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.

Night Surf

A couple weeks back, we went on a vacation with extended family down towards San Diego. We actually stayed in Encinitas, a ways north of there, just south of Carlsbad. Our hotel was only a block from the ocean, which was a good part of the reason we'd stayed there.

Every single day we did some sort of touristy thing, which was quite a drain on my parents. The second day we went to Legoland, and my parents and my wife had had enough by late afternoon, and were ready to head back. I could keep going, and my youngest and niece and nephew were all good to stay until closing, so they split and we closed that place down. On the way back, we talked a bit about going to the beach. There are houses all along the coast, so I checked and saw that there was a beach access just a couple blocks north of where we were staying, and, of course, that block over. We all decided that the four of us could go for heading over and checking it out when we got back.

It was a bit different than we'd expected. Instead of the block over sloping down to the shore area, it rose up quite a bit. At the end, it came down a bit, but not as much as the rise. From there, it starts off with a concrete path, with areas of steps going down at intervals. From there, it transitioned to wood steps heading down. Straight down, at the end, and DIRECTLY INTO THE OCEAN!!! Well, we weren't expecting THAT!!! Turns out, we caught it right at an extreme high tide!!! The beach has bluffs that rise up from the back of it pretty straight up.

The waves would recede and reveal the sand of the shore, and just to the right around 50 feet, there is a lifeguard tower, backed right up to the bluffs. My niece was the first to decide that she would make a run for it when the waves receded. She made it, of course getting splashed a bit in the process. The rest of us headed over, and stashed our gear on the tower and did a bit of shore wading. The water was very mild, and the evening was pretty warm, too. My niece had brought her purse (go figure), and among the things contained therein was a GoPro camera, which she broke out to shoot a little bit of video. Don't know how that came out, but I'd like to see.

Of course, I didn't bring a camera, so the two actual "beach" pictures are stolen from the web, and the first pic is image searching the title of this post. By the way, said title was lifted from the Stephen King short story that spawned "The Stand". Grandview Beach is what this beach is called... I cannot attest to the view, but even from the shore area, you could see a lot more stars than back home.

Good times!!!

At Long Last, My Search is Over

Back when I was around 11 to 13 years old, my father was working as a field serviceman for an electronics company. Sometimes during summer vacation he would take me along on service calls. This one time we were out on a call in West L.A., and around lunch time my dad asks me what I'd like to eat. Pizza, I reply. Can't go wrong with pizza, right??? One of the guys at the customers' place says, "There's a good pizza place a couple blocks up called Chicago Pizza Works, you should go there." It came recommended, so that's where we went. At my tender young age, I didn't know from Chicago pizza, I though pizza was pizza. Little did I know. I learned that day, and my world was forever changed. Chicago deep dish, thick as a cake, with just a skin of crust, with cheese, sauce and toppings swimming within. Angels wept. Quite simply, it was the best pizza I'd ever had.

Around the time my firstborn was about the age I was at the time of my pizza awakening, it occurred to me that with the advent of the internet, I could find the place and return. I easily found the address, and packed up the family for an amazing lunch. We made it out there, only to discover that it was long since closed. I had built it up to them pretty much like the first paragraph, and I was disappointed. That seemed to set off a pattern of disappointment, with every place claiming to have deep dish pizza actually having fill-up-on-bread thick crust.

So, this was another huge attraction for this year's vacation trip to Chicago!!! We're going to go to a get a genuine Chicago deep dish pizza in Chicago!!! More than one to choose from, but from the Yelp stars and proximity to our lodging, Giordano's won out.

Ended up being the evening of the day we'd gone up to Milwaukee to see The Fonz. I'll give a bit of the back story, since I've not done a lot besides high points and the Six Flags Great America fail. The night we got there, we ended up about two hours later that the time we had planned on, thanks to the crap bag car rental I'd booked, Payless. Do not rent from them. Rat bastards stranded us at the airport for more than an hour, and told baldfaced lies every time we phoned them. It ended up being around 2 in the morning when we finally got checked into our room. The next morning was the pass in review ceremony, fairly bright and early to get there on time and get parked, in the hall and everything. After that, the man-boy had liberty until 1900 hours. We went to lunch with my parents and him, he selected Steak & Shake, which we had enjoyed on our last Florida trip. Following that, we went to see Jurassic World. The wife & I both dozed off a little bit during that, and we ended up bailing out a few minutes before the actual end, because showing up AWOL on his first day would have been a bad thing. One other main thing the fresh faced sailor wanted was his laptop and his MP3 player. It was not allowed in boot camp, and subsequently could not be handed off to him on base, but could be given to him at the airport before his departure to South Carolina... at zero dark 30!!! After the few hours of sleep the night before and the theater nap, I got another couple hours in, then back to O'Hare. Thank you to the USO for having a lounge there were I was able to meet up with him for the hand-off!!! Turns out that military families are allowed to pass airport security to be with the servicemen until they actually depart, so I ended up hanging out with him until around 0600, then Chicago traffic back to our lodging and FINALLY a bit of sleep. Another sleep deprivation experiment!!! Got up around 2:00 in the afternoon, and headed up to Wisconsin. Got turned a bit on the way back, and added probably another hour or so to the drive, and finally made it to the famed Giordano's. It had started raining on the final part of the drive, after being overcast all day.

