Everything’s just beachy.

We said goodbye to Las Vegas and headed to Los Angeles!

We stopped at the rest area (for a photo of course)

and decided that the snake warnings were just a natural thing out west. (There was one in Arizona and Nevada too).

Even Max was happy about making it all the way across the country. (This is his California Dreamin face). We get back into the truck, head down the road a bit and see a sign that states we would be stopped for inspection. Did we leave America? Nope!

So we get in line to be inspected……(Notice the other campers and motor homes) For some reason these fine folks in front of us just got waved on through, but not us. Maybe it was the Alabama tag on the front that did it. Anyway, we get stopped and we were asked if we had brought any apples, peaches or pecans from Alabama. Mike told the guy we had been traveling for 6 weeks and all our fruits were from Nevada. The inspector then looked us both and said, “Are you sure, you are from Alabama because you don’t look like it.” Mike and I looked at each other and laughed.

Once we got the third degree about our fruits and our non-southern looks, we headed on to Anaheim. We chose to stay in that part of town because surprisingly there are no campgrounds in Beverly Hills.

We went from a nice drive through the mountains, with wide lanes…..

to overcrowded interstate with transfer trucks on one side and tour buses on the other.

 

We finally got to Anaheim Rv Resort, alive and without any bumps! Yay!! I didn’t get any pictures of our site or the campground, sadly, but let me tell you we were very pleased. I took Max to the dog walk and there was grass!!! I know he was so happy and had it not been a dog walk I would have taken my shoes off just to have my toes in it. One of the reasons we chose this park was because of it’s closeness to Disneyland and on their website they said we could see the Disneyland fireworks from the campground. So, every night at 9:30 we watched the fireworks, it was amazing!

What an end to our first night in Cali. It made up for the horrible, terrifying driving experience.

The next morning we decided to go into L.A. to take in the sites. First on the list was the Hollywood sign. Before we left on this trip we asked Micheal what he wanted to see and this was the only thing he could think of. So, I typed Hollywood sign into the GPS and little did we know that she was taking us on an adventure. I trust google maps a little to much. As we are headed into L.A. the traffic is stop and go, stop and go, stop and go, and stop and go. It took forever to get downtown! Once we got closer, we realized we were headed to the Griffith Park Observatory. Mike is a little nervous because he thought we were going to a little park below the sign but our sweet google maps was trying to take us to the sign. Once we got into the park area I told Mike to just drive as high as we could and we would find a parking spot. We climbed up this mountain and finally found a place to pull into and park. We got out of the truck and walked back down the hill a bit and boy, was it beautiful!  One thing about L.A. is the smog is always thick!

Then my sweet Sugarboog got to see the Hollywood sign…….After about 5 minutes the boys were ready to go. So we get back into the truck, did a u-turn on the mountain and headed into downtown L.A.

We didn’t actually stop and park in L.A. so all of my pictures are from the passenger side. This wasn’t one of the towns we wanted to explore but it was cool to see some of the sights in person.

 

The famous Capitol Records building.

Grumman’s Chinese Theater…….and then we rolled into Beverly Hills!

I kept looking for the hillbillies but they must have been busy…..I never really saw any big mansions, I guess those are on private roads.

Anyways, we were in search for Rodeo Drive and after a few wrong turns, we found it.See the sign? It’s above the you may walk now man.It is a very narrow street with the loveliest palm trees! At first it just looked like any other street until……..I see the yellow Rolls Royce and in front of us…….a really pretty Bentley.  There are of course stores on this street.and…..this person’s store…..(I didn’t know most of them)…andMr. Vuitton’s. I really wanted to walk around and have that Pretty Woman moment but sadly there was no parking for the F350.

At the end of Rodeo Drive is…The Beverly Wilshire Hotel. This was cool!

Now after driving around we decided to go to Santa Monica. It was gorgeous! We parked at a bank (for 10.00) and walked straight to the pier. Well sort of to the pier. This is taken from the street in the picture above. You really can’t believe the beauty in mountains that meet the ocean. Simply breathtaking.

The street that runs along these houses is the Pacific Coast Hwy or Hwy 1. ( We have more adventures on Hwy 1 that will show how neat of a road it is)This is Santa Monica Pier. It was very busy!!! We opted to just look at it from afar. We did however walk down to the beach.It was a great day to fly a kite…..obviously.He has officially been from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean just like me when I was younger. Now the sand on this beach was not like the white sand on the Gulf. It was like a gritty play sand. It wasn’t my favorite but the folks hanging on the beach don’t know the difference…..poor things!It was a beautiful day at the beach!This is the bike trail that runs all the way to Venice Beach from Santa Monica. Next time we will bring our bikes and ride down that way. In California, you should just take your bike every where you go.

Well we have walked so much, according to Micheal, that it is now time to eat. I didn’t have anything researched so we went to the first place we came to. The Water Grille. It is the restaurant with the black facade. Sorry, this was all I had of the front, but once inside…..wow!This was the view from our table. Now lets get to the food.Mike ordered a fish and some cole slaw. Yummy, but my mouth is still watering over my…..drumroll please…..Buttery lobster roll…..see the butter oozing from the bread. I would brave all the traffic in L.A. just to eat this again.

Moving on…..as we walked back to the truck we came up on a shopping area that was fun. There was a lady that would read your fortune to an amish looking man singing Van Morrison and Michael Buble songs.

I have video of the amish man but once again I can’t load it. We have decided to do a Youtube page to load our videos but that is a work in progress.

As we headed back to the camper I told Mike that I had to ride my bike on one of the many bike trails. So , that what’s we will do tomorrow, after some research of course.

So I read about a place called Seal Beach. It is a quit little seaside town off Hwy 1 that didn’t require us to travel on any major interstate. Down from Seal Beach was a small state park with a bike trail that went to Huntington Beach. So we head down to the Pacific Coast Hwy in search of the bike trail.Along the way we passed an old naval base with gorgeous views.We get to the park unload our bikes and see a sign that says we are 8 miles from Huntington Beach. No biggie! We just don’t tell Micheal. He isn’t to thrilled with a long bike ride.Yes it was just chilly enough to have on a sweatshirt. One thing we noticed were all the oil rigs that you could see from the shore. It sort of took away from the wonder of the ocean but there was beauty elsewhere.The landscape changes so much in California.Here is the happy boy! Taking a break. In all honesty his bike is not fun to ride on, how do I know? Well on the way back we switched bikes. I didn’t make him go on long bike rides after that!

So we get into Huntington Beach and there is a dog beach with so many dogs running around, I wouldn’t be able to remove my shoes to walk in the sand. That’s just me getting grossed out about stuff but the dogs were loving it. I am not sure what was going on here but it seems very popular. People were renting those big bikes and geez it got crazy trying to dodge them but luckily no one got hurt.Surf lessons and food. Look at the pay phone…..that is awesome. We didn’t stay long but we saw enough to make us want to visit again. Next time by car so we could walk around the shops.

Once back at the camper we had dinner and you guessed it….fireworks at 9:30.This was from inside our camper….it makes me happy.

Tomorrow we celebrate my birthday…at Disneyland.