Category: DESTINATIONS

Places to go

DESTINATIONS, Road Trips, TRAVEL, Travel Planning, United States

Sliding Into Sea-Tac

Jane Sadek

MAKING MEMORIES: SEA-TAC & My Red Suit Case

I’m taking you along on our 2024 vacation to Washington State, a vacation we’d been looking forward to for many years. Come along and we’ll suffer through the travel day together!

Waking Up at 2:30 AM

So, we did get a deal on our Delta flight to Sea-Tac, but it was very early in the morning – so early that my alarm went off at 2:30 AM. We’d joked about just staying up, but we’re senior citizens now and those days are over. At 3:10 AM the Travel Buddies hit the road.

As I did my planning I was dismayed to discover The Parking Spot had bought out my old favorite, Park ‘N Fly. I’m a bit suspicious when it comes to travel and if something ain’t broke, I don’t try to fix it. I’d been using Park ‘N Fly for at least 30 years and wasn’t happy about trusting my vacation departure to someone else, but I have to admit, even though I had to find a different location, the whole Parking Spot experience was very smooth.

Getting Through Security

By the time we drove to the remote parking lot, rode the shuttle to the airport and checked our luggage, the sun was shining into the big windows of the Delta terminal. We stood in the security line and when it was just about our turn, they made an announcement that the line was closing down due to unnamed problems. It was supposed to be only a 10 minute shut down, but there was a sign nearby that said the next security gate was about 3 minutes away and it only had a 10 minute wait. Fearing the 10 minute shut down might have a little mission creep and not wanting to stand still for however long it would take, we decided to hot foot it to the next gate. Great decision. The walk was invigorating after all the driving and riding. We were whisked through security in no time and were cooling our heels at our gate.

LAX Layover and SeaTac Arrival

Our cheap flight to WA State included a brief layover in LAX. Our flights to LAX went off without a hitch. The flight from LAX was a little delayed, but they made up the time in the air. Before long we were riding the SeaTac monorail to the the rental car facility.

As we went through the machinations of locating our rental I noticed our faithful Old Red suitcase was not cooperating as well as it usually did. Something was wrong with one of the wheels. A cursory inspection revealed the wheel had been destroyed. We pulled away the broken plastic pieces that were slowing us down, to reveal a piece of metal that had been holding it all together. Old Red’s traveling days were over.

That Red Suitcase

I can’t let an old traveling companion like Old Red pass away without acknowledging its glory days. I got the suitcase and a matching tote at JC Penney’s while Bill was an interpreter in Iraq, 2006-7. I was determined to get just what I wanted and was amazed at the affordability of Penney’s choices. The big red bag was fitted out well, with a hanging bag you could fold up into the lid and a matching shoe bag. How could I resist?

I vetoed the matching rolling carry-on and instead chose a matching rolling tote. It was too big to be a carry on, but I’m not a fan of wrestling a rolling bag on board, anyway. I want all my bags checked and only carry a small cloth backpack on board. The matching tote would be perfect for my toiletry bags and shoes. I was a happy camper.

Of course, right after that was when airlines decided to change up the luggage policies they’d had for years. Two checked bags had been the standard since the beginning of my travels by air. In those days, every one checked two bags and then got on the plane with a rolling carry on. Good old Southwest resisted the change until recently, so my red luggage was fine, for years, with Southwest and the arrangement was good for road trips, but when I flew anyone else rolling tote had to stay home and I’d utilize one of the many rolling carry-ons that somehow landed in our attic.

Old Red made some amazing trips with us for a dozen years as my suitcase. Along the way I discovered it was actually smaller than the maximum size I could check with most airlines, but it was configured in such a way that I still managed to get what I needed in there.

Then in 2019 as we prepared for out Anniversary Cruise, all the hard plastic stuff inside the cloth exterior broke up. That damage and the fact that I needed a little more room to get my vow renewal ceremony gown and all the accoutrements in, suggested it was time to buy me a new bag. So that’s when we bought Purple Pair, the luggage I use now, but the bag we check is so large I can barely maneuver it myself.

However, Bill decided he would continue to use Old Red, even without the protective plastic inside, so she kept traveling with us. Sometimes Bill would use her and sometimes I would take her on a trip with me, when I didn’t need the extra room the purple bags gave me and I didn’t want to handle the Purple Monster.

