The time difference and the temperature difference is still catching up to us. We're tired (back to back cross country trips will wear you out) and freezing! But having been to the area we're going to be moving to has gotten us excited.
As we flew into Los Angeles, the mass buildings and houses on top of each other for miles and miles, was pretty spectacular. And we were pretty excited to see snowy mountains, which we realized after looking at a map, that it was Big Bear. I also didn't expect there to be mountains all around. For some reason, I thought they would be farther away. This part of California is ridiculous. I kept saying, What do these people do for a living? There is shopping, everywhere. And not just Target (we didn't even see a Walmart, only Walmart Marketplaces), but major malls every third exit. There is a premium outlet mall in Camarillo - and when I say premium, think of the best outlet mall you could imagine, then times it by 3. That's right, three outlet malls all in the same parking lot. There are 1,100 sq.ft. homes going for $1.4 million dollars. The cars they drive there are Audis ($170,000 Audis - I looked them up), Range Rovers, Porshes, Maseratis, Lamborghinis, etc. Mercedes and Lexuses are the least expensive cars out there. Gas was about $1.00 more than here, but about $2.00 more in Malibu. This place may take a bit to get used to.
One thing I didn't expect was to see as much farm land as we did. I guess with the climate they can grow fruits and vegetables year round. We saw the Driscoll Farm, Dole, and Sunkist. I looked up local farmers markets and there is one in every town, every week. I am looking forward to that!
First things first…get off the plane…find IN-N-OUT Burger (a California staple).
There was no way we were going to take the interstate to the base. Hwy. 1 Pacific Coast Highway!
Our drive consisted of gigantic houses on cliffs to the right and the ocean to the left.
I expected Malibu (27 miles of beauty - so the sign said) to be a little more Malibu-ish :o). The houses we wanted to see, we couldn't, except for their gated driveways. On the coastal side, we saw modest looking beach condos and homes, with lots of unsightly electrical wires. The only thing that told us we were in Malibu was the price of gas and the ridiculously expensive cars sitting along the highway.
As we got closer to the base. The Point Mugu State Park sign.
The giant rock you can see to the left of the mountains was pretty cool. There is a beach front campground just next to the beach there too.
Driving between the rock and the mountain.
The base was a base, nothing exciting. We dropped our things off at the hotel and then set out to explore.
Again, we opted for the backroads drive instead of the interstate. We decided the first day that we wanted to live in the neighborhood right next to this park area. But, it was gated and so we figured too expensive.
We drove around all day Thursday and Friday morning, we went into where Shawn will be working to meet some of the people there. They all told us to look for homes in Camarillo, Moorpark and Thousand Oaks. After that, one of Shawn's old squadron mates (who is there now), drove around with us to show us Ventura. Ventura is about 30-40 minutes from the base. We walked around the downtown area, then over to the beach to get some fish tacos.
The Ventura Pier.
Surfers all waiting on a wave. The water is always cold here, so if we ever want to get in, we'll probably have to have wetsuits.
Some of Shawn Campbell's family had lived in Camarillo (which is right outside of the base and supposedly where Will Smith lives - and his son goes to the high school there). They told us that if we liked to hike we needed to go to Ojai (pronounced Oh-hi). After we left Ventura, we changed our clothes and headed to find a trail.
After walking around Ventura and driving through Ojai's downtown area, we realized we loved SoCal's little downtowns already.
This trail was really just a road, so the hike wasn't too bad. There were black bear warnings at the ranger station we stopped at in Ojai, so I guess we'll be watching out for them.
Hiking past orange trees. There was an orchard to the right of us. I'm sure we weren't supposed to pick one, but how could we walk right past them and not try an orange fresh from the tree?! It was delicious.
A couple of women stopped to take our picture.
The next morning, we opted for hiking before we started neighborhood shopping again. We had to try out Point Mugu State Park since it was so close. While we had black bear signs in Ojai, we had mountain lion warnings here. They even had news stories about mountain lions in the area we want to live. So….I guess we'll be keeping the kids close when we go on hikes.
We're not sure how far we hiked, but it was about 2 hours total.
Right from the start we had amazing views. We just happened to experience Santa Ana winds, which were pretty intense.
I love this picture (below) because you can see the trail we came up on, the highway and the rock we drive between. Those are the Channel Island off in the distance.
This is where we turned around.
Looking towards Malibu.
You can see the beach campground down below. After experiencing the Santa Ana winds, we decided camping on the beach didn't sound like much fun.
Shawn spotted a jack rabbit down below us. He kept throwing rocks down to try and get it to come out, but then we saw it's den and figured it was hiding out.
On Sunday, we decided to drive to Simi Valley and figured we should go to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
After parking our car, we looked down over the valley and spotted this house…with a soccer field!
This is Ronald Reagan's burial site.
Exact replica of what his Oval Office looked like.
We were able to walk through Air Force One (no pictures though).
HMX-1
Piece of the Berlin Wall.
We left the Presidential Library and headed for Pepperdine University. Again, taking the back roads - is there any other way?
Looking down on the university. I looked up the cost of attending Pepperdine…..with room and board and food…..$70,000!
This was called the Heroes Garden. Thomas Burnett (Flight 93 on September 11th), attended this university.
Just above that white building, you can see LA in the distance.
It was time to go home. Looking out our LA hotel window, we could again see snowy mountains.
Catalina Island as we turned back to head towards home.
We drove around a lot! But, in driving around a lot, we know the area we'd like to live. We are focusing our house hunting search on the Thousand Oaks area. Most of the schools are good there and it's really close to lots of hiking. We really think we're going to love this place and are looking forward to showing it to anyone who would like to come out and visit!
