Kalos Calling

Last month, just a little before the younger's birthday, Pokemon GO was doing a live event near us, at the Rose Bowl. The GO Tour Kalos. Right around this time last year they'd had one, and I had been thinking of going, but by the time I looked into getting tickets, it was sold out. Since it was near the boy's birthday, I figured this would make another good present for him (and me)!!!

They had three areas, the City Center, the Coastal Research Laboratory, and Mountain Manor. This was the City Center, it had a fountain with water flowing out of the middle of a Pokeball.

There was some theming like that, and cut outs of team leaders set up around the area, but mostly the attractions were in game.

It had been raining that week, so some of the areas were a bit muddy, but it was mostly clear on that day. A really nice day to be out!!! Started out chilly (there was snow up on Mount Wilson) but warmed up as the day went on.

Most of the play area was on the surrounding golf course.

A couple of screen shots of the play area, the first showing the actual stadium...

And another on the golf course, on the other side of the river. You can see, there are a lot of gyms and stops, several of them for the event.

Did I mention the river??? It's the northern portion of the Arroyo Seco!!! Just a little north of there is the Devil's Gate reservoir, one of these days I'd like to check it out. You might be able to hike to it from where we were, but there were other activities afoot!!! I had an Ampharos as my buddy at the time, because it mega evolves, and having it as your buddy gives you more mega energy. It was a poffin day!!!

There's the cabin they had for the Mountain Manor area. When we were first there, there was a big line to go in. We had no clue what was going to be in there, so we weren't eager to get in a big line.

Later on the line was considerably shorter, and we checked it out. It was cool, but nothing that great.

The Coastal Research area had white boards and a computer terminal set up, as well as the three team color cylinders shown in an earlier picture.

Eggs in incubators, and shown on the white board here is something they were rolling out, link charges. They're used in mega raids, but I don't quite understand how they work...

And there's my Ampharos next to what appears to be a mossy lure module, it appears to be much larger than I'd pictured in person!!!

They had several things they rolled out that day, one of them was the super mega raids. You've got to have something mega evolved to get through the shields to defeat them, and the 'mon you catch after has a fourth level of mega evolution that you can achieve. We only did one super mega raid for a Gardevoir, which I didn't have the required amount of mega energy for it yet. I took this screen shot of the waiting queue for it, with 796 participants!!! It wasn't hard to do with that many, but they rolled out the Dragonite mega evolution afterwards, and we were unable to defeat the super mega raid with our normal wrecking crew of 4.

Another of the debuts on this day was the shiny Honedge. We did several raids (the pass we bought came with several passes, I'm not sure exactly how many, but we ran through them all!!!) and both got our shinies. Also pictured, one of the other things they've added recently is backgrounds (that only show in your own game, so...) and for the event, you could get some with the Los Angeles skyline as a background!!! Looks great!!!

Another one that we did a few raids of was the Yveltal, and the first one I got a shiny!!!

Caught in the wild was a shiny Pancham, and since it's kind of that color, I've renamed it Tancham!!!

Two mega evolutions were also debuted, one of them was the Malamar. I had a shiny Inkay already, but during one of the raids I caught a shiny Malamar.

The other mega evolution released was for Victreebel, another one that I already had a shiny of. I think I got another.

Another wild catch, a shiny Skiddo!!! Don't see many of the non shiny ones even, so this is pretty cool!!!

Another thing they were doing for the event, there were various stops with different trims of Furfrou that you usually can't get in our area. While you're near them, you can get the trims. I had two shiny Furfrous, and while we were there I caught two more!!! I was able to trim all the shinies with trims not normally available. One of the tasks that came with the ticket was to visit all the various trim stops, in a specific order. Hadn't picked up on that at first, so we ended up doing a little more walking than we would have!!! I applied the Kabuki trim to the first shiny Furfrou I'd caught!!!

'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 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.

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!!!