One thing to know about a true deep dish pizza, it will take a while in the oven. After the side trip short cut detour, everyone was already hungry. In addition to the pizzas, we also got an order of mozzarella sticks and cheese garlic bread. I don't know if I've ever seen this kind of perfection in mozzarella sticks, not in the flavor or construction, but in the serving temperature. Usually they come out flaming hot and, unable to be resisted, burn the taste buds off your tongue and the skin off the roof of your mouth, but these were perfection in edibility!!!

That first pizza pic is now the lock screen on my phone.

My parents got a small Chicago Classic, that has pepperoni, mushrooms, green peppers & onions. I could take or leave the 'shrooms, but I don't do green peppers, they have a lingering after effect on me for a day, quite unpleasant, even if I'm fine with them while downing them.

We got a medium Meat & More Meat, that has pepperoni, salami, sausage & bacon, and a small Bacon BBQ Chicken with BBQ-basted chicken, bacon & balsamic onions, with BBQ sauce instead of tomato sauce. Oh. Oh yes!!! Truly AMAZING!!! It was SO good, but it's a lot. I may have only had one slice of each, or perhaps I split a second slice of the meat masterpiece with my wife... or maybe I put away a whole second slice by myself!!! It was a pizza lovers' utopia!!!

We had enough leftovers for something like three more meals, and reheating didn't diminish the magic!!! They also will ship out frozen pizzas for a fairly reasonable price (considering they aren't that cheap to begin with, and if you were to factor in airfare to Chicago, it's a relative bargain), something I will likely do at some special occasion in the future.

So what was the verdict of the rest of the family??? After hearing me go on about Chicago deep dish pizza in such glowing prose for so many years, they agree that I did not oversell it!!!

The Sleep Deprivation Experiment

The flight out to Florida left of Saturday night, arriving a bit after 6 AM on Sunday morning, with a couple of hours layover in Las Vegas. Of course, there was a some delay leaving, but still in time to make the connection. Just enough time in Vegas to get a couple mini pizzas and bread sticks, go to the bathroom, and eat before getting on the Orlando bound flight.


Of course, the theory on travelling at night was that we could get some sleep on the plane. The youngest complied with this on the second leg of the journey without any encouragement. They did push the drink and snack cart through, and they had Shrek the Third for an in-flight movie, which the older boy and I both watched. I did a little bit of snoozing, as did the older boy, but wifey got none. I think she was too excited.



We arrived at Disney's Pop Century resort right at daybreak. Moved our stuff into our room, and then the boys and I decided to go to the Typhoon Lagoon water park during the first part of the day, while mom got a nap in. That didn't last long, the younger scraped his knee in the wave pool right at the beginning, and didn't want to have much more to do with that. We rode tubes around the outer river for a bit, then he was ready to go back to our room and nap some himself.

He fell asleep on the bus heading back, but when we got back he was ready to go check out the bowling pin pool. A little bit of that, and then back to our room (on the opposite end of the resort) through the buildings to check out some of the theming. Everyone was ready to eat by the time we got back, so we did that, then proceeded to the Disney World's Magic Kingdom park.



It was the featured park for Disney's "Extra Magic Hours", a plan where resort guests can remain in the parks for an additional two or three hours in the evenings, or get in an hour earlier in the morning. The featured park changes daily.



One of the first stops was to buy the Pal Mickey of which we had heard. He is pretty cool, but his volume is so low that you need to hold him to your ear to be able to hear what he says. The youngest wore him on the neck of his shirt almost every day.



We rode the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, shorter than the California version, but other than that virtually identical. The youngest was up for riding Thunder Mountain Railroad again, even though he didn't care for it when he got off last time.

Disney World has an area that Disney Land doesn't have, a Liberty Square, and the cars run four across instead of two by two in California. Also, they still have the People Mover ride there, although they don't call it that. Neither of my boys had ever seen that, it was before their time.

We never got a chance to ride Splash Mountain. It differs from the California version in that, instead of riding front to back, it has side by side seating. Interestingly, the older and I rode Space Mountain, and it has front to back seating, whereas the California version has side by side seating. It seems to be a quicker, better coaster in Florida, too.

And, look at this!!! Disney World has a rollable sphere, too!!!

I think it was around 1:30 AM when we left. Too much fun to do any sleeping!!!