Seventeen years Old Red went on all our travels with us. I’d only paid about $75 for the pair, so I got some real value out of them. If I ever need a rolling tote, I still have Old Red’s mate – and yes, she’s still great for shoes and toiletries. With all those trips together, I was sad to see Old Red go, but I thought with her lost wheel we’d need to replace her right away. Not Bill, he continued to drag her along, all over WA state.

Once we made it home, we knew we had to get rid of Old Red, but I became very sentimental about her and took the photo above. When we’ve traveled since, I’ve mourned the loss of Old Red. The airlines did replace her for us – a shiny new hard size bag we’ll call Cool Blue – more the size of Old Red than the Purple Monster – but I don’t trust her. There was a period of time where Bill was using hard-sided luggage and the airlines seemed to crack it every trip. Let’s hope they’ve improved hard-sided luggage since those days. Cool Blue went to Arizona and on our latest cruise, performing well both times, but I still miss Big Red.

So, on this trip we said farewell to two old favorites – Park ‘N Fly and Old Red. A new travel era had started! Come back next week and we’ll go to Snoqualmie Falls, one of the best treats of the whole WA state experience.

DESTINATIONS, TRAVEL, Travel Planning, United States

Wild & Wonderful Washington State

Jane Sadek

MAKING MEMORIES: LET’S GO TO WASHINGTON STATE!

I’m taking you along on our 2024 vacation to Washington State, a vacation we’d been looking forward to for many years. Come along and let’s get some planning done.

A 2024 Vacation that started in 2012

Back in 2012 I started planning a trip to the Pacific Northwest, but I quickly decided a couple of weeks wouldn’t allow us to see everything we wanted to see in Oregon, much less also visit Washington State. So we took a great vacation to Oregon, a place we loved and planned to return to Washington State as soon as we could.

As it turned out, we didn’t make it until 2024. Our 30th wedding anniversary was last year and that opened the budget up a little. We are also semi-retired these days, so I proposed visiting Washington State AND staying there for a full two weeks. Bill is an 8-Day guy. We take 8 day cruises and the only way I get by with a 10 day vacation is pointing out we’re traveling to and from our destination on two of those day, so they don’t count. I had no idea how I would cram enough of WA state into 8 days to make it worth the flight.

The 8-Day man relented and the planning began. At the top of the list, Snoqualmie Falls! That’s the picture above. I’d seen images of it when I first started researching the Pacific Northwest and knew I didn’t want to leave WA without a peek at it. Then Butchart Gardens. It had been one of my mom’s favorite places and she urged me often to make the trip. I love all things Chihuly so I wanted to see as much of his work as I could and since he’s a Washingtonian, there was plenty to see. I thought Bill would enjoy the Museum of Flight and there’s a lot in Seattle. And somehow, I was determined to also see the Olympic National Park and its rainforest. If I’d had a few more days, I would have visited the San Juan Islands, too, but I knew I already had more stuff to see than my 14 days would allow.

Planning in Earnest

For flights I used the Incognito Google Travel trick and ended up on Delta. I can never think of the airline without remembering someone’s quip about it, Don’t-Even-Leave-The-Airport. Or perhaps I remembered it, because several in-flight incidents with Delta had been on the news, but it was a deal compared to the rest of the flights I could find, so I planned to leave the airport with them.

My friend Expedia helped me with accommodations in Snoqualmie, Tacoma and Olympia, but for the rainforest I booked a National Park Service lodge. Then I found the big saver, Black Ball Ferry Lines. In researching the ferry to get us to Victoria BC and Butchart Gardens, I discovered you could also book your hotels through them and the savings were BIG at great hotels. Heck, I even booked my Butchart Garden tickets through them and my hotel in Seattle. The day I made the purchase the price gave me the jitters. I don’t usually make purchases that large, so hitting the Pay Now button was a little scary.

I made another important decision in this process. Parking in Seattle is reputed to be impossible and more than one source told me to take advantage of public transportation. The hotel I chose put us right across the street from the light rail station, so I decided once we arrived in Seattle we’d take the car back to Sea-Tac. All of these decisions turned out to be very good ones.

So, travel purchases made and bags packed, let’s got to WA state next week!

ART, Attractions, DESTINATIONS, Memory Keeping, Museums, Photography, Road Trips, TRAVEL, United States

Petersen Automotive Museum

Jane Sadek

MAKING MEMORIES: I LOVE CARS

The Grand Finale

As I’ve mentioned, I didn’t do much in the way of research for this trip. Nephew was supposed to cover LA, Lizbet planned Huntington Beach, we know the Central Coast and Bill found Casa de Herrero. All I can really take credit for is bringing the glue that turned all of these disparate things into a vacation.

