Lark Ranch

Just like the sign promised, we had the "Ultimate Fall Experience" on Friday!! We went to Lark Ranch in Loogootee, Indiana with a couple friends and had a blast!

Enter corn maze here! We were pretty lost most of the time!

Super fast slide!

Good, cheap fun!

Beautiful night!

Labor Day Weekend

Beautiful sky

McCormick's Creek State Park

Canyon Falls

Craig managed to hike with his coffee without falling!

Birthday Cheesecake made by mom! Sooo yummy!

Birthday cookie at work - 2 layers of cookie with icing in the middle!

More of LA

After we finished fishing and got the fish stink washed off, we drove up Highway 1 about an hour, toward Oxnard where Craig was staying for his training.

Highway 1

We found a cute winery along the way.

This winery charged $10 for a wine tasting! I think all the tastings we have ever done have been free, so Craig and I split a tasting. The owner was very nice and had worked for the government. She even knew where Crane was!

We found a second winery.

Also very yummy! This one charged for the tasting unless you bought a bottle. I ended up with three bottles in my luggage and it made my bag so heavy! (All three weren't ours!)

On Monday, Craig had to go to class, so the rest of us explored Ventura a little bit. We checked out the mall and then had lunch at the pier. (Amanda and I had a much better time at the mall than Ben and Tyler!)

Ventura Pier - 1872 -

Amanda and Ben

Our last night together we went out for sushi!

It was my first time trying sushi. We ordered about 5 different plates for all of us to share. I knew some of it was cooked and some was raw. I just told myself it was all cooked and tried everything! It was really good and I was surprised I liked it!

It ended up being a good trip and I'm glad we all got to go. I don't think I could have lasted the whole two weeks without seeing Craig. The three hour time difference made it pretty challenging to comunicate very well over the phone. About the time Craig was starting his evening, I was going to bed! I'm not sure when we will make it back to California, but I'm still shocked we had the opportunity to go twice this summer!

Deep Sea Fishing!

Second day of LA trip:

We got up early Sunday morning to go fishing. We were pretty impressed with ourselves that 5 of us were able to make it out the door (with one bathroom) before 6:30 am! The boat headed out at 7:30 for 30-45 minutes before finding a good place to fish.

Seals and birds lined the rocks on our way out to the middle of the ocean! (Ok - It wasn't the middle, but it felt like it!)

Fishing poles were ready and the boat was rockin!

The morning was overcast and chilly. I was glad to have a long-sleeve t-shirt on and a light jacket to cut the wind. The sun eventually came out and fried my neck! In this picture the deckhand is flinging bait overboard to get the fish stirred up and hungry . (This is actually only a guess as to why he was throwing bait over people's heads. I basically had no idea what was going on most of the time. Deep sea fishing is a lot different that pond fishing from the bank. And I have only done that a hand full of times!)

Tyler and Craig were nice enough to bait my hook many times. (Several of my pictures aren't very good, but I blame it on the rocking of the boat and my queasiness!)

Craig baiting my hook with squid. The next day we ate calamari that looked strangely familiar!

Tyler caught many fish...like 7 or 8. He was definitely on a roll. I didn't understand it - his line was 2 feet from mine and I wasn't catching any! Finally he told me that my line probably wasn't on the bottom, told me what to do differently, and then 5 minutes later - I finally caught one! I only caught one the entire time, but I was happy to at least catch one. We mainly caught sculpin fish. They measured the fish and if it was over 10 inches, we kept it. We ended up with about 3 fish, but gave them to another couple that was fishing next to us.

Amanda caught several. Ben, to her right, also had good luck catching several.

Another beautiful, spiny sculpin! Craig found out the hard way that these fish aren't like Indiana bass that you can grab and take off the hook. He found out after he had his hand around it that it was venomous! His hand itched the rest of the morning, but apparently it wasn't too bad.

As we made our way back to the shore, the deckhands filleted the fish. The "extra parts" got thrown overboard and made for a great seagull and seal lunch. As we were fishing, we had a couple seals that would swim around our boat hoping to eat our bait before it got to the bottom.

Overall it was a great experience! I'm glad we got to go and experience something new that you can't do in Indiana!

Hollywood

For some reason, I can't move the pictures around in this post and I'm out of patience trying, so here is Hollywood...in random order! We did the zoo and hollywood on the first day.

Christopher Reeve

I started taking pictures of the stars that I recognized. Then I realized...I knew most of the names and the sidewalk was very crowded, so I stopped after 10 or so. We happened to be there on Michael Jackson's birthday, so his star was full of people and flowers.

Dick Van Dyke - Danville native!

Rodeo Drive...around 6 pm after everything was closed.

We couldn't afford to shop here anyway!

Craig looks so happy to get his picture with me

$$ Rodeo Dr $$

Will Smith - "Change the world"

Roy Rogers (1949!)

The famous HOLLYWOOD sign

Chinese Theater

LA Zoo!

The day started cloudy, but turned into a beautiful day for walking around learning about animals.

Our group (L to R): Amanda, Tyler, Craig, and Ben. I have face shots later in our trip!

Hopefully I'll get more of our trip posted soon!