Mar 07

We go pick up Jen and help her finish moving out of her old apartment. Her old and new apartments are in Marina del Rey, and both are nice. But her new apartment has a wonderful view of the marina.

We watch a large bird building a nest in a tree outside her apartment and realize it's a great blue heron. I could spend a lot of time just sitting on her balcony relaxing :-) There's also a partial view of the ocean, but the marina is what I find wonderful to watch.

Later in the afternoon we go down to Venice and walk along the canals and look at the houses there. Jen and her boyfriend like this area, but the houses are way out of their price range. Even the rundown houses there cost several million -- ridiculous even for the LA area.

Beautiful day, so we head out for a bike ride along the beach.

We run a few errands and then enjoy some quiet time at the RV. Well, as quiet as it can get with jets taking off above you every few minutes :-) We do enjoy the ocean view from our dining window:

We go pick up Jen and Jason for dinner and enjoy a wonderful meal at an Italian restaurant in Venice, a short drive from their apartment.

We wake up bright and early and take off for Los Angeles, but first we want to drive through Joshua Tree National Park. The area of the campground that we stayed in actually does not have any Joshua trees, so today we'll drive through the part of the park with the famous trees. There are very few cars on the road and we have a very enjoyable, scenic ride through the park.

After the scenic ride through Joshua NP, we proceed to LA through a lot of blah-blah scenery and then onto the big LA freeways with SO MANY CARS!!! And it wasn't even rush hour.

We get through the slow-moving traffic and finally arrive at LA County's Dockweiler RV Park. We go to check in at the park and find that they have our name on the board at 3 different RV spaces. I try to convince them that we should get the space that is a front row space beside the beach, but they say that is a mistake and we need to take one of the back row spaces we've been assigned. They do NOT use computers for reservations -- it's all hand-written and they have a big whiteboard to keep track of who is in which RV space. One board space has me as C Angelman, one space has me as Claire Engelman and one space has me as C Engelman. They are getting computers next year to track their spaces. We will find that this park is unique in many ways, other than their big white board.

We get our 5ver backed into our tight space and get everything set up. We're going to be here almost 2 weeks. It's a backrow space (there are only 3 rows), but we actually can see the ocean from our dining room table :-)

Dockweilers is basically a parking lot with full hook-ups. Trailers are close together, BUT it is right on the beach, with a wonderful bike path that goes north to Malibu and south to Hermosa Beach. It is 10-15 minutes drive from our oldest daughter's apartment in Marina del Rey.

Now the bad part of Dockweilers: it is almost directly beneath the south take-off runway of LAX. Jets take off every 3 minutes. We will find that the jumbo jets fly low and are very very loud.

We call our daughter and find that she needs to work late and then has to pack a few more things in her old apartment (she just moved to a new apartment this past week). We tell her 'no problem' and arrange to take her and her boyfriend out to dinner tomorrow night.

We pack up and leave Mesa and head toward Joshua Tree National Park in California. We had hoped to stop at the Grand Canyon, but the weather is cold and snowy there.

The drive/scenery is nothing special and we arrive at the campground late in the afternoon. The campsites are on the small side, but we manage to fit into one of them. After dinner we take off for a short hike and some fresh air after the long drive.

We spend the day doing errands and hanging out with Granddad and Darlene.