Heading south from the Central Coast, Jim arranged to meet up with old high school friends in Carpinteria (by Santa Barbara), Los Angeles, and Carlsbad (by San Diego.) Gee, you’d think he went to high school in California! Nope – South New Jersey.
We found an Elks lodge in Santa Barbara to stay a couple nights. We drove down to Carpinteria early enough to make a stop at the beach before heading over to Bill and Mary’s house for dinner. What a beautiful beach! And, there is a State Park / RV park right on the beach. The website said maximum length was 35 feet, so we didn’t even think of staying there (we're 37), but we had to take a drive thru. This is what a $70/night site looks like:
Here’s the main street of Carpinteria at the beach. Iconic California! and on a beautiful evening!
Then we took a walk on the beach.
This is one Panorama picture where I ran around behind Jim to his left, as he was panning left to right. Fun! I got the idea from this video: http://youtu.be/fTz4Nhgm_SQ
Then we had a delightful dinner with Bill Crowley (Jim’s high school buddy) and his wife Mary. He left New Jersey immediately after high school, found this area and has been here ever since. They both obviously love the area.
I was interested to learn that one of the biggest employers in Carpinteria is Lynda.com. I love Lynda.com. That website was the inspiration for our Geeks on Tour Tutorial Video/Membership website. I actually sent in an application to be one of their teachers once … never heard back. I kinda like how things turned out!
We headed south again, destination Carlsbad – near San Diego. It was just a minor detour to go thru San Dimas and see another high school friend of Jim’s – Halsey Bonnell. We could only stay a couple hours, but I was glad to meet this friendly, joyful guy! We might get to visit him again because he's just around the block from the Pomona fairgrounds where the
FMCA rally will be next March.
Carlsbad is the home of Ron and Ruth Kennedy. Ron helped organize the last high school reunion back in Jersey and we attended. We also visited their home in 2007 – I know because I can look it up in
this blog!
Ruth is a very accomplished artist and we so enjoyed getting the “Art Tour” of their home!
I love this one where she makes the light emanate from the flower.
We went out to dinner one night, grilled outside another, and took advantage of their hot tub for a nice soak. All along we chatted, reminisced, and planned. It's so good to spend time with friends at their home and really get connected. We even got to meet their son and grandson. Here's a picture of their grandson, actually it's two pictures of him - one directly from the camera and another of the painting that Ruth did of him.