Petersen Automotive Museum was not anybody’s list, but we passed it when we were leaving LACMA and I made a mental note of it. When we decided to go, I just put LACMA in the GPS and looked for the place I saw across the street. We spent more time in the car museum than we did in the art museum! It was one of our favorite things of all the new places we visited.

If you don’t love cars, then this is not the place to go. That’s all there is: cars, cars and more cars, with a few motorcycles thrown in for good measure – floor after floor of cars. They tell you to take the elevator to the top and then work your way down.

My favorite part was this section of the museum. Here’s some of the cars they had. Yes, I do keep showing you various shots of Steve McQueen’s sports car, but it’s only a fraction of what I have.

This car museum spoiled me forever. In a few months time I would go to another famous car museum, but all I could thing of was how inferior it was to this one.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

Eventually we had to leave the car museum. Perhaps I should have covered it in more detail, but there were cars, lots of cars and then some more cars. It was heaven.

After some fast food it was back to the car rental place and then onto the airport via a shuttle. (We used Fox.) The weather was glorious all the time we were in California, but the story was different back at home. North Texas had been caught up in the annual freeze over for most of the time we were gone, which was odd, because we used to have one snow day a year and that was it.

We enjoyed the final day in LA. Our flight left LAX a little before 7, but the time difference was against us and it was midnight before we crawled off the plane. Thankfully, the flight was to Love Field, because things are much closer together and our car is always just across the street. We don’t have to wait for a parking shuttle.

Remember the cold weather? Well, Bill had me stay in the building and went to get the car. What a gentleman! But he was soon back without the car. It wouldn’t start. We feared we’d be sleeping in the terminal, but Bill called some emergency number posted in the garage and it was no time at all until a guy showed up and jumped a start.

We made our way home and went to bed. Directly to bed!

Before I move on, I’ll share a few more of my favorite cars with my photobook pages.

Architecture, ART, Attractions, DESTINATIONS, Gardens, Memory Keeping, Photography, Road Trips, TRAVEL, United States

Back to LA

Jane Sadek

MAKING MEMORIES: GREYSTONE MANSION

Too Many Sad Stories

I go to a lot of historical homes and palaces. One thing most of them have in common is sad stories. He built the home for the love of his life and she died shortly after it was finished. They built their dream house, but were then bankrupt. He never finished his castle, because he committed suicide. The bought the house, did extensive remodeling for their coming child, then the mother and child both died in childbirth. I’m just drawing these out of the air, but each one probably has at least five places I’ve been that would fit the story. It’s rare to find a happily-ever-after house.

Greystone Mansion is no different. “On the night of February 16, 1929, only five months after the family had moved in, Ned Doheny was found shot to death inside the home, at the age of 35 and the victim of an apparent murder-suicide perpetrated by his longtime personal friend and aid Hugh Plunkett,” says beverlyhills.org.

You are welcome to enjoy the grounds, but the interior is off limits. The facility is frequently used for grand affairs and as a location for filming movies, TV shows etc., but most of the time it just sits there sad and empty. There is a tour of the interior every first weekend, but that’s not when we were there.

All the signs say photography is not allowed, but then no one is there to stop you and we ran into some people scouting it as a filming location and they offered to take our picture for us, so if you go, snap away. I do believe what they say about filming, because just a few days after we got home, I saw a TV show where the characters were standing under the lamp in the photo above.

Here’s what the mansion looks like.

From the mansion, we drove around Beverly Hills a bit. We thoroughly enjoy looking at rich people’s stuff. Then we returned to our nephew’s house for the evening and had dinner at an Italian restaurant that was supposed to be historical, but it was really just dirty and old and the food was awful.

The vacation was winding down. We’d be flying back the next day, but I had one more trick up my sleeve and it turned into one of the things we enjoyed most of the whole vacation.

Accommodations, Attractions, DESTINATIONS, Memory Keeping, Road Trips, TRAVEL, United States

Food, Drink & Accommodations Around Santa Barbara

Jane Sadek

MEMORY MAKING: STRETCHING OUR BUDGET

Dinner in Downtown Santa Barbara

After the Casa de Herrero tour was over, we were hungry, but the time of the tour had landed us right in that dead zone between lunch and dinner. We drove to Santa Barbara, found some parking and walked over the State Street. When you live on the Central Coast, Santa Barbara is the big city or at least the biggest city in striking distance, so we’d been there many time during our six year sojourn and we made it point to visit whenever we returned.

