Gladstone's Legendary Deserts

This is the Chocolate Cake we ordered to go. Eight big servings came out of this one desert. PS: You can order this ala mode with about a dozen big scoops of ice cream piled in front of the slice of cake. These deserts are usually shared by two couples and even then are too big to eat at one sitting.

Gladstone's

Every visit to Los Angeles we have lunch at Gladstone's restaurant, the quintessential Malibu beach restaurant on the sand at the foot of the west end of Sunset Boulevard. We always have lunch on the deck and have never be disappointed. This trip we both had the Seafood Cobb salad with lots of crab, shrimp, avocado, etc. and a portion of lox on top and two oysters on the half shell to the side. Even by NW standards it was a great salad. When we spend time in LA we always notice that the lettuce down here is much crisper that the lettuce back home. I'm sure its because the time from the fields to the stores is considerably shorter. Portions of everything here are very large and the waiters are trained to wrap leftovers in gold foil in the shape of different sea animals. Crabs, swans, whales, and many others are presented with the check. To the dessert lovers reading this; the deserts here are huge to the point of obscene! We have never eaten desert here because the meals are so large but have seen the plates being delivered to tables. Susan ordered the chocolate cake to go as she wanted to try it. We had two pieces that night with coffee while watching Dancing With The Stars, then took the rest to Mark and Carol's house to watch the season finale of DWTS and it still was four big portions. I took a picture of the desert at the table, yes it is one order, because you have to see it to believe it. LOL

View out our front window

Another neighbor in and vintage coach

Home on the beach

This is us on the right.

Beach Traffic

Lot's of traffic on the bike path. If you watch long enough you see most everything pass by.

Dockweilers RV Park, Playa del Rey

We had a beautiful drive down from Thornehill Broom Beach along the coast highway through Malibu, Santa Monica, and Venice on our way to Dockweilers RV Park in Playa del Rey just south of LAX on the beach. The drive took about an hour and we checked in just before 1pm. We have site 81 second from the last spot on the beachfront row. This is good as they build a large sand berm along beach in front of the park to guard against winter storm tides. We are far enough south that sand berm ends and we get a nice view of the water. Our neighbors on our left are here for three weeks also, that's the max stay allowed, and have a 2009 Allegro Bus. Jay and Julia, who live here in LA, just returned from a year long trip east and are winding down before returning to their home which they rented out for the year. He is a professor of Lit, and she teaches photography at the college level and owns a studio in Venice. Nice couple. The park is about a third full as they raised their rates from $46 a night to $65 as they are a LA County Park and under a budget crunch. We are in for $46 since we booked before the rate change. The result is the the space on our right has been vacant much of the time. Good luck for us.

We have just passed the midway point of our visit here in LA and the weather is almost hard to believe. The sun comes up at 7am and shines through the shades in our bedroom. We are up and around by 8am, I have been getting an hour long walk in almost every morning. usually sit in chairs at the front of our coach enjoying our morning coffee and watch bicyclers pedal by on the bike path between the park and the water. Sometimes I include a nice cigar along with the coffee. It is warm and sitting there in a tank top and shorts is very comfortable even at 8am.

A couple of days it was foggy until 9am but then sunny, clear, and warm like clockwork. I keep thinking of the movie "Groundhog Day" as the weather each day is so great. Can't say I miss home at all.

The CRV is definitely a huge step up from the Wrangler as far as driving around the freeways and in traffic. We loaded Ollie in the back, got the car washed in Santa Monica and drove around the houses just a block or two off the beach. What a life that must be. Many have been restored and run the gamut from small to large. I have to get back there with my camera as some are really picturesque. Ditto the houses on the Venice Canal. We drove around those for a while then drove north along "Ocean Boulevard" the main north/south street in Santa Monica. It is bordered on one side by the Pacific Ocean beaches and the park above the cliff and on the other side by old hotels, restaurants, shops, etc. Both sides are bordered by rows of old palm trees. When the Olympics were in LA in the 80's the Marathon event ran up this long boulevard. Even if you haven't been to LA you have seen this street and park in countless movies and TV shows. We followed it to the northern end and picked up the coast highway heading to Malibu. We have been eating healthy this trip but treated ourselves to burgers in Malibu....Ollie got his own fries since we are all breaking rules for this meal. We drove around up there admiring the homes along the beaches.

