I need a vacation to recover from my vacation

The rest of our trip to Cali was awesome :-)  We stayed waaay too busy the next few days to try and write it down; we'd crash in the hotel room each night, just to wake up early the next morning and head out again.  As we had entered SoCal and  the traffic really picked up, we strapped the bikes to our car and spent the next few days sight-seeing.
The next stop on our tour brought us to Venice Beach, where we attempted to spend the afternoon enjoying the sun, sand, and water.  This is hard to do when it's partially cloudy, windy, and 65ish.  We did get a little riding in, as they have an outstanding bike path in the area.  However, it was a much more leisurely ride :-)

What trip to Cali wouldn't be complete without getting to experience LA rush hour traffic?  Leaving Venice Beach (north side of LA) at 4pm for our destination Dana Point (1 hour south of LA) was not my greatest idea.  Distance traveled: 60 miles.  Time elapsed: just under 3 hours.  Pure awesomeness, am I right?  After checking in we frantically changed clothes and just managed to get a 4 mile run along the coast in before sunset. 

Next up, our last full day in Cali-a trip to Catalina Island!  We boarded our ferry for the 22 mile, one hour ride over and promptly fell back asleep.  Upon arrival, we were greeted with this beautiful little view:

After grabbing a quick lunch, it was time to head off on our next adventure-a hike in the wilderness :-)  As we wore casual clothes for the ferry ride over, we needed to get our hiking clothes out of our backpacks to change.  But I somehow managed to unpack Joy's hiking clothes on the car ride over...  So guess who scored a brand new Patagonia shirt and pair of shorts, courtesy of yours truly?  :-)  Crisis averted, clothes changed, and after grabbing a hiking map, we took off.  Along the way, Joy managed to miss stepping on a 5 foot long rattlesnake by 6 inches.  Of course, I didn't tell her it was a rattler until we got back to town, but as she heard the rattle distinctly while running away, she said she knew all along.  At the top of the climb, about 1500ft above sea level, we were treated to some pretty spectacular views:

 If you look closely, you can see us running along the trail on the ridge-line:

We finished the day with some outstanding ice cream and a walk along the coast, where we saw this guy having a great time all by his lonesome

If only I could move through the water so effortlessly :-)

The next morning we said goodbye to Cali and made the 13ish hour drive back to the Gord, crawled into our own bed and slept for 12 straight blissful hours :-) cleaned the house, checked on the garden, played with the cats, crashed for a few hours, and drove to the airport to pick up our guest for the next several days, CHARLIE!!  We had an AWESOME time, but I'll let my wife take that story. 

Until next time!