State Street is the main drag and there are many choices of restaurants, but most of them can be a little pricey. We walked up and down, visited a few shops and then Bill decided on Pizza. Mizza was a satisfying choice gastronomically, but the service could have been better.

On to Carpinteria

We have a secret when we visit Santa Barbara. We stay at the Holiday Inn Express in Carpinteria . The price is right and it has everything we need. I did a great job describing it last time, so there’s no need reiterating it.

The next day in Santa Barbara was just what it was supposed to be, a chance to decompress before heading back to LA and then back home. We hung around the beachside area and Stern’s Wharf, enjoyed an art show, stopped by the mission, drove around the hills and saw an open house, had lunch at someplace called the Fish House. It was nice, if not spectacular.

Our favorite part of the day was back in Carpinteria. It was about sundown when we rolled into town and I saw a sign pointing towards Carpinteria Beach. We headed that way and found much of the population of Carpinteria making the most of a Sunday twilight.

We spent a good amount of time there, enjoying the people as much as we did the beach. Back in the room, there was a little reorganizing and packing. Bill had some work he needed to do and I did some crosswords. Exciting, right?

Here’s the page I created to remember Carpinteria Beach by.

Accommodations, Architecture, ART, Attractions, Decorative Arts, DESTINATIONS, Gardens, Memory Keeping, Photography, Road Trips, Scrapbooking, TRAVEL, United States

Leaving Pismo for Santa Barbara

Jane Sadek

MAKING MEMORIES: PISMO LIGHTHOUSE SUITES & CASA DE HERRERO

Pismo Lighthouse Suites

I can’t abandon Pismo without a shout out to our wonderful accommodations. After the grandeur of the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort, pretty much anything else would have to be a step down, but we didn’t have to step very far down. Pismo Lighthouse Suites proved to be an excellent choice for a stay.

Don’t expect swanky, because it’s not, but it is nice. Very roomy with a bedroom totally separate from the living area and a full kitchen. Bill didn’t think much of the décor, but I thought it was very functional and everything was clean. Who could ask for more when you’re watching your pocketbook at little?

One thing we certainly loved was the breakfast every morning, served in a community room and if you couldn’t find something you liked, then you are really too picky. I’d sure stay here again.

Casa de Herrero in Montecito

Bill usually leaves most of the vacation planning to me, but when he does make a suggestion, it’s a jewel. I didn’t find it in any of my research, but it should be on every must-see list for Santa Barbara. It’s a little pricey and hard to schedule, but it is a gem.

The home is open to the public at 10 AM and 2 PM on Wednesdays and Saturdays – PERIOD! And the tickets are $50 per person. I’ll wait for you to catch your breath. If budget is not a constraint and you can be there on their schedule, then you have to go. You will love it. Lotus Land was $60 each, but it seems to me there was a whole lot more to it. Still, I’m glad I had the opportunity to go.

We pulled into Montecito about 1:15 PM and had to kill about half and hour in a shopping center parking lot. We couldn’t just go hang out by the Casa. They keep the gate closed until a few minutes before the tour and you aren’t allow to park in the neighborhood. Parking is at a premium everywhere in Montecito and the signs at the shopping center were very threatening, so we couldn’t even lock up the car and go for a walk. We had to pretend one or the other of us was visiting one of the establishments, while the other guarded the car.

Finally, it was almost time for them to open their gate, so we made our way to the home. When the tour started, we were informed we couldn’t take photos inside, but think San Simeon’s dining room turned into a full house. Very Spanish and a little dark.

The original builder and owner of the house was George Fox Steedman from San Luis Obispo, who started out as a metalsmith and woodworker, threw in a few real estate deals and became filthy stinking rich. The house had a metalsmithing and woodworking studio where Mr. Steedman pursued his interests. The house is full of valuable antiques from the Golden Age of Spain, but they are pretty dark and depressing.

Counterpoint to the interior with it’s nod to the Inquisition, outside was delightful and you could take photos. And that’s what you’ll see on the photo book pages I’ve included below.

Attractions, DESTINATIONS, Memory Keeping, Photography, Road Trips, TRAVEL, United States

Driving Down Memory Lane

Jane Sadek

MAKING MEMORIES: MAKING MEMORIES OF MEMORIES

The Pismo Pier

After leaving our old house and taking a drive through it’s neighborhood, we headed to Downtown Pismo Beach. Some things don’t change and trying to park in Pismo is one of them. Weekday in January and parking was at a premium. We made our way down to the waterfront where many improvements had taken place. We took pictures, walked to then of the pier and took more pictures. It’s not the most beautiful beach in the world, but it’s a familiar one.

