While in Southern California in May 2018 for a week of meetings at Port Hueneme, a few of us flew out a couple days early to do some sightseeing. After landing at LAX, we spent our first day exploring Santa Monica before driving up Pacific Coast Highway to our hotel in Oxnard. It’s the first I’ve been on PCH in about 15 years. The scenery is as great as ever! The next day, we drove down to Los Angeles and took a tour of Paramount Studios. After our tour, we continued south to Long Beach for lunch at a place that had been featured on Food Network and then spent the afternoon at the Aquarium of the Pacific.
We then headed back up north to Oxnard to meet up with our newly arrived coworkers from around the country at the hotel. The remainder of the week was spent at work, but I still managed to snap a few more photos in our off hours. Most were taken around our beautiful oceanfront hotel (Mandalay Beach Resort) in Ventura County and Port Hueneme. The weather was perfect and the scenery was quite nice!
We’re always looking for things to do in the Fall since it’s one of the best times of the year to be outside. This year we took a Fall foliage ride through the Red Clay Valley on the Wilmington and Western Railroad. Thanks to the terribly warm weather we’ve been having, there wasn’t too much color but it was a fun trip nonetheless. We upgraded to the open air car which gave me a better opportunity to test out my brand new camera, a Nikon D5700. Yes, I finally replaced my trusty D90. I’m very happy with the new camera and there will be MANY more photos to come!
While looking for someplace to go for a day trip, we stumbled upon a balloon festival in North Jersey. Since hot air balloons always make for great photos, I couldn’t pass it up. We bought tickets and headed to Readington Airport. Unfortunately, the day was pretty overcast and there were scattered showers throughout the day. Some of the traditional balloons were able to launch but all of the larger shaped balloons either inflated and stayed tethered or just didn’t inflate at all. As it turned out, the unexpected part that made the price of admission worth it was all of the companies that were there handing out samples of their products. It was a bizarrely eclectic mix of stuff. From Advil to Minute Rice to flavored milk and on and on, we had to make the long muddy walk to the car twice just to offload all of the stuff we’d been given! It was a fun day and we managed to stay mostly dry while watching the balloons that were brave enough to take off despite the questionable weather.
While looking for someplace to stop for a few days on the way back from Kingston in the Catskills, we settled upon Norwalk, Connecticut, a city I’ve driven through/past hundreds of times but never visited. They have a cool aquarium along the waterfront on the Long Island Sound. We also took a boat trip out to Sheffield Island to tour the lighthouse. Our spare time was spent exploring the SONO (South Norwalk) neighborhood where we found some fantastic food. On our way out of town we stopped at the world’s most fun supermarket, Stew Leonard’s. A friend suggested it and you’ll have to look at the photos to really appreciate it as much as I appreciate her telling me about it!