Day 1 of vacation. I was late getting to the airport, as usual Cheryl would say. I found them waiting, still, down by US Air baggage claim. Cheryl's bag missed the connecting flight! So Cheryl made arrangements for them to "deliver" the bag to our hotel in San Diego. Supposedly, it was going to be on the next flight.
Well, the first thing that those guys wanted to do was go see all of the weirdoes on Venice beach. So we drove up to Venice (just north of the airport) and got out and walked on the sand and waded in the ocean. Then we walked along past all of the shops and street vendors. We may have been the weirdest looking people there.
We ended up spending enough time there that we could have probably gone back to LAX and seen if Cheryl's bag had arrived. Since we had already told them to deliver it to San Diego, though, we decided not to. Instead we headed south, and stopped in Long Beach to see the Queen Mary. There was a very loud music festival going on there, though, so we did not stay.
We got back on the freeway for a ways then got off on the Pacific Coast Highway to go through some of the beach towns like Newport Beach and Laguna Beach. At the end of the coast highway we drove a little inland to San Juan Capistrano and we stopped at the Mission. We did not see any swallows, although it was supposed to be another few weeks before they migrated away. Apparently few swallows nested there anymore because earthquake retrofitting had disturbed them the last couple of years. By the way, the room at the mission with all the candles lit was like walking into an oven. You could barely breathe the air was so hot.
We got to San Diego later that night, checked in and went for a swim. After many phone calls by Cheryl, her bag finally arrived at something like 1AM. It had come ground freight from LA instead of US Air flying it to San Diego. Oh well, we were looking forward to the rest of the vacation too much to care…
(By the way, for those who may not know, my sister Cheryl is the one in the green. My sister Dawn is the tall blond, and my step-mom Mary is the other one.
