The thought that this might be the last time I fly through Los Angeles makes me a bit sad. I cannot count how many hours I have spent in LAX in the last 7 years. The Singapore Air reps here know me by name and ask about my grandchildren. I wish that I had kept track of how many times I crossed the Pacific Ocean, many more than I have crossed the Atlantic for sure. The interesting thing is that I haven’t ever spent much time out of the airport during the last seven years. Once, when a plane crashed at Narita my flight back to Tokyo was cancelled and I spent a day there. Thanks to Ruth’s sister Charite I got to leave my hotel for a really enjoyable dinner.

When we were making our plans to return to the US, Rick suggested we spend a few days in California before flying on to Texas. We arrived on Sunday, got our rental car and drove to San Diego. Our goal was to drive along the coast as much as possible. We rested and drove around the entire area. We stopped at the Mormon Battalion historical site in Old Town San Diego. It was well done and very interesting.

The only part of our stay in California that was planned was arriving and going to San Diego. As we drove back north, we decided to go east and see what Plam Springs was like. Well…it’s a bit run down. We ended up staying in Rancho Mirage and liked it well enough to stay two nights. We shopped a bit in Palm Deseret, but mostly just relaxed. Then we drove back to LA the day before our flight to Houston. We drove up Highway 1 to see the section north of LA. We ended up at Santa Monica Pier and got out to stretch a bit.

We also made a stop to walk around the Los Angeles Temple.

We met Charite, Sarah and Brian at PF Chang’s for dinner. It was so good to see all of them. We love Ruth’s family!

The next day we said goodbye to the Pacific as we headed east to Houston and our new home (at least for awhile, until the next adventure beckons).