California Dreamin'

California has so far been everything that we have hoped for and then some. Fortune has smiled upon us with amazing new friends, sunny days and beautiful landscapes to explore. We are staying in Lakeside, which is a bit mountainous, but a quick morning drive easily puts the beach in reach.

Big Easy against the Southern California night sky.

We have spent many a lazy day relaxing on Stephanie and Ron’s property in Lakeside. It’s picture-perfect, with mostly sunny skies and springtime weather. Mountains border it and the neighbors range from people to Chihuahuas to donkeys. There is even a peacock wandering nearby, but we’ve only had the pleasure of hearing his voice so far. Our favorite part about the property has got to be the citrus trees, of which include grapefruit, lemon, orange and tangerine. Whenever we’re in the mood for a fresh afternoon snack, we can just meander over to the fruit trees and pick the plumpest one. Aside from the “green” aspects of the property, we also love relaxing here because of two sweet little terrier pups named Chloe and Emily. They have been very welcoming to us and spend the day either cuddling up beside us or playing a game of fetch. We definitely missed having pets around, so it’s nice to have some new furry friends.

Our back yard view of the mountains!

Little misses Emily and Chloe.

The weekends out here in Lakeside have been even better. The first weekend we were here, Ron and Stephanie hosted a Mardi Gras party for about 20-30 of their friends. Even though we didn’t know any of the guests that were coming and had barely even gotten to know Ron and Stephanie, a party’s a party and we were excited to join in. It ended up being much better than anything we could have expected. All of our hosts’ friends were beyond kind and fun. They are all part of the Burning Man community (as are Ron and Stephanie) and were even more unique, creative, and awesome than we could’ve imagined. Between making meals together and sitting around the fire pit listening to stories, we felt like we truly made some new friends. We wished we could have spent more time with each individual, but we hope there will be more time in the future to become even better friends. We are incredibly grateful that Ron and Stephanie invited us to take part because we definitely had a blast.

The following weekend was more low-key, but still a lot of fun. On Saturday, we spent part of the day with Ron and Mike, one of their close friends. Mike and his girlfriend, Genevieve, live in a neighborhood but have an awesome urban garden in their backyard… chickens included! They also have a short bus! (Who wouldn’t love them after just this information?)  We went with Ron and Mike to check out his garden and bus, as well as pick up a giant wooden box he was giving to Stephanie to use as a raised garden. Mike’s garden still had some vegetables in it, which is something we aren’t used to this time of the year in Virginia. Southern California offers a great climate for growing because it stays pretty warm all year long and they even get some rain (unlike Phoenix). He even had a pretty large compost box filled with tons of composting worms! Our favorite part is that every now and again, he harvests some of the worms and gives them to friends so that they can start their own worm-composting pit. Talk about a good friend… I don’t know how often even my BEST friends could convince me to go digging for worms.

That same afternoon, Mike took us up to really cool trailhead near Lakeside called “El Capitan.” It looks beautiful; I hope we get a chance to take a walk there very soon. After a couple hours of relaxing, Mike and Genevieve came back over and, along with Ron and Steph, made a delicious dinner for all of us. It was a lovely evening. We finished the weekend off with some around-the-house projects, including the making of one very cute Mason jar herb garden! It was another great weekend.

Mike and Genevieve's backyard urban garden.

A couple of backyard hens!

Aside from all the fun we’ve been having in Lakeside, we’ve also ventured out and soaked up the sun in other parts of Southern California. Stephanie works in La Jolla so she has kindly offered to take us there to spend the day while she works. We have, of course, taken her up on this offer a couple of times and will probably go several more as well! La Jolla, for those who don’t know, is a beach town a little bit north of San Diego. It’s filled with fancy boutiques and even fancier houses that are most likely filled with ultra fancy multi-multi-millionaires. We can’t really even be envious, though, because the houses are just gorgeous to look at and the boutiques offer an extraordinarily posh window-shopping experience. Of course, the best part about La Jolla is the beach! The Pacific Ocean looks pretty similar to the Atlantic (for those of you who didn’t know…) but it has beautiful cliff overhangs mixed in with the flat, sandy beaches. The water is still pretty chilly so we didn’t go in, but there were plenty of surfers and other things going on to entertain us on the beach for hours… aside from sunbathing of course. Finally, and best of all, La Jolla is home to a population of seals that just hang out on a certain part of the beach all day. They allow you to walk up pretty close to them which was awesome in its own right, but we were also lucky enough to be there during “pupping” season, which means we got to see little baby seals too! They were so ridiculously cute that we stood there for hours admiring them.

Cute seals playing in the surf!

Daniel and Angie in front of La Jolla beach.

A large number of seals soaking up the sun on the rocks.

Angie with a large starfish on the beach.

Daniel on a cliff overlooking the Pacific.

Momma and her pup sunbathing on the sand.

We have had such an amazing time so far and it seems it will only get better. We plan to spend a day at Balboa Park (museums and the famous San Diego Zoo) as well as go to Orange County (maybe we’ll get a reality show?), LA, and many other cool places. Stay tuned for tales of our adventures!

Palm Tree lined street leading to the beach.