Dan and Julie traveled to California in early May and had a wonderful time visiting Christine and Jamie in Los Angeles, and then Dan in Santa Cruz.
This was D&J’s first opportunity to see the apartment where Christine, Jamie and their cats have settled in since their cross-country move in late November. It’s in a quiet residential neighborhood in West LA, close to the Santa Monica city line and just two miles from Jamie’s office at Riot Games.
The first evening, the four took a stroll by the ocean near the Santa Monica pier, then had dinner at one of the restaurants with outdoor tables along the Third Street Promenade.
The next day, Saturday, the quartet visited Griffith Park, where they walked around the grounds of the Griffith Observatory, looking out at the Hollywood sign and the sprawling city below, and took a short hike on one of the park’s many trails.
That evening, they returned to Santa Monica, had another
look at the pier and dined at a Japanese steakhouse that has become Jamie’s
favorite.
On Sunday, the group visited the botanical garden on the campus of UCLA, which is also a short distance from C&J’s apartment. The garden features plants from around the world, mostly from places in South America, southern Africa, Asia and Oceania that share the subtropical climate of Southern California.
Next came a daytime visit to the beach, where Dan made a point of stepping into the Pacific Ocean, and to the famous pier, which was packed with people strolling, shopping and enjoying the amusements on a sunny, cool, breezy day.
Then it was back to the apartment, where Christine cooked an excellent Mother’s Day dinner from one of Julie’s recipes. It was a great way to wrap up the visit.
All too early the next morning, Dan and Julie were back at Los Angeles International Airport for a short flight up the coast to San Jose. There, they rented a car and drove over the Santa Cruz Mountains to the small city on the shore of Monterrey Bay, and met the younger Dan at his apartment – which is just half a block from the beach.
They visited the Santa Cruz pier, which is much quieter than Santa Monica’s – except for the barking of the sea lions that like to perch on the beams under the structure. (The nearby boardwalk amusements were closed, as it was a Monday off-season.) The trio looked down at the sea lions and out over the bay toward the Big Sur mountains in the distance, then had lunch at one of the pier’s restaurants.
The group paid a brief visit to a small lighthouse just up the coast, where they could see more sea lions sunning on a rock and surfers riding low, long waves. The weather was cool with a stiff shore breeze – not a day for humans to sunbathe or to swim without wetsuits.
So, the three drove several miles inland and uphill (and out of the wind) to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, where they walked a loop trail through a forest of towering Coastal Redwood and Douglas Fir trees.
The day wrapped up with a fine dinner at a local establishment, the Crow’s Nest, looking out over a small-boat harbor and the bay beyond. “Although it was just a one-day visit, we packed in a lot of fun, and it was great to catch up,” said Dan the elder.
Dan the younger was working on Tuesday, but D&J had built an extra day into their trip to see a few more sights and then make their way to San Francisco for their flight East on Wednesday.
They visited another botanical garden, this time at UC Santa Cruz, where they saw lots more exotic plants from some of the same parts of the world as at the UCLA garden.
Before leaving the Santa Cruz area, they drove a little farther up the coast and checked out a couple of parks along the ocean. Just as they were ready to head up toward San Francisco, they experienced the one problem in the otherwise wonderful trip. Having stepped away from their rental car for just a few minutes to look down at Shark Fin Cove (pictured above), they returned to find that someone had smashed a window and stolen Julie’s purse. Fortunately, the rental company was able to get an Uber to bring D&J to its Santa Cruz office and get them into a replacement vehicle (an annoyingly big pickup truck). Less fortunately, Julie’s phone and credit cards were gone, requiring some quick calls on Dan’s phone to cancel the cards.
On Wednesday, having time to kill at the San Francisco airport before their return flight, D&J found a mini-museum in the terminal, which had a display of garments made in the Philippines from pineapple leaves. It was one last point of interest before they headed home from a great trip.
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They visited the Santa Cruz pier, which is much quieter than Santa Monica’s – except for the barking of the sea lions that like to perch on the beams under the structure. (The nearby boardwalk amusements were closed, as it was a Monday off-season.) The trio looked down at the sea lions and out over the bay toward the Big Sur mountains in the distance, then had lunch at one of the pier’s restaurants.
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