'Mon Shots

Always playing Pokemon GO, and part of it is taking pictures. Sometimes they're pretty good. One of the places we end up going a lot is the entrance to the Southwest Museum on the next street over. The entrance goes straight back into the hillside, and used to feature some very cool dioramas on the way in, then it has an old style elevator with the accordion door, and the shaft going straight through the rock, up to the museum on the top. Anyway, there's a gym there, and for most of the time I've been playing, it's almost always dominated by my team, so we go there often to put a 'Mon in the gym.

It's got great architecture, so it makes a great backdrop for getting your buddy out for a picture. This is right after I got my shiny Qwilfish to best buddy, right before I evolved it to Overquil.

While we were on our Catalina vacation last year, I had my 4 star Absol as my buddy. I had enough mega energy to mega evolve it, and making it your buddy after mega evolving gives you more mega energy, so that's been the impetus for several of my buddies. Anyway, we'd gone on a route while we were waiting to board, and there's the ghost ship Queen Mary in the background. Actually the same place that the first picture of the vacation post was from!!!

Also on that trip, if you don't have the AR function turned on, they've started having more detailed backgrounds that mimic the area. While we were there, this was one of the land and sea backgrounds, complete with animated waves.

Another vacation, another 4-star mega evolvable buddy!!! This time it was a Gengar, at the Cabazon Dinosaurs!!!

And yet another vacation picture, this time in Ventura, with my shiny Feebas, right after I'd gotten it to best buddy!!! As was the case with the Quilfish, this is another 'Mon you need to adventure with before you can evolve it. I evolved it into Milotec shortly after this. In both cases, I could have evolved them earlier, but I always get 'em to best buddy, so you get to see where the badge ends up before the evolving.

I think this was from our '22 Catalina vacation, when they were having Fashion Week. The younger caught the shiny costumed Absol, and made him his buddy. He has a naming convention for his buddies where he names them after food items, and this is named Cherry Jam. I love the look of this picture where he's on the pier. On a later Fashion Week, I finally caught a shiny costumed Absol of my own. Named him Marley, on account of Jammin', get it???

I think this was from the same vacation, my Palkia on the steps going up in our normal hotel, the Hotel Atwater. I'd made mention when we were there in '23 there were only 2 routes, and I'd submitted mine, Old Ben's Beach Walk. The one that wasn't straight back into the canyon at the back of Avalon was from the central plaza to the Casino, and the reception was always flaky right when you get close to the Casino. The route I submitted goes from a park as you're coming from the wharf (that has a statue of Old Ben, a sea lion that would greet tourist and was a local fixture in the early days) along Crescent street, to one of the places that are over the water on the way towards the Casino, but not to where the reception goes out. It has a Leaping Tuna statue as a stop, and the end point of the route. The text I put for the route is “Show Ben some respect! (and some of that tasty tasty tuna!) and months after the trip, it was approved. On our most recent visit, one of the nights I hadn't done a route yet for the day, and it was getting close to midnight. I asked the guys if they wanted to go with me to do it (bonus, it's only a short distance from our lodging to the park) and they both declined. I went on my own, finished it before midnight (which was my goal), and waited a few minutes until it was after, and did it in reverse!!!

And also from last year's vacation, another AR picture. Here's another thing it does, changes the lighting as the sun is setting, which is what I was getting the picture of. Then the Whismur attacks!!!

The Mid Year Vacation

Last November for our anniversary my wife and I had gone to Palm Springs. It was a good time, and I was feeling like going again. I had some vacation time in the middle of last month, so that's where we went!!!

We were big fans of Monster Shakes the last time we were there, so that was the first place we went after we got to our hotel!!! We'd stopped for dinner on the drive in, not at Whalburger's this time. This time we both got a shake instead of splitting one, and the boy had Dole Whip, as they have an amazing array of flavors on tap there. Wife got a cinnamon toast crunch shake, and I got a cookie monster shake.

Looks like the boy is eyeing my shake!!!

After a restful morning the next day, we had lunch, then again went to the Aerial Tram, which was a good move, this time of year it was over 100⁰ down in the city, and up in the San Jacinto Wilderness, it was in the 70's.

Did I mention??? I'd taken this week off for my wife's birthday!!! Once we got up to the top and the visitor's center, we hit the gift shop, and found a nice bag for her birthday.

We headed out the back, which leads to several trails. We headed just a little ways down, and it was apparent it was going to be too steep for my wife. We headed back, and asked if she'd be OK waiting while we headed out for a hike.

Just a little ways into the hike, spotted a hummingbird at a bush. Pulled up my camera, and he came straight up to eye level, and hovered there!!!

Nice little stream flowing through the area...

And this crazy red fungus!!!

There's a lot of Jeffery pines in the area. Thing about Jeffery pines, they smell like butterscotch!!!

We came to one of the areas that overlook the Palm Springs basin, and there was a tree leaning over precipitously.

Walked a ways down, and found out that one tree had toppled into another, which also toppled, and was into the third tree!!!

On the way back, we stopped at a hotel restraunt just a few down from where we were staying called The Reef. The food wasn't anything special, but the theming was great!!!

