Spring Break

It was the perfect weather today for Spring Break!  The sun was shining, it wasn't too hot or too cold, and a small breeze was blowing off and on so we walked down to the parking lot of the nearby school to play.

One grandchild had made a great kite and wanted to try it so see if it would fly.  It did!  The breeze was not quite consistent enough for it to fly very long, so we'll have to try it again another day.

The kids all rode their various bikes down to the school so they could have a large empty area to practice their riding skills.  The weather was a bit deceptive though.  We could see high clouds and the temperature was pleasantly cool, so were not quick to notice that the sun was enough to cause the first little sunburn of the season!

Plenty of love to go around

We are back home again and missing our California family, but you can see that little Ara has plenty of folks who think she needs lots of love and hugs.  I'm already looking forward to seeing her again in a couple of months!

Arachnophobia

I'm nearsighted....have been since I was in grade school, so sometimes when not wearing glasses, I see things, but not clearly.  Maybe that is a good thing, but at other times my imagination fills in where I can't see clearly. 

Such was the case recently when we stayed in a hotel.  It seemed to be an older building which had been remodeled.  The walkways outside the room had a definite tilt to them, but room interiors were nice, with new furnishing and fresh paint.  The bathroom counters were granite with matching granite forming the walls of the shower.

This is where the nearsightedness comes in since the shower is one place I remove my glasses.  The granite was really quite uniform which to my eyes appeared fairly bland and plain...until I turned around and faced the end wall of the shower surround.  That is when I noticed 5 black spots on the granite like these in the picture below.

My eyes said black spots.  My mind screamed "SPIDERS!"  That got my heart rate up a bit!  

Fortunately a closer look confirmed there were just 5 mysterious black spots in the otherwise uniform granite.  Whew!

Cherimoya

Today we stopped by a local farmers market to see what was there.  As we were buying some blood oranges at one table, the seller was telling us how they were his favorite fruit.  Then he mentioned that his 2nd favorite was there at the end of the table.  When I looked where he pointed, I saw a rather nondescript green fruit.  I thought it looked more like a vegetable really.  Just for fun I decided to get one to try.   He said something about a pit in the middle, so I cut into it, expecting to find a single pit, but noticed instead that it had large black seeds spread through out it.  It was ripe enough I could just scoop it right out of the rind.  The flavor seemed like a combination of fruit flavors all mixed in.

The vender told us it is called cherimoya.  Apparently Mark Twain called it 'the most delicious fruit known to men."  It has a fruity flavor similar to a mixture of various fruit.  Son said it reminded him of fruit cocktail.  Other names I saw for it were ice cream fruit and custard apple.

When the seller first started telling me about the color and texture of the fruit, it reminded me of the description I'd seen for durian so I asked him if he had ever had durian.  He said he had, so I asked if he liked it.  He seemed reluctant to answer, but I could clearly see the answer in the way he screwed up his face, so asked him if this cherimoya tasted like durian.  He assured me that it most definitely did NOT taste like durian.  I don't know if I'd go out of my way to buy it again because I thought it a little bland, but the taste was not at all unpleasant, and now I can say I've tried it.

Catalina Island

Twenty-six miles across the sea

Santa Catalina is a-waitin' for me

Somewhere along the line the woodworker was on a ship that went to Catalina Island.  He never did go ashore there at that time, but has always wanted to go back and see the place.  Since we were already in southern California it seemed a good time to fulfill his wish.

We drove from Fontana to Long Beach to catch the Catalina Jet to take us the 26 miles over to the island.  I was afraid I'd be seasick since it has happened before, but the sun was bright, the wind was small and the journey was uneventful.

Here we are leaving Long Beach on the Catalina Jet Express. 

As we left the harbor, we went past the Queen Mary.

We went up to the top deck so we could see everything, so we got a little bit sunburned.  We passed the prettiest little island.  At first I thought it must be someone's private little tropical paradise there near Long Beach Harbor, but in reality, it was all just an elaborate disguise for an oil well.

It took just over an hour to get to Avalon, the main town on Catalina Island, with a population of about 4000 in a square mile.  The streets in Avalon are pretty small. Only 800 cars are allowed on the island.  You have to get a permit to have a car, so you first have to put your name on a waiting list which different sources said were either 18 or 35 years to wait to be able to have a car there.  Some very, very small cars are exempt so we saw Mini Coopers and little Japanese micro cars.  For the most part people just drive golf carts everywhere.  One of the hotels fixed their golf cart up to be quite fancy.

After checking into our hotel, the Casa Mariquita,  we walked over to see a large, round, 12 story high building called The Casino.  In the basement of the Casino was a museum telling the history of the island.  Here you can see the Casino across Avalon Harbor.

We were most interested in seeing what happened to the island during World War II.  It was used as a place to train OSS and Special Forces groups for the military and also had anti-aircraft facilities.  There were also rooms telling about the many movies that have been filmed there as well as stories of movie stars and other famous people who went there to play.  The original movie of Mutiny on the Bounty was filmed on Catalina Island.  Movie star, Natalie Wood died there.  In 1919, William Wrigley of chewing gum fame, bought the entire island.  Since he also owned the Chicago Cubs, they had their spring training camp on the island for many years.  NConservancy.

