Travels

We had a very nice visit with extended family over Thanksgiving down in Escandido. Let me tell you how NOT to get there the day before Thanksgiving. Do NOT take the 91 to 15. This is a big mistake. At one point I saw a sign saying 'Cororna 15mi' and I thought to myself "Gee, at this speed we'll be to Corona in two hours!". I optimistically/naively think that the 5 will be a much better choice next year.

We eventually got where we were going. We stayed in a hotel that had a heated outdoor pool. The Things had to go swimming, naturally. The air temperature was less than 60, but we went swimming, darnit. Brrrrr! Good thing there was a hot tub to warm up in before we went back to the room. The next morning, we had to go swimming again. This served two purposes: it got the Things to stop asking when we were going swimming, and it tired them out so they wouldn't be too bouncy with the excitement of the day. Thing 2 actually had to take a nap in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner. We were dining with friends of my Uncle and Aunt. They were very nice and served an excellent dinner. There neighborhood was close to where the fires were in October, so they had some interesting and hair-raising stories to tell.

Friday we had planned to do something fun like the Wild Animal Park or Legoland, but everyone was tired and the weather wasn't that nice, so we decided to drive back to LA and go to the Natural History Museum. That was really cool. They have great diorama's displaying their large mammals and the Treasures from the Vault exhibit was great. Saturday was errands and a movie, and then it was back to the island.

A week later, Sweetie and I were back to the mainland. We had to take a ferry from Avalon, so the first part of the trip was a drive across the island. The ferry ride over was smooth as glass, which should have alerted up to bad things ahead. The next day it rained (in LA!), which made our drive downtown that much more interesting (it's sort of like when it snows in North Carolina). We were supposed to go back to the island Friday night, but decided to wait until Saturday. This turned out to be a mistake. As the ferry left the dock, the captain said something about "it's kind of bumpy out there today". And it was. I would say the swells were around 6-8 feet. The boat would hit them and the spray would go 20-30 feet in the air. At one point I think the boat went airborne. Many passengers were getting seasick. I just closed my eyes and thought about work. We finally got to Avalon. I got off there; Sweetie was going to take the ferry over to Two Harbors. So I get to the truck to discover that Sweetie still had the keys! Fortunately, some friends of ours needed groceries, so there were willing to drive the keys across the island to me, otherwise I'm not sure what I would've done. Finally, I got home. It was an exhausting couple of days. The Things were very happy to see us.

Next post: The Christmas Season