Rattlesnake Season Starts Early

Oh?  That tidbit was announced on the local Orange County TV news at the end of January.  Who knew?  My young granddaughters did, “Oh the rattlesnakes cross the Santa Monica Mountains hiking trails all the time, grandma.”  Remind me to stay off the mountain trails.  Apparently the normal rattlesnake season runs from April through October…  Add to that bears in the backyards in Pasadena and mountain lions routinely crossing the 101 and you have an altogether different picture of paradise.

But paradise it has been this winter. We enjoyed the warm southern California weather for two months while our neighbors have been enduring one of the worst winters on record.  I felt really guilty about that, at least until the rattlesnake warning.

All good things come to an end and we have been back in the frozen tundra for a week.  I can take a joke with the best of them but when are they going to roll up the snow and cart is away? Yesterday it reached the 50s for the first time since early December.  Much of the snow cover melted but not to fear, 4 to 8 inches are predicted for tonight!  I cannot complain because it was an unbelievably awful winter in the Midwest and we missed much of it.

On to more pleasant memories, our California vacation was wonderful.  We were able to spend a great deal of time with the granddaughters who are a miracle.  Weekly dinners, occasional sleepovers and special trips remind me just how lucky we are.  The girls rope me into reading to them, although I expect that they read far better than I.  The latest series I found was the Dear Know-It-All  books about a junior high journalist and her friends.  The situations and solutions presented are real, relevant, and rational.  I would recommend the series for young girls nine to twelve.  I may need to load some of the earlier books onto my Nexus 7 because they are not all in print now.

What of our California adventure this year?  We spent most of our time in Santa Monica again but were able to get down to Orange County for a couple of days.  Some of my favorite SoCal restaurants are the Sherman Gardens and Library Restaurant (Corona del Mar), Auld Dubliner (Tustin), Thyme Café and the Urth Cafe (Santa Monica), and C & O Cucina (Venice). We also visited the Observatory in Griffith Park which is a great place to take yourself or your kids because the displays are very fine and the docents knowledgeable.  Their sky show is OK, I’ve seen better. The Observatory is free except for the sky show. We also went to see Cirque de Soleil’s Totem—very enjoyable.  Most of our time was spent at the beach, usually reading on a park bench and watching the sail boats.

 I fulfilled my long held desire to visit the Central Coast and was not disappointed.  After a nice lunch at the wonderful Mexican restaurant, Cielito, in Santa Barbara we drove north on scenic highways 1 and 101 to San Luis Obispo, a small city about three and a half hours from Santa Monica.  The area we visited, from Santa Maria to San Simeon, has much to recommend. In San Luis Obispo we visited the historical part of town near the small downtown area, a variety of shops, the Mission, and their Carnegie Library Muesum.  The restaurants in SLO (as they like to be called) are very nice.  If you like beef a trip to Tahoe Joe’s is in order; for Italian try the Upper Crust Trattoria which is in a strip mall, but the food and décor are first rate.  Lunch at the Apple Farm Restaurant will delight you with good home cooking and a visit to nearby Morro Bay requires a stop at Rose’s Landing for seafood chowder as well as a view of the harbor seals as they swim by.

Morrow Bay was relatively quiet in February, but I expect it is much busier in the summer.  The Central Coast State Park Museum in Morro Bay is really worth the stop. The interactive displays are educational for adults and children and be sure to see the minke whale skeleton on the very breezy balcony.  The Park’s golf course looked challenging; the boat rental tempting.  There are other state parks nearby as well as a large salt marsh.  However the really nice part of the SLO area is the people who are just like your neighbors and friends back home.  They are eager to share a recipe, offer directions or suggestions, or just chat with you.  I hope we can return to this area and check out nearby towns because it is a great place (read, SANER than LA or Southern California). I wouldn’t mind living there either…

After a week home, the memories begin to fade.  The unpacking is finished; loads of laundry done; maps and brochures stored away for next year.  I voted in the primary today. (Early voting is very popular in our household.)  We attended one of the lectures at the Institute for Continued Learning at Roosevelt University and have another scheduled for this Friday.  The Spring semester begins soon.  Plans for Easter begin to emerge.  One thing for certain, there will be no rattlesnakes at the egg hunt!