We walked around town quite a bit, but when we wanted to go see the botanical gardens, it was too far for the time we had, so we rented a golf cart.

It was off season, so the rental place was happy to give us a few discounts....for being a veteran, for having a birthday or probably any other reason he could think of.  The first place we went was to the Wrigley Memorial and Botanic Garden.  William Wrigley was originally buried there but has since been moved.  He really liked the island and did many philanthropic things there, including  encouraging and funding a business which made clay pottery and clay tiles which decorate many parts of Avalon.  His memorial as there as well as a garden meant to showcase many plants native to the area.  Eventually almost all of the island was given to the Catalina Island Conservancy.  The memorial at the botanic garden is in his honor and includes some of the tiles that were made on the island.  The garden contains desert plants including some that are only found on the island.

Old man cactus

Cactus garden

Red hot poker flower

From the Wrigley memorial we could see the ocean in the distance.

Here are some of the tiles made on the island.

After a tour of town via golf cart, we decided to join a larger tour of the island as individual travel with personal vehicles is prohibited on most of the island.  We were told we'd be traveling via Flexible bus.  Sure enough a 1952 Flexible bus was exactly what pulled up to pick us up.

The island is actually quite rugged.  The highest we went was just over 1600 feet I think, but since we climbed that far from sea level it was high enough to have nice views of the island as well as the southern California coast from Malibu to San Diego.  We also could see San Nicholas Island off in the distance which is where Island of the Blue Dolphins took place.

This is a sea level view of Avalon harbor.

These two pictures are taken from much higher up.  We could see someone surfing by the little beach.

We even saw some of the bison which live on the island.

At one of the highest points of the island they had bulldozed three mountain tops to make runways for the little airport which was called the Airport in the Sky.  It isn't really suitable for larger planes at all.

In some ways Avalon reminded us of small town life in Alaska.  It is somewhat isolated, so everything must be brought in by a weekly barge.  With a total island population of about 4000, everyone who lives there knows everyone else.  Prices are high.  Gas in California seems to be running about $4.15 to $4.35 a gallon.  On Catalina it was $6.95 a gallon.  Of course, since everyone pretty much runs golf carts around a very small area, they tend to fill up about once a month.  There are two schools on the island.  The big school is in Avalon with about 600 students in grades K-12.  The school at Two Harbors goes up to 5th grade.  After 6th grade the kids are taken by bus to Avalon for school.  Sometimes the 4th and 5th graders choose to also go by bus to Avalon in order to attend the big school.   This year there are 4 students in the Two Harbors school.  It is the only one room school in the Long Beach Unified School District.

Water is a problem for the island.  There is not enough.  There is apparently a de-salinization plant for some of their water.  They use salt water for flushing toilets and things like that.  Agriculture is not much of an option there due to lack of water. 

There is also a 12 bed hospital on the island.  One of the ladies we met told us that they no longer deliver babies on the island.  I assume from that remark that women must relocate to the mainland the last few weeks of pregnancy.  Apparently a woman who goes into labor while still on the island is taken by helicopter to the mainland at a cost of $3000.

After Alaska vocabulary such as going 'Outside' or to the 'lower 48', we assumed the islanders must have some term they used for the mainland.  When we asked they knew exactly what we meant and said they go 'over town'.

On our way back to Avalon our bus passed the zip line area where some folks were preparing to go down the series of 5 zip lines.  As soon as our bus parked, we grabbed our backpacks and took off quickly to catch our ferry back to Long Beach.

It was quite a change to get back just in time to join the rush hour traffic.

Aquarium of the Pacific

We recently visited the the flora and fauna of the Pacific Ocean from Australia to the icy Polar regions when we checked out the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California.  The parking lot was full of school buses, so it is obviously a popular field trip destination.

Inside were halls representing different areas of the Pacific.   Young people were standing in some areas of the halls showing off specifics of some of the various sea creatures.  We asked them if they were paid employees or volunteers.  They said they were students from the Marine Science Academy in Long Beach who volunteer several hours each week at the aquarium.  We had to laugh at one of the stations though.  It was near the seals.  The students there had plastic bags of blubber so kids could squeeze the bags to feel what blubber is like without actually touching the blubber.  We mentioned that blubber can be used to make Eskimo ice cream, but that sometimes it is made with Crisco when blubber is not available.  One of the students then whispered to me that their blubber was also really Crisco.

Seahorses

Penguins

Ray

I think this one was a dragon fish.

Bat Ray and halibut

Some of the tanks were as pretty as any flower garden.

This is a cutaway showing a baby shark developing from a shark egg.

Seahorses

Jellyfish

There was a tank where visitors could carefully touch some of the sealife.

This one looked like it was yelling about something.

It was a fun place to visit while we waited for our next adventure.