Birthday Wishes to one of my Favorites

Our favorite tall, beautiful, talented blonde is having a birthday this week! Everyone be sure and send her some birthday greetings and tell her, "Your Mama loves you!"

Palos Verdes and Channel Islands

The boat trip to the Channel Islands takes about an hour. We saw one whale but on the way back there were "mega pods" of dolphins that followed us. There were about a hundred of these little fellows all around the boat who came up to say, "Hello, humans, welcome!" It was an amazing experience and makes me think a different way about our relationship with the animal kingdom. This is as close as we got to the traditional photo of the arch at the Channel Islands that you see in all the brochures. We did not visit the Island near the arch. During the winter the trips are limited and the only Island available to us was Santa Cruz. We had a lovely hike there, though and enjoyed it very much. I am working on my scrapbook now and plan to scan it for a slideshow when I finish it.

Here we are on the Palos Verdes pennisula that we could see from our hotel balcony. You are looking at Redondo beach with Los Angeles in the background. We drove over there one evening and arrived just in time for sunset and enjoyed a walk along the ocean across from some of the million dollar homes there.

Basil got the Palos Verdes sunset with a boat and a helicopter!

South Coast Botanic Garden

This is a very old botanical garden built on a landfill . It was beautiful and we spent a very enjoyable afternoon there. I was amazed to see everything green and blooming in January.
The Lake
Wait for me!

California Poppy

Japanese Plum TreePlum Tree Blossom

Calla Lilly

Reminders of home

The Bottle brush Tree was about 3 times as large as the ones we saw in Florida.

The Mall

One of the scariest things I did in Los Angeles was drive to the mall by myself. It was only 4.5 miles (and I had a GPS) and I had no problems. Well, I did circle the parking garage a couple of times before I found the way out, and someone honked at me. (Everyone honks in California) I also turned on the wrong street once, but it was a nice detour in a residential neighborhood and a I had no problem getting back to the street I was supposed to be on. I was also worried that I was going to have to park in a garage at the mall, but it was a normal parking lot, just like ours! There are lots of hills in Los Angeles and sometimes you have to stop at a red light on a steep incline. It was a very pretty mall with 3 levels, but not all that big. One of the larger stores, Mervyns had closed two weeks before.

I bought Middle Eastern food from the food court to take back to the hotel for lunch. The guy I bought it from, Isaac, was from Israel. I said "Shalom, God bless you!" and he said, "You like Israel? You Christian?" with a big smile.

It was a very enjoyable trip for me and Basil enjoyed the rest and was pleased I didn't have a fit because he was too tired to drive to San Diego.