Over our two day stay we snapped photos wherever we were. Eating at the Shore Cliff (which they now call the Ventana Grill), hanging at Pismo Lighthouse Suites (which was a marvelous place to stay), visiting our friends or just driving between their houses. I combined all these photos to create Pismo Beach pages I’ve added below for you to see.

On to Estero Bay & Cayucos

Though Pismo Beach is where we built our home and lived later in California, we first lived in Los Osos. Los Osos was part of a estuary shared with Morro Bay. Then down the road a little bit is Cayucos. These were our haunts.

We finished many a day in Los Osos by visiting the beautiful Montana de Oro State Park which was moments away from our rental house. Or we’d just walk around our neighborhood, Cabrillo Estates with it’s jaw dropping views. Bill also enjoyed playing golf at Sea Pines Resort.

Los Osos was a great place to live, but it didn’t have much in the way of restaurants, so eating out usually meant going over to Morro Bay which was more of a touristy town. If if we wanted Tex-Mex, we’d go to the only place on the Central Coast which actually knew what that was, Taco Temple in Cayucos. They were more famous for their California Fusion fish tacos, but we always ordered the nachos.

We also loved going up to Cambria with beautiful Moonstone Beach, but we didn’t make it this trip. Don’t worry, we’ll make a point of going next time we visit the area – and we will visit the area again.

So, on this nostalgic tour, we drove up to the top of Cabrillo Estates and stood in wonder of the majesty of God’s creation. We hit our two favorite spots in Montana de Oro, Spooner’s Cove and the Bluff Trail. Sea Pines was next and the Baywood neighborhood nearby. On we drove on around the estuary and through Morro Bay State Park.

We hadn’t left Pismo until around 3 PM, so the day was getting away from us. We merely drove through most of Morro Bay, but we did get out at Morro Rock. From the rock we drove on Highway 1 beside Morro Bay Strand to spend a few minutes on the Cayucos Pier, before going to Taco Temple for a plate of their nachos.

If you’re wondering what all that looked like, then you’ll enjoy these pages.

DESTINATIONS, Memory Keeping, Road Trips, TRAVEL, United States

Back in the Hood

Jane Sadek

MEMORY MAKING: OLD FRIENDS AND FAVORITE PLACES ON THE CENTRAL COAST

Leading with the Human Connections

On the way to town we’d connected with one friend and had dinner with others as soon as we arrived. Now we’d be stopping by for “coffee” with even more people we’d enjoyed when we lived there. I put quotes around coffee, because I don’t drink it, but it’s easier to make coffee appointments and explain my odd negation of the beverage for later. If we were going to be in the area for an extended period, I would have reached out to quite a few more favorite faces, but our time was limited.

First up was Sally, a sister in the Lord. We met at South Bay Women’s Network, which was a group I loved all the time I was there. Sally and I have stayed in touch, mostly thanks to the magic of Facebook and her very sweet spirit. Since we’d last seen each other in person, she’d gotten married and moved from Los Osos to Avila Beach. It was great to catch up, meet her guy and see her very lovely home.

Too soon, because we could have continued the visit for hours, it was time to head to Arroyo Grande to visit Melissa, a sister in real estate. I did real estate while I was there and besides being one of the nicest people in the world, Melissa was also one of the very best real estate agents I ever met. I tried to emulate her in everything thing I did and gave her my client list when I left. She was still married to the same guy, but had given up a big rambling house on a large lot to downsize in the city. We shared all the real estate gossip and I caught up on her family. Then she showed us around her remarkable estate. In the front it looks like just another lovely home in the Five Cities, but the backyard seems more like a resort than a residential space and then there were all the garages – one with her beloved RV. Her daughters carried on her real estate business for her and Melissa is busy being a grandmother and RV traveler.

We Built That

Having fulfilled our coffee appointments, we made our way to our old neighborhood, not to see someone, but some place. Our home at 37 La Gaviota had been Bill’s labor of love and he wanted to spend some time there. Even though he’d done my real estate photography on the Central Coast, he didn’t learn to fly a drone until we opened Spot On Images in Texas. Bill had brought his drone along so he could get some shots of the old home place. At the time, it was the pinnacle of his home building experiences. Now we live in what he considers his masterpiece.

I’ll leave you with the pages I made in Artisan from his photo shoot of our old home.