One morning we drove up to Venice to have breakfast at the Sidewalk Cafe, eating outside with the canopy over our heads. We have been coming here for about 30 years and always schedule a breakfast here. They have world class omelets and its a great place to people watch. After breakfast we walked along the boardwalk and I ended up buying three tank tops for $15. They work well in the sun down here.

I took a bike ride down the bike path a few miles to the Manhattan Beach Pier. Again it is hard not to notice the beach houses along the sand in Manhattan Beach. The whole little community is very nice, with lots of little shops, and restaurants. We drove down here a couple of days ago and had breakfast at "Uncle Bills Pancake House" which has a outside dining area with a view of the pier and beach in the distance. It is an icon in the area and on Yelp, Around Me, Zagat and all the other restaurant finder software. Great pancakes, and corned beef hash. Small, fast service, and reasonable prices. One of the better breakfast places in the area. If you want to try it on a weekend allow for a wait to get in as it is very popular.

We have shopped at Costco and Ralph's for groceries a couple of times, done laundry once, and went to an RV place to get an awning strap replacement. But otherwise it is sitting in the sun, reading, and on Sundays watching football. Before we left I had the compartment TV put on an "Arm" so it swings out and will tilt so we can watch TV outside and be able to adjust for sun glare. It works great. Love being able to enjoy a morning cigar while watching the game...can't do that at home for obvious reasons. LOL.

I will be better at entering more photographs in the future.

Thornehill Broom Beach

Rincon Parkway

The Trip Down

As usual I am going to document our winter trip with pictures and thoughts along the way that will be a journal of our trip and preserve some memories for future reminiscing. I have posted notes along the way on my iphone and finally I am taking time to getting the blog up and running again so for any of our friends and family who are interested in following along...here goes.

We were up at 7:30am on Sunday and loading up the rig. We had a few little chores to due; hooking up the CRV for towing, filling the freshwater tank, loading the last of the food, etc. We were on the road a little after 9:00am. It was a little foggy but it was only low clouds and was not a problem to drive in. We drove in and out of sunny patches as the clouds were burning off as we moved south. At 11am we passed through Portland, Oregon and the clouds disappeared for good leaving a beautiful sunny day to drive south. We stopped at a rest stop just north of Eugene, Oregon where we walked Ollie and had lunch a little after 1pm.

The Honda CRV towed very well, better that the Wrangler, probably due to the smaller tires on the CRV where the Wrangler had the oversize tires. Maybe just because its newer and more aerodynamic. One way or the other it tows sweet. We jumped back on I-5 after lunch, bought gas in Cottage Grove, and arrived at our first days destination of Canyonville, Oregon at 4pm almost on the dot. We spent the night at "7 Feather RV Park" just across the freeway from the big 7 Feather Casino. The park is immaculate, modern, and extremely well maintained. There are shuttles to the Casino every ten minutes. Full hookups for $32 a night. We stayed here last December 1st on our trip down and the Casino was all decked out for Christmas. Since we are a month earlier there are no decorations up yet. Cheap meals seem to be a thing of the past in all casinos these days. Hard to find a sandwich for under $8 but the buffets are probably the best deal if you don't mind eating until you explode to get your moneys work. We decided to eat "breakfast" for dinner since we skipped our morning meal, then read a little and get to bed early as we had covered 550 miles during the day. Tomorrow morning we cross the border into California and have a much shorted leg of the trip, 250 miles to Corning, California and the Rolling Hills Casino and RV Park. A nice place for a cheap $25 a night

It was a beautiful sunny drive down from Canyonville and we stopped at a rest area by Lake Shasta and had a nice lazy lunch. See the picture at the top of the column. We got into Corning about 2:00pm and stopped at the famous "Olive Pit" where you can buy every kind of olive you can imagine and quite a few you can't. Naturally, we walked out with a big box filled with Olive jars, pickled asparagus, cheeses, etc. Hey, you need proper garnishes for your cocktails right? Hot pickled asparagus for the Bloody Mary, or Martinis with garlic or blue cheese stuffed olives. We did buy some great pepper cheese that I really liked. Nothing like shopping for the basic food groups. We only were one exit away from our stop for the night and instead of using the GPS I remembered a side road adjacent to the freeway and figured we could take that right to the front of the casino.....wrong! We ended up on a dead end road which is no big deal unless you are 34' and towing a car. We had to unhitch the Honda to finally get both vehicles facing the right direction. Since we were so close to our location, Susan drove the Honda and followed me down the freeway to the correct turnoff. I did not mention that yesterday was the end of Daylight Savings Time and in California the days are not as long as in Washington. It was dark when we pulled into the RV Park at 5pm. We got set up very quickly with the slide out, levelers down, water and electricity plugged in, and satellite TV working. Those olives came in handy that night as "daddy needed his nerve medicine real bad" . We ended up going to the casino buffet for comfort food that night. We also decided to spend another day there just lazing in the 80 degree sun. We had been running all week long to get ready for the trip and decided we needed a break from travel the next day.

