Vacation - December 2009

We decided to take a little Holiday Vacation between Christmas and New Year and visit Los Angeles. The purpose of the trip was to have dinner with the 2 guys with whom I am cooperating on the WimiForum - http://whatismyip.com. However we also wanted to visit The Getty Center, Channel Islands National Park and the town of Solvang.

We'd just finished lunch on Sunday in San Juan Bautista and heading 'over the hill' to I-5 when Ali said "Oh, I think we've goofed. The Getty is closed on Monday!". We didn't turn back. Instead we visited the California Water Supply Exhibition near Gorman, a picnic on the beach at Malibu and a walk on the pier at Santa Monica. Just as good. We'll do the Getty on another trip.

The rest of the trip went to plan. We visited the Island of Santa Cruz in Channel Islands National Park. Perfect Day. Beautiful place. The Dolphins racing our boats were an awesome sight. There were thousands of them.

On Wednesday we were surprised that it was a rainy day and we visited Solvang. This is a Danish Town in California and where the 2003 Oscar Winning Movie "Sideways" was shot. We also visited Lompoc where there are 60 murals of local scenes in the down-town area. Very unusual and interesting. A we finished off with one hour at Mission La Purísima State Park. The Mission deserves another and much longer visit.

The trip was also a good opportunity to get the know Karen our Garmin GPS Navigator whom we purchased as our joint Christmas Gift. She has a very pleasant Australian Accent and knows how to get to any place (although she's never been to anywhere of course).

You'll recall that the purpose of the trip was dinner with the Wimi people. A great success. The dinner was awesome - easily the best dinner of 2009 for Ali and I. Brian's company picked up the tab to say "Thank You" to Steve and I who are volunteers. I was also given a beautiful bottle of Scotch. Brian's wife Charlie and Steve's wife Melissa and son Ryan also joined us. Thank You, Brian for the gifts and dinner. Thank you everybody for your company.