Cali Trip

This past weekend the fam and I took a quick vacation to California! We were lucky enough to catch a Space-A flight from our base. For those of you not familiar with Air Force lingo Space-A is short for Space Available. If an Air Force flight mission has extra seats after filling up all the cargo and space for essential passengers; they open up those available seats to military members like us who are looking for a vacation. Best part of this? It's free! We took a similar trip a few months ago to Seattle. 

Check out Con-Man on the plane:

On the way there the plane was empty so we were free to walk around as we pleased. But the way back we had some interesting cargo-

The plane had a quick stop at another base to unload the truck. It was interesting to watch and quicker than a layover on a commercial flight if you can believe that. We even saw a helicopter land while we were waiting!

While we were there we stayed with family friends. On our way to their house we drove up the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway). 

We stopped at Paradise Cove on the way up. And even though we had just gotten off the plane and didn't have our bathing suits; Connor loved running in the waves. And even made a few friends.

During the day Saturday we went up to wine country. The Hubs did some wine tasting while I did some wine watching. All the wineries are gorgeous so it was nice to relax and enjoy the scenery. We had cheese and crackers for lunch and spent time on the grounds of the wineries.

That evening we drove down to LA for a Dodgers game. And they won yay! I love their old mid century style stadium.

We spent the last day of our trip in Santa Barbra. It's so beautiful there. We spent most of the day in the harbor on the board walk. We took Con-Man to the marine museum where you can touch the sea creatures! We walked along the beach and ate lunch in the marina.

Con-Man got to take his picture with a real life Filmore van and rode the carousel.

We learned that the homeless population here is not shy about getting what they need:

And while out in Wine Country I found some material for a possible project. I saw a whole basket full of wooden stoppers used to plug the wine barrels seemingly all forgotten. I asked around and the people working at the winery said I could take a few.

Hmmm.... I'm already formulating some ideas for these guys!