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!!!

Beach Boys

I've previously mentioned that one of my favorite things to do is to go to the beach. Ordinarily, I only end up making it once or twice a year, sometimes on or around my birthday, and sometimes when I'm on vacation.

It so happens that surrogate son also happens to love going to the beach, and since I've had some latitude in my schedule these days, I've been able to go several times this summer!!!

I think this may have been on the trip I'd previously posted about. Surrogate son was forming perfect spheres of the sand!!!

There's a pile of them in the foreground, in the shadow.

This was another trip we made to Horny Corner, with surrogate son's sister and another friend. I think his mom may have been there that time as well.

I know one time, maybe two times, my younger and surrogate son had gone when I had something else I was doing. We have a large duffel bag that has our beach towels, swimsuits, and sunscreen in it, and he'd taken a smaller bag with just his towel, suit, and sunscreen. One of the times, he didn't get the sunscreen swapped from the smaller bag, and got a sunburn. This time, he looked like he'd been slapped on the shoulder by someone with a lot of sunscreen on their hand, and that area didn't burn or tan!!!

This is the sand structure that we made on that day. I started out by drawing the moat, then removed the sand and piled it up in the middle. The moat wanted to cave in. The setting sun made for a cool effect on it!!!

Something else I'd not mentioned, Grill 'Em All has relocated down to Horny Corner!!! They used to be next to a theater in Alhambra, and I'd been there at least once. I was familiar with Grill 'Em All because they would help out at the Oinkster during Burger Week, and I think Oinkster may have featured some of their burgers during it.

They've still got the metal theme going, but now with a beachy locale and vibe!!! I may have been craving a premium gourmet burger... Anyway, on the same day, we ate there, and it was awesome!!!

I like the picture of surrogate giving his sister the side-eye!!!

Surrogate son got the Behemoth, which is served on two Texas Toast grilled cheese sandwiches!!! It was too much for him!!! I got the Witte, which has cream cheese, deep fried bacon, sriracha, malt vinegar aioli, and grilled onions. It was glorious!!! Also got an order of Primate Fries, basically In-N-Out's animal style fries, but the fries are better.

Got this picture of the seagulls in the run off channel from the showers on another trip to Horny Corner. In the background, you can see the inflatable play floats they've got set up out there. They only let a limited amount of people on at a time, of course, and depending on the day, there can be a line to go on it. We went one time, and on our most recent time down there they'd taken them down for the season.

We've also gone a few times to Santa Monica beach. I like it a little better, it's got some surf. The first time we went there, surrogate son had wanted to walk out on the pier, so after the sun had gone down and we'd changed, we did. It drops down on the end for a fishing platform, and when we were heading down, one guy had his pole bent down, so we had to stay and see what he caught. Turned out to be a spiny lobster!!! I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to catch them with a pole...

Got a nice sunset picture...

And the fabled pier...

Last time we were there, a Coast Guard chopper doing maneuvers. It was kicking up a good amount of vapor with the rotor wash!!! Stayed around for a while.

Another beach selfie with another friend!!! This was on the time before the last time we went to the beach.

Oh, I had a cooler that I would usually take that came with our house. It was old, and as it got used more, the plastic on the edges and the lid started cracking. I bought a similar size replacement, and then a couple of weeks later, I was taking a walk, and one of our neighbors had a give away pile that had another similar sized cooler, but with a split lid, so now I've got two. They also had a nice boogie board that I grabbed, but we only made it to Santa Monica one time since I got it, and the surf wasn't great for boarding, the waves would crash as soon as they formed.

We stopped by a Taco Bell on the way back. Next door was a donut place, and on the side wall, they had the donut angel background!!! It has a little curb that you have to hop up onto, and it's not easy to balance. Took pictures of surrogate son and myself in front of it, but we were both off center. I moved the donut on his picture!!!

The Same Late Season Vacation Where Everything Was Different

Here it is, the typical late season vacation to Catalina again, only different!!!

The first thing that changed, we took the younger's friend. He's a good guy, calls me his father figure, and I call him my surrogate son.

The next, and probably the most significant thing we changed, instead of getting a hotel room, we rented one of the many houses in Avalon!!! There's a lot of them available to rent, but a lot of them are a ways back from Crescent Street, along the front of Avalon.

This one was on the lower end of the price range (but still a little more than the hotel would have been... and without the room credit towards some of the local places, of course) and it was just a little ways from Crescent Street, right down the first street as you come into town.

Almost all the places over there are older construction, and skinny and close together. That was the case with this one. It has a good sized front living room, a skinny kitchen including stairs up to the upper loft room, then a decent sized master bedroom.

Dang, that glare off the bald dome!!!

It has air conditioning (actually several wall mount units and a couple of portable units) but the weather there was perfect, and we didn't need to use any of them.

Upstairs there's a couple of beds and a little bathroom with a shower that is encroached upon by the slant of the roof, a little sitting area, and a tiny but pretty cool little balcony.

