It was just about 15 days since a colleague of mine had come to the US in 2014. It was the weekend of July 4th and we planned to go to Los Angeles. However, we did not want to visit the typical Hollywood, Universal Studios or Disney where it would all be very crowded. We were joined by my friend my Sacramento, Anup and Madhunkiran on the road from Sacramento. Madhukiran had earlier flown from NYC to Sacramento. We also had my cousin Prasanna joining us on this trip.
Anup and Madhu rented a Toyota Avalon from Sacramento and arrived here at about 5 PM and we then went to the airport at San Jose to add ourselves as drivers on the rental. We started from there at about 6:30 PM on our journey to LA. We stopped at Denny's on the way for dinner and reached our hotel late night. Denny's is one of our typical dinner stops on trips like this.
The next morning, we were all excited to go on a Segway tour at Huntington beach. We had bought a deal on
Living Social for this and worked out pretty well. It was a 2 hour Segway tour for $36 per person. It took all of us a while to know how to use it and how it works. While, Prasanna and Madhu learnt it pretty quick, Anup took the most time and was very scared of riding it all through the tour. This was our first experience on Segway and all of us enjoyed it.
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| Guru and Madhu trying Segway at the rental |
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| All of us on the Segway |
We had lunch at an Indian Restaurant that afternoon along with an ex-collegue Sushma who was at LA for the last 2+ years doing her masters and now working there. Its been so long now that I don't remember the name of the restaurant. But, it was a long wait for the buffet lunch and all of us were so hungry. The food was pretty good and we were glad to have Idly and Vada in the buffet. We later had Crushed Ice with mango flavor (called Gola or Ice-gola in India) nearby and headed to the beach at Santa Monica. Unable to find a proper parking, we parked our car on the street and went to the beach and played until we were tired for the next few hours. This was the most crazy time we ever had in the beach till date. From jumping on the waves to literally pulling legs of each other to bring them down, we had great fun. After the beach, we drove about an hour before having dinner at
Islands Burgers. We then went into Target and bought food and other supplies we might need for the hiking we had planned for the next day. Checking in to the hotel, we took a shower and hit the bed for the day.
The next morning, we were supposed to start early in the morning to take the Island Packers Cruise to Channel Islands National Park off the coast of Ventura. Though most of us were ready, we got slightly delayed and had to rush to make sure we reached in time. We eventually reached a little late. Since the reservation was confirmed and we had called the cruise folks a couple of times, they had delayed boarding and we could make it to the cruise. It was an hour ride on the cruise with amazing views and dolphin showing up often besides the boat.
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| Boarding the cruise |
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| Dolphins enroute Channel Islands |
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First glimpse of Channel Islands at a distance in the fog
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Views closer to the shores
As soon as we landed on the shore, we had a ranger who gave as instructions on the various trails available for hike, their distances and a strict no trash policy of the island. We also got flyers with these details. We took one of the loops which was about 8 miles and started after eating some fruits. It was a fun filled tiring hike and we had some amazing view of the ocean from the top of the hills on the island.
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Anup walking away from us to avoid our poor jokes
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Tired folks on the hike
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Ocean views from the top
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| More ocean views |
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| Ocean views again |
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| Atop the mountain |
