California Trip- Part 2

Before leaving the area Thursday morning we were fortunate to be able to meet and catch up with a good friend. After a short visit, we hit the road.

The trip from the Bay area to L.A. is a pretty straight shot down I5. It was suggested that once we got near L.A. that we cut over to the Pacific Coast Highway for a more scenic drive. We decided to see how it went going straight through. The traffic was thick and there was quite a bit of hard braking. Even though there may have been some expletives flowing from my mouth, driving in this traffic really wasn’t that bad. I wouldn’t want to have to drive this way every day however.

We checked into our hotel in the Anaheim area. We chose this area because we originally thought we may be visiting Disney Land during one of the days. We did end up visiting the Downtown Disney area but did not make it into the parks.

Friday was our Segway tour day. We drove to Santa Monica. We arrived a little early so that we could walk around and explore the famed Santa Monica pier for a bit. As our tour time approached we found a new parking spot and made our way to where our tour began.

After making sure everyone was comfortable with operating the Segways, we started out on our tour. The tour started with going back to the Santa Monica Pier where our guide gave a little history about the pier itself. We then headed down the walk towards Venice Beach. We stopped for a few photo ops. Our guide said we were lucky because we not only had the Santa Monica pier as a backdrop, but here was so little smog that we had a clear view of Malibu as well.

Then our guide took us off the path up to some backroads and alleys. I was thinking that this was just to avoid the crowds on the walk. He had an entirely different reason for leading us here. The neighborhood off the beach is rich with history and artwork. The murals that adorned entire walls, garage doors and rooflines was amazing. Definitely worth the excursion off the beaten path.

We headed back down to the beach area, went by muscle beach and the skate park before heading back to our starting point. Overall, this may have been the one thing that everyone thoroughly enjoyed.

On Saturday we headed up into the mountains. The two boys were going to ski but it ended up that only Tyler went. Which was fine with the rest of us. we just enjoyed sitting inside the lodge staying warm. Wind advisories had shut down some of the lifts anyway.

On our last day in California we spent the day in the Hollywood area taking tours and letting Janice and Kaya get some pics up close and personal at the Vanderpump restaurants.

Overall, a great trip but 6 days is not nearly enough to see California.

~Tim


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