CaCaCatalina (Etc.)

We just finished a wonderful week long visit from Mary. To start off, it's us at dinner on her first night here. Imagine this scene, almost each night, for one week. It was a lot of eating out but it was also yummy.

While Mary was in town she wanted to visit some college friends in LA, which was perfect because Brad had a high school reunion so, we divided and we conquered. This is me and Brad and some high schoolers at the reunion.

Onto Catalina. Mary and Brad had never been, and I had not been since the 1970s. For those not familiar, Catalina is one of the Channel Islands, 22 miles off the coast of Long Beach. It's 26 miles long, 8 miles wide at the widest, and there is only one real town (Avalon). Most of the island is a nature preserve, and at an elevation of just over 1600 feet it goes up almost immediately from the shoreline. (More on that later.) Most importantly, it's beautiful. This is Mary as our ferry approaches Avalon harbor. (The round building on the far right was built as a casino by the Wrigleys of chewing gum fame in 1929. Now it's a movie theatre and event space.)

Avalon harbor has a beach and that's what's behind us. It's small and so very pretty.

We did a bit of walking around town and quickly figured out that the most common direction to travel is: up.

I've said this to many of you who are reading this blog but I'll say it again: I think this was the prettiest day I've ever seen in Southern California.

That's our girl.

When we were out on this little dock, we saw lots of bat rays swimming in the shallow water.

We walked down the length of the harbor and found this public beach club to stop at and have a drink. It could not have been lovelier.

Next was the best/worst decision we made all day. Best: because the views were spectacular. Worst: because I was terrified. We traveled in a large ex-military vehicle up the narrow and winding road to the top of the island (did I mention sheer dropoffs?) for stunning views (that is, if you were able to look off the side toward the views, which I found hard to do). It was ten miles each way and it took one hour to go up and one hour to come down. Inbetween we got to spend a half an hour at the top for what I was convinced were likely our last minutes on earth before we plunged over the cliff.

This is just the beginning of our climb, but you start to get the idea.

 That's the mainland of California off in the distance.

And that's Mary looking at the mainland. There aren't more stunning photos of the sheer dropoffs because I was, honestly, too terrified to look, let alone snap a photo. What I did see out of the corner of my eye was breathtaking, though.

And this is Brad and Mary, on terra firma at the Catalina Airport, our stop at the top before we headed back down the mountain.

Near the bottom we got to see this, which was the kind of thing that made all my visions of our certain demise well worth it.

The next day Mary and I drove to Temecula for a visit with my mom where we accidentally chose to wear match-ish clothes. (Because wouldn't you?)

No visit to Temecula is complete without a picture of Simba.

Back at home, we celebrated Mary's 26th birthday a month early with cake and presents.

And a final picture before putting her on a plane back to DC after a fantastic time together.