We had our extra day of leisure and then we were off heading to "Lost Hills" about as far south as we could make in the one day. We wanted to be able to drive into the Rincon Parkway camp area by about 10am Thursday as there are no reservations strictly first come first served and it is a popular place. We planned on staying there several days. The drive to "Lost Hills" was uneventful, clear and sunny driving, south on I-5 for several hours. Easy but maybe a little boring. The campground was a disappointment, these things happen even when using campground guides etc. You never really know what you are going to get until you arrive. We really did not have a choice as we wanted to get as far south as possible that day. It was $34 a night for full hookups but the grounds were dusty dirt and bare trees. No cement or paving, no gravel, no grass or vegetation of any kind. Just dirt. It was almost empty when we pulled in about 3pm but by that night it filled up quite a bit. As it was just an overnight stop we didn't really care about the amenities as long as we could get an early start the next morning.

We did get an early start and were climbing the infamous "grapevine" on I-5 by 8:30am and turning west just before "Magic Mountain". We were on Highway 126 which runs into the nice little beach town of Ventura. It was a very pretty drive after being on I-5 for the last couple of days. We got to Rincon and there were plenty of spaces left. Rincon is set up along the edge of a road with parking spaces set up for RVs that run along the water for about a mile. The spaces are 40-50 feet long so you have plenty of room for you rig and tow car, fifth wheel and truck or whatever. You are parking head to tail and your curbside is facing the water, You have about 10 feet from the rig to the rocks along the edge that keep you from falling about 15 feet to the beach below. When the tide is in the surf breaks on the base of the rocks just below you. The reason we like this place so much is that the water is so close and the roar of the ocean ever present, the beach is open to dogs and most beaches in LA are not, and your closest neighbor is either in front of you are behind you...not right beside you as in most campgrounds, which gives you a lot more privacy. As with most state and county parks in California there are no hookups so you have to dry camp or "boon dock" as RV'ers call it. We got all set up, which is pretty easy since we only have to put the leveling jacks down and run the slide out. We filled our fresh water tank, and emptied our black and grey water tanks that morning at Lost Hills so we were good to go.

Ernie and Cheryl Parsons stopped by Friday to visit as they live in Ventura. We made plans to meet them Sunday when we arrive at Thornehill Broom for a two night stay. We had a nice visit in the sun and then they had to head for home before dark. Again the weather has been killer with the sun coming up at 7:00am and shinning through the drapes. It is nice to wake up to that and the roaring of the waves below us. We took Ollie down for a beach walk, sat in the sun, read, relaxed, took the Honda into town to shop and just enjoyed the fact that we were in Southern California. We had a campfire and watched the sun set around 5pm each night, then ate dinner and watched some Direct TV or a movie on DVD using either the generator or inverter for power.

Sunday morning we left Rincon for a short hour long run to Thornehill Broom. This is a place we have camped with Mark and Carol for a long long time. Say maybe 30 years. It is just off Highway 1 about 10 miles north of the Malibu Colony. It is also head to tail camping but not close to a road. You curbside door opens right onto the sand and each site has a picnic table and a fire pit. Since it was Sunday people who had spent the weekend there had to leave to get back to the city for work Monday and we had no trouble getting one of the primo spots at the south end of the beach. Larry and Rose Mackey, and Ernie and Cheryl arrived about 1pm that afternoon and brought lots of food, we chipped in with wine, beer, chips, and appetizers, Ernie BBQ ed chicken and a good time was had by all. The rig held everyone comfortably and when sunset came we had a campfire with coffee and brownies. It was really great to see our California friends again. Hope we catch them again before Palm Springs, at Palm Springs, and in March when we work our way back home again.