Since there was a little kitchen, I brought some bagels and cream cheese so we could have some breakfast or snack chow without having to go out. When we got there and found there was a coffee maker and several filters, we headed over to the store and picked up coffee and creamer, and several other things.

It's a nice place, though far from perfect. 100% would stay there again!!!

There's a washer and dryer on the side of the house (bonus, there was detergent there already!!!), and a shed full of all kinds of beach toys and floats. We were in the ocean swimming 3 of the 4 days, but didn't ever use any of the stuff in the shed.

Here's another thing that was changed, they painted the 1953 Flxable Buses!!! I liked the old style, but this looks good, too, and matches the Catalina Island Company colors. I had wanted to take the Inland Tour again, but apparently they only run that tour when the cruise ships that port in Avalon tell them to or something. Not sure if that's only during the off season.

Here's another thing that was different, surrogate son made dinner one night!!! He's had some chef training, and it came out great!!! Of course, everything over there is more expensive on account of everything having to be shipped over (and there's only one full grocery store, which is the perennially more expensive Vons) but it still came out at a fraction of what we'd been spending most other nights!!!

We did a lot of playing games. For something else different on the games, my boy brought over his Binding of Isaac game, and we played it several times.

There were several games in the closet including Battleship and a weird Cityville version of Monopoly. Didn't get to Battleship, but broke out the Monopoly one night. The end game for this version is to have 4 properties with skyscrapers on them. You can add buildings without having the full set, but you can't complete a skyscraper without the full set, so there's your challenge. I got the equivalent of Boardwalk and Park Place, and was on my way to getting enough capital to build out one of my other properties. Got a couple of hits from the others landing on them (which is how I was able to complete another set of properties).

Didn't quite get the capital together, and ended up losing the game!!! Congratulations to son #3. I had fun, though. Don't 100% remember, but I think I may have not won a single game!!!

We hiked up the left side of Avalon this time instead of the right side, where the Catalina Chimes Tower is. It was a little early in the day (but not that early, I'm on vacation, dammit!!!) maybe around 1:00 PM or so, and it was still a little cloudy out.

As we ascended up the gradual rise, and easy hike, we got further into the clouds, and they were streaming through the gaps in the mountains!!! It was pretty cool!!!

Here's what my goal was for heading up this side this time, it's where Mount Ada is located. It was the home of William Wrigley Jr. and his wife Ada, and has since been converted into one of the most expensive hotels on Catalina. In the pictures I've seen it looks like a nice place, but not nice enough to justify the price, and being separated from most anything else you'd want to do on Catalina!!! A cursory search doesn't show it has an included golf cart or hotel shuttle, but for the price I would think it would.

The one thing I hadn't considered, for such a nice place it naturally is behind closed gates to keep the riff raff such as myself away!!! Nice looking gate...

A slightly related reason I'd wanted to hike up there, there's a couple of Pokemon Go gyms up there. When we vacationed there during the Stupid Times and they had expanded the distance to reach gyms, we put a couple 'Mon in one of gyms up there, and they stayed for weeks on end!!! The Pokemon in the gyms had been there a while, but when we got up there, we had no internet connection. (When we were back in downtown Avalon that afternoon, we still had no internet, it often seems very flaky over there).

Nice hike up there, though!!! We went a little further, and there was a similarly gated driveway. There was an overlook point that we explored a little with interesting semi constructed areas, and a nasty looking reservoir. On the way back, I got this shot of the place we stayed, Green Palace Junior, from the back!!! The master bedroom has nothing directly over it, but you can still hear when someone is moving around upstairs, and you can see how the little sitting room area upstairs is the only part that's square to the house.

The clouds had mostly cleared by the time we were heading down, giving a nice before and after of Avalon and the harbor.

The first night we were there, my wife was wanting Italian for dinner. The previous go-to would have been Antonio's on the waterfront, but the last time we had been there it looked like the menu had been gutted and the hours were shortened. It's since been changed to a place called Pier 24 and re opened, and it seems like the menu is back to being fairly robust (but not as much Italian-themed) and the hours restored. So there's another “new” place we went to. The sun had already set, so it was on the cool side outdoors, so we didn't get in on the outdoor seating ambiance.

We also hit some of our previous favorites, the classic Buffalo Nickel and Jack's Country Kitchen.

To round out the week, and for the final something different to round out this post, the last night we went to the Mexican place that's on the first part of the street we were staying on, Mi Casita (visible in the 2 pictures from the balcony shooting towards the beach). Good food, and it was much more enjoyable after the table of drunks left!!! They had a dessert menu, and my wife was wanting to get something from it, but it was close to closing and they only had flan left as an option, as they had shut down the ice cream machine. After we left, my son and I went to Von's for the final time and picked up a 4-pack of Reese's ice cream sandwiches, which were great, and fed all of us for less than a single dessert would have cost at Mi Casita!!!

And here's what I consider to be my prize winner photo from the trip!!!