We woke up to homemade blueberry and walnut pancakes, breakfast Starbucks blend coffee and about 105 degrees outside… we started our car with the A/C on about 1 hour before leaving—and said our goodbyes to the gang and our fabulous hosts Marq and Dawn and hit the road to LA.
We made our first In-n-Out Burger stop, where Dermot kept calling the secret menu item “monster style”, when it should be “animal style” to add thousand island sauce and sautéed unions to your burger. We ate our burgers on the road, and set the Garmin to N. Hollywood to see Kira and Aaron, Katie’s friends from VA.
The heat wave was all over CA, and we were very grateful to be greeted with ice-cold beers and a swimming pool about 20 degrees colder then the air temperature… perfect. We visited for a few hours, heard about their recent trip to Argentina and Peru.
Our next and last stop was to Sam’s house, one of Katie’s friends from when she used to live in Huntington Beach, CA. We visited Sam in Newport Beach for additional Labor Day weekend fun. Garmin led us to Balboa Island, a very adorable man made island from 1890, but then told us to get on a ferry. Due to the line and potential to be big $$, we took the long route along the peninsula… only to find that it was a $2 ride that lets out right next to Sam’s house… next time!
We grabbed gyros and beers in Sam’s hood, and then biked down to Josh’s house party. We had great conversions- including political talk (man, we are getting old!) that everyone attempted to avoid… but had a great time visiting with Josh, Jacob, June and all people with names starting with J. We officially traded in our AARP cards and stayed out until 2:30am.