Dreams, Moments, Travels
Shortly before heading off to the Navy, Jessica stopped in Arizona for one more visit.
Immediately, we drove over to southern California and had dinner at Mix Bowl, a fast-food Thai cafe, before staying the night in Santa Barbara to say hello to Aunt Ann and Uncle Woody.
After our night in Artesia (Little India) and breakfast at a south Indian place called Annapurna, we drove out to San Gabriel for Sonal to visit Caroline’s favorite nursery here in L.A.
Sonal, Caroline, and I spent our brief weekend in Los Angeles on nothing but eating and shopping.
If you like bargain hunting, Chinatown and Little India are places made for dreams.
After spending a few hours here, we headed back over to Artesia so Sonal could do some shopping for essentials she’d drag back to Arizona for her small shop, Indo Euro Foods.
Ending the trip we had dinner at Rasraj.
Indo-Chinese food for the win!
Taking the scenic route through the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area as part of our trip back to Arizona. We are passing Malibu Creek State Park on Mulholland Drive in California; on the right in those mountains is the site where the TV show MASH was filmed. This sure beats the freeway.
Thank you to the person selling vine-ripe strawberries next to the road. Every time we stop for berries in Southern California, it ruins us from buying them in Arizona.
Back on the freeway for the drive home. Just beyond the curve ahead to the right will be our first glimpse of the Los Angeles skyline, and the temptation begins to go explore some other corner of Hollywood or L.A. These moments of the trip might be the most nostalgic for me as it brings me back to my teen years when I’d clandestinely make my way to the greater downtown Los Angeles for some exploration.
The last major stack of interchanges on Interstate 60 traveling east across California. We deviated off the I-10 as we needed to grab a couple of Boba teas at Ten Ren’s Tea Time in Rowland Heights. If you’ve never been to Ten Ren’s, you might not understand why it’s worth the detour.
Only an hour left to Blythe means we’ll be home in around three hours. You can be assured that we are still eating those yummy strawberries all the way home.
On a glassy ocean, we glide over the surface of the Pacific on our way to Anacapa in the Channel Islands National Park. The ride is brief at only about 11 miles from shore to shore and is serene in the quiet of the fog.
We arrive at an island in bloom. These yellow flowers are from the giant coreopsis that only blooms for about two weeks a year. Anacapa is one of the best locations to see them in this state should you be so lucky to be out here at just the right time.
Anacapa is part of a series of small islets covering only about 700 acres of land. We are on East Island, and somewhere out in the fog are the West and Middle Islands.
West Island is obscured by the fog, but at the end of East Island here, well, where the trail ends, you can see Middle Island a bit better. The Anacapa chain stretches for a total of about five miles.
Sometimes called Tree Sunflowers, these coreopsis plants can be quite tall for what looks like shrubberies in the distance.
While the dominant wildlife by appearance is the nearly 70 species of birds that live here there is an abundance of insects, invasive rats, and surrounding us in the waters below everything from sharks and sea lions to anemones and sea stars.
There are no tours of the lighthouse available, but the foghorn sounds great.
It’s beautiful out here on this narrow strip of volcanic land, especially with everything so green and flowery.
After a few hours of wandering around, visiting the museum, and enjoying the solitude, we were about to board the boat for the trip back to the mainland.
With nearly 70 species of birds out here, there is poop everywhere, a lot of poop.
On the way back in, we were joined by a pod of dolphins that raced along with us and leaped out of the water from time to time. This was the first time Caroline and I had such a close encounter with dolphins that were playing with the craft we were on, as opposed to the smaller pods of porpoises that we saw up in Monterey back in January.
Back in Santa Barbara, we headed to the park to walk Sophie before Caroline and I headed back to the ocean for a walk before dinner.
Cloudy, sunny, foggy, we don’t care. We just love being next to the sea.
It was already late in the afternoon when we got out of Phoenix, but we’ve made this trip countless other times and have a good idea of what we’re up against. Once again, we are not flying, and it’s also likely that someone along the way will voice how they couldn’t do the drive because it’s so boring. We find this view anything but boring. I think their boredom has more to do with the quiet in their mind or the inability to carry on a conversation with the person they are traveling with.
It’ll be close to midnight when we pull into Santa Barbara, and until then, we’ll have the sunset, holding hands, and probably something yummy to eat along the way.
So what should we do this Sunday morning? I know; let’s go to Six Flags Magic Mountain and see how truly exhausted we can become. So that’s what we did.
While I didn’t show you this yesterday, it is, in fact, the way Queen Rinku is moved around. She can walk without issue, but in her village, she is royalty, so Jay and Krupesh are trying to help her adjust to living in America.
All of us except Krupesh somehow took a bath on this last ride, and it being February, we are quite cold.
Knowing that we don’t have a lot of time here, we are trying to get to some of the more iconic rides, such as the kind of roller coasters Caroline loathes.
Like a wolf howling at the moon, this is how Rinku talks about her life with her friends back in India….”Just let me tell you about Tapuuuuuuuu and Seemaaaaaaa.”
Nobody can ever know how much we laughed over these two days, and it’s not over yet.
It’s getting late when we arrive in Little India for some dinner at Rasraj and some CDs from Ziba Music. It was agreed that even though this detour to Artesia would guarantee that we wouldn’t be home until about 3:00, everyone would work with me to stay awake for the long drive back to Phoenix. We sang, froze with the windows open, screamed as loud as we could, got out and walked around, danced in our seats to Bollywood favorites at full volume, and laughed; all the way home.