Swinging Through Southern California

Tonight (Friday night) is our 6th night in California and I'm a bit behind on my blogging, for which I apologize. Apart from my grandmother's house, we haven't really had access to the internet.

But I have to say that we FINALLY have some nice warm weather since we've been in California. I'm even a little tanned on my head :)

For our first night in California, we stayed right on the Colorado River in a small town called Needles. We had spent the whole day driving, arriving at the campsite after 5pm. At 6pm, it was still warm enough to take a little dip in the pool, which was very cold. Luckily they also had a hot tub. So far, Noa hasn't been too keen on swimming. And by not too keen, I mean screaming her bloody head off when we try to take her in. I think some trips to the swimming pool back home are in order. Funnily enough, we ran into another Dutch couple and their children at the pool. Damn, these Dutch are all over the place!

Of course, I have to take a video of Noa with her big budda belly (which she gets from her father) walking around the pool:

On Monday, we finally arrived at my grandmother's house and we've done very minimal driving since then. Kind of a little vacation from our vacation. We stayed 2 nights with my grandmother, who although she's turning 90 this fall, is still sharper in the head than I am on my best days. A lot of my friends came to visit us there, including Derghi, Rosita, Serge and my friends Aimee and Mike (and their son Aaron, who Noa's taken a liking to, if we interpreted her poking him in the eye correctly). Very cool of them to drop by and if you're reading this, then thanks!

There was a computer there, which belongs to my uncle Alan who also lives there, so I was showing my blog to my grandmother, who just loved it. But hard as I tried, she would not let me teach her to look it up herself. I even put a shortcut on the desktop, but to no avail. I guess the VCR was tough enough. To be honest, I'm very pleased that my grandmother (my only living grandparent) was able to see Noa, and for the second time to boot, and I think that she liked it too!

We then drove up a short hour to the Ventura area, where I used to live before finding myself in Holland. We camped up at McGrath State Beach, which is in the dunes between Ventura and Oxnard. It was very relaxing, but had no hookups, meaning no electricity and no wireless internet. Now we've been very spoiled with all these RV parks with wifi, meaning we could call people using our Skype connection. Here we were isolated from the world, yet so close to so many of my friends in the area.

Which is why I was a little bit disappointed that we didn't get more visitors, especially since we decided to spend our extra day there. But we were very happy to see our friends Brandon and Elizabeth, with their son Dylan, whose about the same age as Noa. My friend Martha also came by later on and it was nice to catch up with everyone!

We did a little bit of hiking around the dunes as the weather was just wonderful.

On Friday, we did drive a little bit more and pulled up in Morro Bay, a very picturesque little town in Central California where I've been many times. Here's one nice photo that Margreet took today:

Yeah, to think that I moved away from here :)