Father’s Day

Plan A for Father’s Day had included a drive to San Diego to attend services at Dr. David Jeremiah’s church, Shadow Mountain Community Church.
After experiencing driving in Southern California, John was not so sure he wanted to spend Father’s Day that way.  Then, after the later-than-expected night last night, he was sure that was not our best plan.
Instead, we let people sleep a little, and we decided to visit San Juan Capistrano.  We hoped to visit the mission there and explore the town a little.  What we failed to realize was that there was an entrance fee to the mission.   Oops.  We were feeling a little spent out, so we instead just wandered around the town a bit and did some window shopping.
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We stopped at a Walmart and bought a few sand toys and some things we needed for the house and then used a website that we’d found the other two beaches and located one not too far from where we were.   Crescent Bay Beach was wonderful.
We parked on a little one-way side street near tiny homes that overlooked the Pacific Ocean.  Zillow tells me those <1,000 sq. ft. bungalows cost more than $1,000,000. 
With a view like theirs, it might not be as overpriced as it sounds.
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It had a tiny beach house with essentially no where to change, but we made do.
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The waves were FEROCIOUS and the lifeguards on duty were working hard.
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The little girls had none of it (which I was happy about) but they enjoyed the sand tremendously. 
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The waves would knock us down and push us around.
This next video is a must watch!
 
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Now you see them
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Now you don’t.
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And they’d pop back up eventually.
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I had one eat-the-sand moment myself, and every one of us had at least one bucket full of sand in our swim suits when we changed out!
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It was the least busy of the beaches we’d visited, but still had maybe 100 people on it.   See the homes up the hill?
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We headed back to the house where I fed them something (sigh – I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to get to blogging…) and got to bed decently early.
Originally our plan was to have another quiet day on Monday and visit Disney again on Tuesday.  We looked into it, and adding a fifth day at Disney was only $10 a person.  So we decided to go to Disney Monday and decide during the day if we wanted to expand our tickets to Tuesday.

Hollywood Boulevard and Santa Monica Pier

To say we moved SLOWLY this morning would be an epic understatement.  Laundry, dishes, and mid-vacation inertia made us very late to get out the door…

This may not have been as big a deal were we not entering into some of the worst traffic in the country. 

We made it to Hollywood Boulevard and headed to the lot more or less under TCL Chinese Theater (once Mann’s). 

We did not venture out to the Hollywood sign, but were satisfied to see it from a distance.

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How apropos that the first star we saw was Mickey Mouse’s.

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We walked for blocks in multiple directions, trying in vain to use phone-accessed websites for directions to the stars we most wanted to see.  For the most part, only Nigel was on a quest to find some of his favorite stars from decades gone by. 

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Robin Williams

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Harrison Ford

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Sylvester Stallone

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Tim Conway

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Chris Pratt

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Winnie the Pooh

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Ron Howard

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Rod Serling

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Poor Gamora…

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Samuel L. Jackson (do you see the Marvel theme???)

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CHUCK NORRIS!

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Stan Lee… NOW you see the Marvel theme.  (The little girls know him from Big Hero 6.)

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ELVIS!

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Don Knotts.

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Marie?

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Snoopy

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Someone named Nancy Kelly – so it was just funny.

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Scarlett Johansson.

We could not locate Andy Griffith – Nigel’s favorite.  By the time we had a command of the website we were using, we realized we had gotten extremely close at the far end of our walk, but turned back east before we’d hit it.  Sad smile

We found a playground for lunch.

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And headed to the Santa Monica Pier.

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The Pier itself was a little dicey… but not super sketchy.  Finding this sign was my main goal.

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Some of the kids expressed their dislike for the idea of donning swimwear and going to the beach.  The beach WAS fairly packed.  The little girls and Tab were all over the idea, so Mama pushed it just a bit but donning her own suit.

Soon the others reluctantly put theirs on…

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And no one regretted it.

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We had such a nice time.  As I mentioned, the beach was pretty crowded, but that didn’t make it unpleasant.  Nan mostly stayed sand-side and the little girls made friends with some kids next to them.  There was a lot of frolicking, and we stayed until after 4:30 P.M.

I made a terrible suggestion…. I thought it would be easy to just wear our suits back.  It was only about 40 miles back to our house, where we could have changed properly…

Except – TRAFFIC.
No sooner did we start driving did my map app share the bad news.

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When the driving gets tough, the tough get pizza.

We stopped at a neighborhood pool club and used their scummy bathrooms to change.  Then we found a little neighborhood Pizza Hut in a tiny strip mall and the super nice employee, David, helped us find some great deals available when you order online, which I did from my phone.

We finally got back to our house around 7:30 PM.