Well, two weeks in....

 How is 2024 treating you?  

We've had an interesting start for sure.  On December 28 we got on a Viking cruise ship in Los Angeles and headed for Hawaii!  Yeah, it's not like visiting Columbia or the Sudan or Pakistan but, well, it's not sitting around in the house either!

It was a fine trip.  My wife and I like being out at sea and Viking did everything it could to make our trip a SEA trip.  We took 5 days to get to Hawaii and the first two were really kind of rough.  It doesn't bother us but there were plenty of seasickness wrist bands and behind the ear plasters to be seen.  We did celebrate the New Year onboard.  I'm pretty sure we've never had little hat things for the New Year before!

 

Then we got to visit Kauai, Oahu, Maui and Hawaii.  On each island there were tours  and we planned on taking one of them on each island.  Ok, with that lead in, do I have to say it didn't work out?  Kaua'i worked out just fine.  The only problem was that much of it was at a 'plantation' which has become a tourist town with lots of small buisnesses to sell stuff to tourists.  Unfortunately many of them were closed!  Duh!  You have 400-500 tourists coming by and you are closed???  Retail has changed a lot since I worked in it!  We did manage to find this Christmas ornament.  It is glass and is painted on the inside; not the outside.  It has chickens because many years ago chickens became wild on Kaua'i and they still are!  You are driving somewhere and here are 6 or 8 chickens just pecking around by the side of the road!  It's amazing!  And fun if you like chickens.  I was trying to take a photo of this rooster trying to have his way with out of the ladies but it just didn't work.  Darn!

The next day we were on Oahu in Honolulu.  We were getting dressed to go out and my wife remembered she wanted something from the bathroom; she turned, caught her foot in some bedclothes that were hanging down and fell!  Oh shit!  Of course she's been recovering from her broken ankle and now she was down again.  Slowly I got her up and we headed down to see the ship's doctor.  The good news is that there was nothing broken; the bad news is that she really couldn't walk and her toes, arm and ribs hurt and were bruised where she had fallen on them.  SO, back in the wheelchair for wifie!  

 

The staff were really quite nice.  They would find us places to sit and places to hide the chair.  The bar staff got to know us better than usually since we did have more time on board and alcohol helps the pain go away.  But really that was only for that first day.  Then I left my wife.

NO, not for ever, just for the Maui tour.  We decided that I'd go do that and she would just relax in our cabin.  Well, actually, she could have come with me except for climbing onto the bus and out of it.  However I did go on the tour.  The first part of the tour was up to a tourist shopping area in Lahaina.  Well, shit!

 

Here you are driving through residential neighborhoods where everything is burned down and then you are in the Hyatt, Hilton & whatever neighborhood with their pristine buildings and lovely golf courses.  Oh, and in the middle was our destination:  the Whaler's Village (Mall).  Well, shit!  Just what I wanted to see:  Louis Vuitton, Sephora Cosmetics, Tommy Bahama clothing, Lululemon sportswear,  Keani Hawaii jewelry, Maui Divers Jewelry.  Really???  The folks who lived there are still working on finding places to live.  There are tents on every beach where people are trying to live.  Of course there are vans parked along the road as well.  It was nasty!  These tents were probably 30 feet from condos that are worth $700K on a bad day!  Oh, and the people in the background are tourists getting on their sailing trimarans for the morning.

Anyway, the second part of the tour was up to a crazy little river, oh, and a rock!  Where you got to climb 147 steps (or something like that) to see the river falls and a weird rock.  The rock is the Iao Needle; it just sticks up there in the middle of a canyon like it was meant to be there.  Weird but photogenic.  The steps were just awful!  They didn't even have hand rails on both sides!

Our last day in Hawaii was on Hawaii, the big island.  We checked with the tour people and they said that going while using a wheelchair was fine so we decided to do it.  Our tour started with viewing the Rainbow Falls.  That was ok; my wife couldn't view them being in the wheelchair but I got a couple nice photos.  This is the falls.

 

Then we wandered off to the Panaewa Rainforest Zoo.  That would probably have been ok too but it was really raining in the rainforest!  And my wife was in a wheelchair and, well, it was pretty wet for her!  So we were definitely first back on the bus!  