DESTINATIONS, Memory Keeping, Road Trips, TRAVEL, United States

The Long & Winding Road of Friendship

Jane Sadek

MEMORY MAKING: BETWEEN A ROCK & A HARD PLACE IN PISMO BEACH

Deja Vu All Over Again

Though we hated to leave our glamorous digs in Huntington Beach, it was time to head up the road to see other good friends in the Pismo Beach area. The day was uneventful until we decided to get off Highway 1 and take a scenic backroad. Then it was deja vu all over again.

My plan was to meet Deni in an Orcutt coffee shop called Plenty on Bell and then drive on to Pismo for dinner with, let’s call them, A & B. Dinner is something you have around 7:30, right? Well, A & B had decided, since we’d seen them last, that it’s at 5. Things were about to get tight and that’s where the deja vu came in.

The last time we’d been to Pismo, we stayed with A. We also had plans with another friend we’ll call C, but as we drove into town, A called us with the news they’d gotten us tickets to some gala and we had no time to see C. We were between a rock and a hard place with no place to win. We went to the gala (which was not a gala at all, more of a drunken brawl) and missed the time with C. A went on to monopolize the rest of our time, so I never got out to C. My friendship with C cooled to an acquaintance sort of relationship after that (and who can blame her). That was a great loss for me.

I thought I’d learned the lesson I needed to learn. So I booked our hotel before we even told A we were coming. We love her to death, but after living out there for six years, she’s not the only person we love in the area. We thought staying in a hotel would keep her from monopolizing all of our time, but the struggle was not over.

Back to the Present

So, here we were on the backroad to Orcutt. The GPS had been very wrong at estimating our arrival at Orcutt, so our time with Deni was already shrinking and A is on the phone demanding we get our butts to Pismo posthaste. Lesson learned, I wasn’t going to let A’s demands cost me another friend. So I pushed back and made room for Deni. It wasn’t enough time, but my friendship with Deni is longer and deeper, so she got both the rock and the hard place. We chatted for a while, shared a couple of hugs and I got back on the road to Pismo with that friendship intact.

Our dinner with A & B was lovely. We laughed so hard we cried. At the end of the meal, A started trying to organize the next day around their schedule, not ours. It was hard, but I pointed out the brief nature of our visit and the long list of people we needed to see.

Despite my many protestations, I was to call her as soon as I was free the next day. Not to worry by lunchtime she called us and demanded to know when we’d be there. As I had told her at dinner, we weren’t.

The lesson I learned this time was to let A know we are visiting Pismo after we’ve already seen the rest of our friends. I hate that it has to be like that, but it’s that or not have any other friends in the area and I plan on keeping them all.

Attractions, DESTINATIONS, Memory Keeping, Restaurants & Bars, Road Trips, TRAVEL, United States

True Friends Really Are Friends Forever!

Jane Sadek

Lucky She Love Us

My friendship with Lizbet started at work many years ago. I was in a bind with a customer and she fixed it, when everyone else in the company shrugged their shoulders at me. I was in sales back in those days, which I hated, and when I moved to admin, one of the best things about it was being in the same building as Lizbet. What started as a transactional solution, led to being lunch buddies and on to her being one of my favorite people on the face of the earth. There’s a lot of water under that bridge.

No one can make me laugh the way she can. We love talking about odd, esoteric things that few others care about. And she gets Bill. There’s more, but that’s enough!

Tour Guide Extraordinaire

Because she gets me and she gets Bill, she knew we’d love the things she loves about the area. Such as the ferry to Balboa Island, which was her first treat of the day. It’s a tiny ferry that only holds one or two cars. These days there’s a bridge that takes you there without waiting for the nostalgic reminder of yesteryear, but we loved the experience. She also took us up a winding Laguna Beach road which leads through gorgeous residential areas to an overlook that’s known as Top of the World. Bill’s favorite thing was Crescent Bay Point Park, which was a lovely park high above a beautiful bay.

For lunch she chose a very unique Corona del Mar establishment, Roger’s Garden which is part restaurant, part garden center, part event venue and part home décor store. The closest Dallas might have to this experience would be Jackson’s Home & Garden, but you wouldn’t have your wedding there and there’s no restaurant. As to the rest of the day, Dallas has nothing to compare. That part of California is unparalleled.

But the best part of the day, by far, was spending time with such a good friend. Neither one of us is particularly good about staying in touch, but the occasional holiday greeting and texted update keeps the friendship alive, until we spend another wonderful day together. From a day like that, there should be hundreds and hundreds of photos, but there’s not! Here’s some that we did take.