Speaking of great, the place we stayed was an amazing room!!! It had your own carport, a huge living room with a fireplace, a good sized fully equipped kitchen, a seperate bedroom, two bathrooms, and a little patio with a gas grill. There were a couple of pools and a hot tub, which we took a little swim and soak in in the evening.

On the way back, we stopped off at the Cabazon Dinosaurs.

They're featured in one of the Fallout games, so my son had to see them!!!

My wife wanted to go to The Cheesecake Factory for her birthday, so naturally that's what we did!!!

Love Drive

A little while after I had bought the Sky, I was feeling a little antsy to take her out for a spin. I got my sweetie, dropped the top, and we were off.

In the immortal words of Chuck Berry, we had no particular place to go!!!

I drove us on surface streets over to the north edge of Griffith Park, and cruised right on through!!!

You couldn't ask for a better day for top down cruising!!!

As we passed the far side of Griffith Park and were heading into Universal City, I turned us off into a hilly residential area to get us turned around and head back.

With the pipes and the radio blasting, my sweetie says, “I think we're disturbing the peace!!!”

Around a month later, we've got our anniversary coming up. We've got a couple nights booked in Palm Springs. I had been planning on taking the Matrix, but she says, “We should take the Sky!!!”

She has some difficulty getting in and out of the Sky, as she has mobility issues, and the Sky sits low, and I thought she'd have an easier time with the Matrix. I asked if she was sure, and she was all for it, so we packed light, and away we go!!!

On the way out, we stopped in at Morongo again, because there's a Wahlburger's there, and we really liked it when we had it last year.

Gotta have some dessert afterwards, right??? I saw a place called Monster Shakes not far from where we were staying, and after I saw the pictures, we had to have it!!!

The next day, after a late breakfast, we dropped the top (now that we had the luggage unloaded) and headed over to the Aerial Tram. As we got higher into the shadows of the mountains, it cooled down considerably, and having the top down didn't seem like it was such a great idea anymore!!!

Good times!!!

P.S. I Love You

What I did over the Thanksgiving weekend: We all went out to Palm Springs!!!

Like last year, most of the extended family had other plans. My parents actually set this up, it was a time share condo where they give you a few nights of free lodging in exchange for listening to their spiel. It was a really nice place!!! For Thanksgiving dinner, they bought most of the whole thing pre made from a local grocery store, and for all the possible ways it could have failed, only the stuffing was a disappointment!!!

The next day, after swimming in the pool for a fair amount of the morning (while my poor folks attended the spiel), we went to the only actual attraction I was aware of in Palm Springs, the Aerial Tram. It was amazingly crowded there, and a bit spendy for a trip to the top, but well worth it.

The temperature was much lower at the top, and the rain that had come through the Los Angeles area the days before made for a nice layer of snow up there.

I guess this qualifies as our annual snow trip!!! The boys had a lot of fun frolicking in the snow, and would have stayed there much longer, but it was getting dark already.

We came back and went back to the pool area for a session in the jacuzzi. There are two of them there, one outside, the other under a synthetic hill, hidden behind a waterfall.The next day we went out to one of many oases in the area. Apparently the San Andreas fault line going through the aquifer causes the water to make its way to the surface. We hiked from one oasis to another, about a mile each way, with many cool things to see on the way.

Once we got back, we were snacking on some crackers and sodas near the visitors center (which was already closed for the evening), and along wandered this bobcat!!! Of course, I had already stowed my camera, but I managed to get it out and fire off three shots before he disappeared for good. The first two came out the better ones, shooting from the hip, than the third where I framed him up, and the camera failed to auto focus.

There's a shot of the pool in the background (along with the inflatable turkey). Actually, two separate pools. The smaller one has a very shallow large area for small kids, and two different water slides, one straight and rather flat, and the other of a decent height with some nice twists to it. The larger pool has one area with a volleyball net set up over it. The older boy took a Jr. Lifeguard course they offered. I don't know how much they actually taught him.



This was pretty cool, too. The condos, to further sweeten the pot, gave my parents several vouchers for, among other things, the gas station up the street. The day we headed home, they gave us one to use, $20 value. The drive out there is 111 miles, plus some driving around town, plus about 40 miles of to work and back the day before. Now, we'd driven out on Wednesday night. I haven't made mention here, but I bought myself a GPS unit for Christmas already. Figured it made more sense to have it BEFORE I'm in a strange town trying to find my way. On the drive out, it routed us along a couple of small, two lane highways (not what I'd have chosen, but we followed it anyway). It also rained a bit, causing everyone to hit their brakes far too much. The elevation increases quite a bit from home to there, so in other words, it was all uphill, albeit very slightly for most of the drive. In other words, the drive was less than optimal for prime fuel efficiency. However, in spite of that, after driving 168.4 miles, Baby would only take 3.98 gallons of gas!!! That works out to an unprecedented, AMAZING, 42.31 MPG!!! I have to imagine that this is an anomaly, but at any rate, I was quite pleased. The gas station wouldn't give full change for it, so we ended up with two large water bottles, three of the huge slim jims, and five dollars cash.

Good times!!!