THEN came the thing we wanted most from Hawaii.  My wife's sister and her husband sold their huge, fantastic home in Washington a year or two ago and are building a smaller place there; however she hates the winters up there so they have purchased a condo on the island of Hawaii for winters (also golf which is a passion).  We were hoping to meet them for lunch.  Their condo is across the island and it is about a 2 hour drive to get there so visiting at their place was out of the question - so we had lunch together in a local restaurant near the ship.  That was fun.  We'll be back to visit them when we can rent a car and enjoy the island.  No photos, we just all forgot!

And then we were on the way back east!  It was another 5 days of 18 knot speeds and we landed in Ensenada, Mexico.  Apparently there is an old law saying that foreign vessels can't go between US ports exclusively; they have to go somewhere like Canada or Mexico too!  Ensenada is close; Carnival Cruise Lines likes it too!

 

Anyway, we had a nice day in Ensenada; well, except for the tour!  There is a blowhole, La Bufadora, that is pretty impressive with seawater spouting up through this hole in the rock.  That was really nice; the 2/3rds of a mile of trash and trinket sellers on the way there and back was kind of a pain in the ass!  Or, in my wife's case, in the foot!  But we managed it, two + hours of walking may not have been what she wanted but it worked out ok.  There was a nice musical party going on a mile or so from the boat but we just crashed!

And then there is an overnight very quiet ride to LA. and hop off!  Well, it was kind of screwed up since they didn't bother announcing that we were cleared to go but we managed to get off about 08:40 - probably an hour later than we had hoped.  Zoomed through customs; a nice guy named Cassady spent way too much time checking out our passports and then we were in the taxi line.  Amazingly there were no taxi's waiting but a guy showed up and took us to the hotel where we'd left the car and ZOOM!  

I've got to admit that I haven't driven that fast in a while.  We were doing 80-85mph most of the way across California.  Not that we were passing anyone but still!  We got to the kennel about 13:45 - and they want the dogs out by 14:00!  So we just made it; the clock showed 14:00 (2 p.m.) as we drove into the yard.  The house was just the way we'd left it; didn't clean itself or anything.  But, we were happy to be here.  And we had a lovely sunset.  What's not to like?

Thanks for stopping by.  Keep washing those hands and be safe!

Well, it's been a while....

But this time I have an excuse!  It has been so quiet around here that posting a blog entry would just be adding to the boring!  Here is my last photograph from September.  It is one of the local hawks getting a pigeon ready for lunch.

A couple of hours later I went out and found the remains out by the back fence.  We've all got to eat!  

My birthday is at the beginning of October and we've been wanting to see more of the Los Angeles area SO we made a quick trip to LA.  There was flooding on the small California highway that we usually use to get to the coast so we had to go through Las Vegas adding another hour to the usual 5 hour drive.  Of course when we got to the Cajon Summit we hit a slowdown that had us doing stop and go on I-15 all the way down the hill!  Grrrr!  It is only 4 or 5 miles but it seemed to take forever.  

We are thinking of taking a cruise that leaves from the Port of Los Angeles so we decided to stay in that area:  San Pedro.  My wife got us a suite at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.  It was weird to say the least!  It is a nice looking place and the people seemed very nice but it is still very odd.  The ice machines on all 10 floors of the hotel are all empty.  If you want ice you have to go down to the restaurant/bar.  Also there is no note paper, no pen, no ads for their restaurant, nothing.  They had a room safe but it didn't work.  Grrr!  It DID have free parking in the basement so that was nice.  This is a photo of the 'sitting room', it was almost 40' long!

And then the bedroom which was only about 25' long.  (Did I mention we are messy sleepers?)

I've lived in smaller apartments!  Anyway, there were lots of windows and that was the fun part.  Here is some of the port area.

There were cranes and shipping containers all over the place!  We were just up the street from the Los Angeles Maritime Museum but unfortunately we didn't find the time to visit it.  At night the view was pretty spectacular though and the almost full moon didn't hurt any.

We did manage to visit a small portion of the USS Iowa which is docked near the hotel.

We talked about touring the ship but with my wife's ankle acting up we just couldn't make the walking much less climbing!  We did have lunch at a small cafe on the stern of the ship but that was it.  

On Monday we drove up the coastal road towards Palos Verdes, Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach.  It was a very pretty drive.  Yes, there are beaches in California!

And by a weekday in October they are pretty empty!  The hills, however, are not empty.

Look at all those houses!  OMG!  And each one is probably worth something between $2 million and $5 million.  I don't know how they do it.  There was one section of the road that was exceptionally rough.  They had signs saying that the area was in constant motion and urging people to be extra careful.  It was certainly rough enough and had been patched and patched again.  

