Taking It Easy

If you read my post entitled "The Nasty Shock"; you would understand why on this particular day, we decided to not do much of anything.  We were both very tired from all of the "excitement" of the recent break-in.  We wanted to make sure that we could see my brother at least one more time before leaving for Canada and didn't want to be exhausted when we connected again.  So, we decided to just take it easy.
 We had slept in and thus missed "breakfast" such as it was.  It was cold outside but we had to go out to fill the growing hunger that was starting to settle in on us.....

We remembered seeing an IHOP just down the road and decided to take our chances with them for breakfast.  Neither of us made coffee, so we were at the mercy of IHOP's coffee....geeze....
 

After breakfast, we decided to go for a short drive around the lagoon and see what was what.  We needed some quiet and to just be still for a bit.  The sky was overcast, but the view was very beautiful...

I tried to capture what I was seeing, but the sun was fighting me and didn't let me get what I wanted to.

I did seem a bit remote, but there were others out there as well enjoying the scenary and living their lives too...

I know I spent some of the time thinking about the trip over the last 5 months, and all of the things that had happened in that time period...
  

and how that in just a few more days we would be back in Canada starting yet another chapter of our lives and leaving all of this behind...

and then I thought about all of the laundry we had to do!  haha.  I came out of my dream, too one last shot and we headed back to the hotel to get our chores done so that I could see my brother one more time before we left.

It was a great night with family talking and laughing; glad to be able to connect again after so many years....:-)

We headed back across the bridge grateful that something good had happened to us that day in the midst of all of the disappointment.
  

Now, we were ready to sleep.  Seemed like taking it easy made us tired!

Stay tuned!

Give Me A Break!

As you can imagine, we were exhausted from the previous day's festivities of having our car broken into and presuming that all that had been taken was a blanket.  It wasn't until much later that we discovered that much more was missing in the way of clothes and documents.   At any rate, I needed a break and Scootard decided to take me to the beach in Malibu.  

It was full of tourist of course and a lot of "rich folk" who were living their dream up on hillsides and enjoying life.

I have often wondered about California sitting on the San Andreas fault lines and the danger involved in builing on hillsides and things like that.

We had the ocean in view and wanted to find a beach that was not going to charge us $10.00 just to park for  the day!

And we found this one!  Complete with Dolphins and free parking....yay! See the Dolphins?  :-)

I have this "thing" about sand in my shoes.  Unfortunately, we didn't have our water shoes with us.  Since I was wearing sandals I decided to keep them on until I reached the harder sand.  Scootard on the other hand was sinking his toes in as deep as he could....:-)

I love the smell of the ocean....:-).  It smells to me like oysters, although I don't care that much for the tasted of cooked oysters.  I know it's strange...ha

I found these but figured that since we already had a large collection back in Canada, we didn't need to take these with us....

Scootard was showing me how to play a game called "Chicken".  The object of the game is to get as close to the waterline without letting the waves touch your feet.  Which means that when you wait until the very last minute, you will have to run to beat the rushing water and avoid getting your feet wet.  haha

I found the sand to be cold.  So, I knew the water would be cold too....

uh....I didn't run that time...and it was COLD! But all was well until Scootard said "look honey"!  I said look at what?  I went over to where he was standing and when he took his feet out of the sand, it of course made a lot that the water flowed into.  

ok, no big deal.  I know he is easily amused at all things "nature".  But a closer look revealed....

THIS THING!  hundreds of them borrowing into the sand as soon as the tide went back out!  I quickly moved my feet and as soon as I did, hundreds of these little creatures went scrambling into the sand where my feet had been planted.  I was DONE!  hahaha.  That was it for me!  I looked at Scootard and said..."I gotta go!  hahaha.  He tried to assure me that they were only "sand shrimp" and that they wouldn't hurt me.  I was assuring myself that if they missed their "target" by some freak accident, the next place to burrow into would be my feet!  I was out of there....haha  

thus the ocean side adventure ended as I headed over to the showers to wash any stragglers off of my feet.

sight seeing seemed to be a more "calming" option for me at that time.  So, we went up the hill to see what was there. There were several houses like this one......

and the more we traveled up the road, the more of these we saw.....

but now it was time to resume our trip again.  We had a little ways to go from Malibu to San Bruno, California.  This would be our "home" for the next two days

The weather seemed to be warm enough for the year round riders to travel in packs....:-).

I noticed also that the landscaping was changing.....

It went from these vineyards......

to this.  It seemed that all of the velvet hills that I had seen my first time through were turning brown.....:-(.

After traveling some distance we decided to make a rest stop.  I have no idea why this was there, but there it was. I thought it was a wind mill, but Scootard said it was actually a cell tower disguised as a windmill.  We saw several cell towers disguised as trees along the way too...I thought it was very clever.

the sun was beginning to set and we were both getting a bit tired.

and hungry. We ordered a light dinner.

and checked into our hotel for the evening.