach Road??? Buffalo Nickel!!! We had just been there the night before.

There's a lot of the infrastructure that you don't see staying in Avalon. They've got the cargo docks, the only gas station, and the garage where they house and maintain the Catalina Island Company vehicles. Had one of those sweet Flxable buses there!!!

A little further on, there's the power plant.

Not much further on from there, we left the paved road for the dirt road up the side of the hills. Spotted a red tailed hawk perched on a tree!!!

From above, our driver and guide, Bear, pointed out the quarry near the end of the island.

While we were ascending, you could see Avalon from above!!! We were high up!!!

And there's some of the dirt road!!! Not really, with the exception of the first part of the dirt road, it was fairly flat with only gradual climb. Bear said, “one of these day, I'm going to try climbing that!!!” We encouraged him to make it that day, but as expected it didn't happen.

And there's the first we saw of the other side of the island!!! As well as the ridge road off in the distance.

And there's a couple of ravens!!!

Great view!!!

As we reached the other side, you could see clouds streaming in off the ocean and up the mountains, very cool!!!

Towards the end of the canyon that Avalon is situated in is the Wrigley Botanical Gardens, that I had been thinking I'd like to visit at some point. They moved the original pavilion that had been where the Casino now is up there, and converted it into an aviary. I didn't know, but they had also made a mausoleum that William Wrigley Jr. is buried in, that is visible at the end of the canyon in this shot.

The dark spots on the ocean are the shadows of the clouds!!!

After we passed some radio towers and the reservoir, we began our descent down the other side of the canyon towards Avalon, down Stage Coach Road.

Another shot, from above, of the Descanso Beach area... which, incidentally, we never made it out to this year!!!

Good times!!!

The Return to the Junkyard

It's been a long while since I've made a junkyard run. The last time was when we'd just bought Kutcher. This time, I brought along surrogate son, it was his first time. He enjoyed it, there are a lot of cars to see, and in various states of disassembley.

The trip was prompted by our Catalina vacation. Last year, I'd borrowed my mom's car to be able to transport four, our luggage, and my wife's wheelchair. That plan was torpedoed by Gretchen's Automotive (where elder financial abuse is the name of the game, the epitome of shady mechanics) and we ended up having another friend give us a ride to the landing. This year, I'd checked with another friend who has a Honda Pilot to see if we could swap cars for the week, and that was the plan. Incidentally, it was the same friend who was going to take care of the cat while we were out. Around a week before, surrogate's mom offered to drive us, instead. She's got a mini van, so it shouldn't be a problem. The morning that we were leaving, her van was acting up, and unbeknownst to us, she contacted the friend with the Pilot to borrow it to take us, instead. Pulled up in the Pilot, and we were like, “huh, she's here to feed the cat kind of early”, then we got it figured out. Went out to load our stuff, and tried to open the hatch, and it wasn't opening. Pulled harder, and the handle came off!!! The junkyard had two on the lot that could have the correct handle, so that was the main objective.

First off, there were a couple of classics there, first up was a Olds Toronado!!! Always thought they were a cool car. A few days later I was driving with surrogate in the car, and he spotted one parked on the side of the road, and was able to identify it right off!!! It was a proud moment.

And a Ford Galaxie. Not much left, but that front bumper looks like it's in great shape, probably worth a good amount to the person who needs one!!! There was also a VW Squareback, and an old Ford truck that I didn't get a look at.

I've long had the idea to put a couple of white stripes on Scruffy, and call it the skunk mobile. My beard grows with black in the middle and white stripes on the outside, so I'm already Skunk Man!!! Anyway, someone beat me to it, and got the plates to go with it!!!

Found the first Pilot, and it was already missing the handle. I'd seen one on Ebay for something like $160, so I was thinking it was a hot item, and might be resellable for a decent amount. Found the second one, and it was still on it. Success!!!

The back glass and inside panel were already removed, so the hatch was up and wouldn't stay down without the extra weight. I was wondering how I was going to do it, but I was able to unscrew the two nuts, and stand up on the back through the window opening and pop the press in fasteners off. It was the wrong color, but the recipient is black, so I was able to color match it fairly well with a spray can.

Anyway, I was in the trucks, vans, and SUV area, and spotted a Pontiac front end. Core memory unlocked!!! I recalled that, when I was swapping gauges in 3, I'd read that the Pontiac Torrent, a rebadge of the Chevy Equinox, had another compatible instrument panel, with another different look!!!

Looking back, I realize that I didn't have any shots of the original Saturn gauges, so I took a day and night shot of it before it was removed this time.

The Torrent instrument panel has the chrome bezels like the white face Vue gauges had, but with black gauges with a gray perimeter. Goes nicely with the aesthetic of Scruffy, I think.

The night illumination is where it really shines, pun intended!!! Red glow. Bonus, no check engine light with this set up, only the ABS light is illuminated, since it doesn't have it. Unfortunately, didn't check the illumination before I had it all the way in, and the center sections weren't lighting up. After a bit of driving, though, one of the sides came on, so it's only got one un lit area now. I feel like there were never that many out there, so it's something of a rare instrument panel.

Another fairly high priority item, Scruffy had lost the driver's side plate that holds the bumper onto the pins. There wasn't the correct year there, but I got one off the second generation, hoping that it was a part that wasn't changed. It was.

Back when I had the instrument panel apart on Kutcher for the stupid check engine light, I had unknowingly somehow borked the second digit on the odometer. It had the segments for a backwards “7” that don't display. Also, a couple of the illumination LEDs weren't lighting up anymore. Got a replacement for it, too, and it's really nice having it back!!! Got rid of the bright white check engine light, too.

Something that's always bugged me on Kutcher, though, is the damned dent on the front of the hood. Compounded, the clear coat on the hood has started coming off, so it's looking pretty bad. I picked up a reasonably straight hood while we were there, too.

My original plan was to just primer it black and let it ride thus. I sanded it down, sprayed some gray high build primer, took some glazing putty to a couple of spots with bad rock dings and scrapes, primed some more, sanded it smooth (all the while doing similar with the Pilot handle). Finally got it to a pretty decent finish. At some point in there, I recalled that back when I had bought the second set of Ion rims for 3, I had bought a can of metallic charcoal paint to try and match the dark that the polished front rims have in the recessed area. It was gone before I ever got a chance to use it, so it was still around. Dug it out, and sprayed a test sample. The color isn't really close to the body panels, but it is very close to the faded bumpers!!! I surveyed the family, and they said I should go for it. Fortunately, there was enough in the can to cover it completely!!!

Another minor annoyance, one of the wheel center caps had gone missing not very long after we bought it. I was looking for the same style, but none of the Matrices (Matrii???) had the aluminum rims with them. I did find a cap that ended up fitting. Doesn't match the others, but it's decent!!!