Anyway, Tuesday we woke early so took advantage to leave the hotel sometime before 05:00 a.m.  Yep, and the roads were just as full as at any time during the day except there were probably more semi-trucks!  Which brings me to California drivers....  Talk about crappy drivers!  We were passed by people doing at least 20 mph over the speed limit.  We were passed on the right.  We had people change lanes directly in front of us and directly behind us.  We saw many cars driving without lights at night.  Staying one lane was definitely an option for some people, including semi-trucks.  If I never had to drive in the Los Angeles area again I would be a happy camper.

However, we did make it out of there.  We had a quiet drive back home on the I-15 and picked up Gus from his dog kennel.  He seems to have had an ok stay.  The owner of the kennel liked him and he seems to have liked the guy in return.  Of course, the guy feeding him does have some advantages over just anyone.  So there you go.  Our first road trip since my wife broke her ankle in May.

Thanks for stopping by.  Keep washing those hands!

Older, yes, wiser, well you can't have everything!

I managed to turn 67 years of age last week.  We had thought it might be a quiet time but decided that we should return to Los Angeles to see a few of the sights.  It was still quiet but just not here!

We drove over on Thursday landing at a Hilton near the Marina del Rey.  We wanted to be within walking distance of the beach and this turned out to be a good choice.  I got to see lots of boats, water and sand.  Each of those is pretty special if you live where I do!

On the Friday we drove up to Malibu just because I'd never been there.  Getting out of Santa Monica heading north was a huge pain because they are fooling with the roads.  We ended up driving through the Brentwood Park area which is apparently a pretty ritzy neighborhood.  We found a restaurant on the beach and had lunch then headed back towards the hotel.  Coming back was much easier; how the roads can have detours in only one direction is beyond me but there they managed it.

We were in time to take a nice walk to the beach and find a lovely little Italian place for dinner.  They had a neat little trick.  They would bring you a large (1.5L) bottle of chianti and a couple of glasses - not wine glasses just ordinary glasses.  Then they say just refill your glasses as you wish and tell us at the end of the meal how much you drank.  It's $6.50 a glass so it's pretty easy to blow through $25 worth of wine.  Well, at least it was easy for us!  You have to know that wine wasn't top grade so they have a nice little profit center thing going on there.  Of course once in a while someone is going to lie about the number of glasses they had but I'm thinking the waiters are pretty expert at judging the amount missing from the bottle.

Saturday we headed for the La Brea Tar Pits.  I've heard about them since childhood but this was my first visit.  It was really pretty cool.  They have over 5 million fossils that have been recovered from the tar; a good number exhibited in the associated Page Museum.  There was a creature called the Dire Wolf who got caught way too often.  They had an exhibit consisting of 400 wolf skulls!  We took a tour around the grounds of the park.  There are places where the tar is leaking through the earth and creating new 'pits'.  They are mostly fenced but there were a couple that were new enough that you could step in them if you weren't careful.  Our guide was careful to warn us to keep out of it because it does not come out of clothing or off shoes!

After the museum we decided to check out 'downtown' Hollywood.  Wow!  Talk about people!  We didn't even get out of the car.  LOL  We wandered back to the hotel and hid!

Sunday was the day for the Getty.  We got there about 11:30 - we were on holiday!  There is a cable car that will take you from the parking to the museum on the top of the hill but there is also a way to walk up so we did that.  It was really cool!  We saw two deer wandering around.  They were shy but certainly not afraid of us.

The museum itself is amazing.  Another word is HUGE!  There are five major buildings of two or three levels each plus some outdoor gardens.  Entry is free but parking is $15.  The artwork we saw was European mostly from the 15th through 19th centuries however there was some Greek statuary.  The exhibits do change so I could certainly go back.  As it was we spent four and a half hours going through the place and only saw about half of it.  There is a separate Getty Villa up the Pacific Coast Highway towards Malibu but we didn't stop there.  I understand it is specializes in the art of ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria.  Maybe we'll check it out on another visit.  You can visit both the museum and the villa and only pay for parking once but I'd be dead from exhaustion if I tried it.  Back to the hotel and after a bit of a rest we wandered out to a Mexican place we'd seen for dinner.

Monday we started slowly again walking around the marina and finding a nice place for breakfast.  Then we pretty much took all afternoon to drive home.  It was raining and that made it extra fun.  It was a great little get-away.  I have to say not cheap but lots of fun.

Thanks for stopping by.  Take care.