December Fun in California

I packaged freeze dried candy and Tony made cookies for my cookie exchange plus extras for neighbors, to deliver to all the occupied houses on our block. About 17 plates or so. It was a lot but fun to drop off treats and chat with a few of the neighbors. 

Temecula Balloon & Wine Festival ~ Day 2

 

The weather in Temecula always seems to start out overcast and foggy/misty in the mornings when we are there for this event. No worries though, balloons can still fly! Glenn opted to stay below the fog, thank goodness. We still got beautiful views!

Temecula Balloon & Wine Festival ~ Day 1

 

There were 3 hot air balloon events happening all on the same weekend! Winnemucca and Minden, NV and then Temecula, CA. We've crewed (tether crew) for our friend Kim the past few years but wanted to switch things up this year. Since going to Minden didn't work out and Winnemucca is so fun (but a lot farther to go) we opted to go to Temecula again and we crewed for a pilot named Glenn See. 

Manzanar War Relocation Center

We drive by this area occasionally, usually on our way to Idaho. But we've never taken the chance to stop until this last Saturday when we didn't have too many big plans and Tony suggested that we go check it out.

Sunnylands Center & Gardens

Trying to find Desert X stuff which apparently has all been taken down? But the GPS coordinates took us to this cool Sunnylands Center & Gardens. I saw an owl sculpture inside so knew we had to go in and check everything out. I'm so glad we did!

Cathedral City Balloon Morning

Our morning on Sunday started out so early! 4:15am, Dave and Kim started getting up and ready.  They were so kind to share their hotel room with us. I got up at 4:45am and we were out the door about 5am to head to the ball fields for tethering, static displays, pancake breakfast and balloon yoga. 

Cathedral City Balloon Glow

We were able to help out at the balloon glow in Cathedral City on Saturday evening. It was windy on our drive but luckily the wind died down the closer we got to our destination.

A Friday with So You Think You Can Dance and more!

Sadly no phones were allowed when we went to a taping of So You Think You Can Dance at the CBS Studio in Hollywood. Funny because it airs on Fox. The picture above is everyone getting back on their phones after they were unlocked from padded bags they gave us to put them in. Keep reading to see how it all went down!

Bear Valley Springs Balloon Festival ~ Day 1

Tony and I decided to keep our plans and get out of Ridgecrest after the big earthquake on the 4th of July. Tony went to work and got turned away at the gate so we were able to head to the Bear Valley Springs area earlier than we expected. 

Temecula Balloon & Wine Festival - Day 2

Day 2 of the festival started out overcast and chilly and the fog didn't burn off until much later than the day before. We decided it was nice to crew in the cloudy skies instead of the hot sun but it also meant that the other balloons had to travel aways away to take off or just not take off at all.

Temecula Balloon & Wine Festival - Day 1

I've heard about the Balloon & Wine Festival in Temecula for a few years now and I've always wanted to go. Esp because it's held right by Lake Skinner - my namesake! Haha...and I just thought it would be cool to go somewhere with my name attached to it. So...finally it worked out to take a trip down there for the weekend. It's about 3 hours away, so not too bad. We had just painted the teardrop camper 2 days earlier and it was ready for another trip out.

Memorial Day Weekend Adventures

Right before we were going to head out of town, we got this package of the paint we ordered for our teardrop camper from Monsta Liner. This project would have to wait though until after the trip.

Oxnard Adventures - Day 3

As promised, here are the pictures of our room. It was nice to have a little patio area to get our belongings to and from our car without having to use our key card to go through the heavy gate each time. Oh, and parking here was free. So nice to not get charged for that!

Oxnard Adventures - Day 2

This was Tony's main day to work and my day to play or..stay in the hotel room all day.
I did venture out for breakfast and it was pretty good. Then I checked out the pool, spa area and the beach. I tried to walk on the beach for awhile but it was super chilly and just so very windy! So I didn't stay out long sadly before heading back to the room where I spent most of the day online. I did bring some craft stuff to do and some papers to go through but didn't end up doing anything with those things on this trip.

Oxnard Adventures - Day 1

Beautiful view on a not so beautiful day. You see, Oxnard does not usually get very windy but on our trip it got so windy (did we bring the Ridgecrest winds with us?!) that whole trees blew down. There was debris from palm trees everywhere. Quite crazy and made for some chilly temps as well.

Anniversary Weekend Fun - Knotts Berry Farm!

Neither Tony or I have been to Knottsberry Farm before so we didn't really know what to expect.  When we were talking about what to do to celebrate our anniversary, the idea to go here popped up again and with the Boysenberry Festival going on, it was perfect timing!

Hot Air Balloons & Teardrop Trailers

We woke up very early (5:30am) to go watch our friend Kim launch a hot air balloon with 12 passengers, meeting over at the Lake Perris airport. It turned out that Tony & I crewed instead because 2 of her crew didn't show up. Wow. Good thing we were there! When we left our camp site it was not foggy but 20 minutes away at the airpot, it was a bit foggier. Then when we drove to the launch site - it got worse!

Teardrop Camper Rally ~ Day 1

This day has been a long time coming. We were finally, finally, going to go to a teardrop camper meetup with our teardrop. That gave us the motivation to start in February to get it ready to hit the road in March.

Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes

I've never gotten to see a sunset at Death Valley National Park at the sand dunes so I decided to stay while Tony took a nap in the car. I also got to do a fun tour with a park ranger.

Bucket List Check: The Broad Museum

Driving around downtown LA is both frustrating and magical. Magical because there is so many cool things to see. Frustrating because parking, one way streets and traffic is a beast. But we managed to find a garage where it was $9 for the day (I'm sure there was cheaper) but after driving around and wondering about all the posts of rules on the street poles for parking, we decided to play it safe and grab a spot close to where we were starting to give up but also close to the Broad Museum.