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.

The Nasty Shock!

Checking into this hotel had a "different feel" than the others we had stayed in. I went to bed and had a wrestless sleep the night before, weird dreams and woke up tired. I told Scootard that I didn't want to stay in this particular hotel again.  It just didn't feel right.

We started our morning in full anticipation of having a great day.  I was packing up things and Scootard went down to the car to get a head start on loading some of things I had packed.  He soon returned with what appeared to be our insurance documents in his hand.

What!!!??  Go figure!

Needless to say, I started snapping these pictures for our insurance company back in Canada....

The glass had been shattered into a gazillion pieces and it was going to take some doing to get it all out.
Of course the hotel didn't want to be responsible for anything.

I was NOT happy......:-(.  Poor Scootard was on the phone trying to get some police officer to answer the phone.  We held on forever before someone actually took the call.  She turned out to be no help whatsoever and merely gave us another number to call.

 I made the suggestion that we make our way to the station to file a report.  We had already spoken to ICBC (Insurance Company of British Columbia) and they had set up a claim file for us and made recommendations.  However, by it being the weekend, it was going to be tough finding someone to take us on such a short notice.

Low and behold...the station was CLOSED!  what!!??  How do you close a police department???  On the weekend no less in a big city like San Diego??   I thought I was back in BC.....

Well since this was a wash, we just decided to let it go.  The cost of the repair was less than our deductible.  And upon careful inspection, we discovered that nothing was missing except a blanket that Scootard had been given a few months earlier for Christmas.  The food was still there, the car had not been gone through at all.  Just a warm, fluffy blanket was missing.  I began to feel sorry for the person who needed it....:-(.  I had the strong sense that they were sorry, but did what they had to to stay warm that night.

We carried on down the road and tried to make the best out of a bad start of our day.

The flowers on the side of the highway were a pleasant sight.  It was now much later than we had planned to be in San Diego and our next destination was many miles ahead of us still.

But we couldn't go on without a window for the entire weekend.  So, after calling all over San Diego we found this place which happen to be a warehouse as well.  yay!

We got there at 1:00 and they had us up and ready to go by 2:30.

I was also very happy that they gave a warranty on their work.

We were on our way! The window was repaired and it worked!

There is a structure similar to this in Paris called The Louvre.

We decided that we needed to get going and was going along pretty good until we hit this.It had us crawling forever.....:-(.

Finally, we got through the "bottle neck" situation and decided to do a little R&R on the way.....

We passed through this little place......

and ran across this shop that had all manner of wrought iron gates, doors and tiles.  The owner told us that he had been there for 7 years and told us when we had a lot of money to come back and see him!  Hahaha.  Now, I knew we looked "relaxed", but I didn't think we look THAT bad!  haha

Now, you gotta know how hard it was me not to picture some of this stuff in my garden...but I know, I know!  I can't stick everything I see in there.

but he was kind enough to let us look around before we left.......:-)

I think they will fit right nicely in my dream home, on my dream property and the entrance of my dream island....:-)

Ever think about making a gazebo out of old doors?  I have....hummm.

We left and continued on to this little shop and I had to snap a picture of this little thing outside

and this little thingee inside.....This one is green and the one across the room from it was dark blue and white.

and I had to laugh at the name of the place.....but I understood why he named it that seeing what he was selling inside and out.

It was a bit of a hodge podge of stuff that looked like it was from the flower children era......:-)

 ok, now we really ain't make any progress here.  Time to hit the road again!

don't you just love these flowers?  I think they are beautiful, but I don't know what they are.

 I was trying to get a shot of this house that looked like an igloo sitting behind this sign, but the sign was in the way.

and get a load of this one!  A castle right on the corner...

 Scoooooterrrr!!!

These particular flowers seem to thrive here.  They are called "Bird of Paradise".

 We put a few miles behind us and I began to notice that the velvet hills that we passed on the way through the first time were starting to turn brown.....:-(.

It was spotty for the rest of the trip.  Some where brown some were still green but not many....

 The day was starting to wind down for us.  Scootard was getting a little tired and so was I. We headed for Laguna Beach anyway.....:-).

It seemed that even the birds were trying to find somewhere to roost for the night.

and the sunset was magnificent!

and peaceful even though the temperature was starting to drop quite quickly.

We stopped in a local Starbucks to book a reservation for the night and have some coffee being finishing the last leg of the trip for the day.

and it didn't take long to go to sleep after having settled in for the evening.  It had been a very long day...

Stay tuned!