End of Summer

Now that autumn is here, the cool weather has revived me from the malaise of an extended wave of late summer heat. I went over all the little trips I took that didn’t really lend themselves to a whole blog entry by themselves; a series of little adventures I quietly let slip into the terrine of life’s memory soup, and instead decided to blog about last month’s trip. I went to Laguna Beach for a few days in September to my niece’s wedding. It was a very nice trip, with great weather.

It brought back memories of my days as a teenager in the Los Angeles area, specifically one summer when I lived in a small apartment in Venice Beach with my mother. I loved the cool, moist mornings of a beach town waking up—before the tourists come and the hot sun bleaches everything clean, including the sand between your toes and the salt that licks your body. Oh the joy of sunny days running around barefoot in shorts heading to the beach or coming from it?

Then, in the late afternoon after the bathers have gone and the life guards pack up to leave, the locals come out like house crabs leaving their shells and moving at a leisurely pace or jogging slowly and rhythmically along the waterline, walking their dogs or gazing at the ocean, reflective, as they watch the setting sun.


Early morning before the wedding day, I took a nostalgic drive along the ocean out of Newport. I stopped by the Pacific Whey Baking Company‎ on "the PCH" (Pacific Coast Hwy to the uninitiated—I find it funny to hear everyone call it the PCH instead of Hwy 1) to grab some breakfast (a strong, yummy cup of coffee—best I think I’ve ever had—and a bag of pastry).


I drove down the coast to the pier overlooking Balboa Island and stood watching the ferry take cars back and forth to and from the island while I munched on breakfast and thought about how much the coast has changed.






When I finished, I went to Fashion Island Shopping Center in Newport Beach for a pair of shoes. While waiting for Macy’s to open, I watched the fish in a large Koi pond and the carousel getting ready for the first ride of the day.




The next day, after the wedding, it was time to head home but. . .

The beach girl in me had to make one last ocean stop to squiggle my toes in the sand under the pier in Manhattan Beach and watch the ocean for a while before getting on Hwy 5 for the long trip home.