The Perfect Gift For Kevin.

Laying in bed one morning, with it just getting light out, I thought how neat it would be to be able to see the sun rise over the ocean. We saw breathtaking sunsets over the ocean. I much prefer the sunset, just because then I don’t have to get up early. HAHA Anyway, I was thinking about that and how Malibu (along with Santa Barbara) actually faces out south. Hum, I should get up and see where the sun rises. Got up and looked out the living room windows. Beautiful morning. A few minutes later, “up” came the sun. The brilliance splashing colors all over the ocean. Stunning. I just stood there, in awe. I never get tired of seeing that.

The Malibu Seafood Fish Market is right near Malibu Beach RV Park, where we are staying. It opens at 10:00 and then cafe opens at 11:00. When we got there very few cars were in the parking lot and we walked right in and ordered. I decided to wait on buying any seafood since it would be a few days before we are ready for it and I don’t want it smelling up the fridge. We ordered the fried fish and chips. The seating is outside and it was a glorious day. The food, we rated: Once A Week. The homemade tartar sauce was excellent, with a good tasting tang. Kevin suggested this should be a new tradition – seafood on Christmas Eve. I like that. The rest of the day was just relaxing, reading, and getting presents ready and wrapped. Kevin said he wanted to give me two gifts to open this evening. It turns out he is a silly goose, like his mom. He wrapped up the toothpaste and toothbrush I had got at the store today. HA Thanks, hon. 🙂

For Christmas, I surprised Kevin with a 2 hour sailing with Sail Channel Islands. https://sailchannelislands.com/ We got ready and drove up to Oxnard. We pulled over at Hanna Beach to watch the surfers. There were 21 out there, that I could see.

We continued on and followed the directions Captain Dan gave us for getting to the sailboat. We made it fine and the parking lot had a ton of parking and free. We gathered our things, including sweaters and rain jackets (didn’t use the jackets), sun block, etc.

We walked the short way to Marina 4 gate, called Captain Dan, saw our boat, Willie in the distance, and waited for him to open the locked gate. He was a very wonderful and kind man. He used to fly airplanes and landed them on aircraft carriers. He doesn’t fly anymore because it is boring. Yes, just flying is boring compared to take off and landing on a carrier. 🙂

We got on the small sailboat and what a ride. Captain Dan had Kevin drive it the whole time, except for right in the line of slip at the harbor. The sea was so calm, the rocking almost made me fall asleep. I didn’t feel any “falling” part of motion sickness. So thankful! I saw a boat named, “ Vitamin Sea” and thought that was funny. We also saw a huge dredge. Captain Dan said the pipeline takes the sand out a mile and dumps it on a beach. Wow! We also a lot of sea lions.

The tour was from 1:00-3:00 PM. I picked this time for us to have plenty time to get there and also the warmest part of the day. We saw a big container ship, lots of sailboats, some regular boats, and even a crab boat which was right along the water break.

Amazing. Kevin had the biggest grin on his face the entire time. A perfect gift.

 Credit Card Fraud! Mad. I just don’t understand people who do that!?! They were sneaky in that they used the name of a place we had been last summer and charged it for $34.70. I noticed it and knew we hadn’t been back there. Kevin called the place and they saw no charge so we knew it wasn’t a mistake on their part. Next we called the card company who took care of it right away.

We went to Beverly Hills Mall for the closest Container Store to Malibu. Let me say, that was a fancy swanky mall! All the walkways are outside but it was raining ever so slightly. Beautiful place. At the mall we found the store. It took us a while to figure out what would work. I needed a shelf or containers for the cupboard under the coffee bar where so many cans rolled out on last travel day. I had measured the cupboard area before we left, which was good. Found what we thought would work and came home. It was drizzling and dark but the traffic wasn’t too thick. We stopped by Malibu Seafood and got fish and fries and fish sandwich and fries and took it home. I saw the fish market was all packed up but the guy said it was still open. I bought a pound of tilapia (2 pieces) for $9.99 a pound. Then I put the new containers in the cupboard – fit perfectly – and organized all the cans. Yay!

Kevin was on the phone with Rancho Oso RV in Santa Barbara. It is the campground we were last. A package was delivered there for us. The guy at the gate couldn’t get his computer to hook to their spotty cell service so he was unable to print a FedEx label. The label would have been put on the box, FedEx would pick it up, and send it where we are. Kevin called FedEx and oh yes, they would print the label for him if the guy would drop off the box to FedEx. Well, we can’t ask that, since it was probably 20 minutes from the campground. I suggest we just drive the 91 miles each way and pick it up and that is what we did. We left around 1:00 PM and enjoyed the drive. The drive was beautiful. There was a little rain but stopped as we went up the canyon. Low clouds hung low on the mountains and very pretty. Kevin got the package just fine. Drove back down the canyon and headed south on 101. We quickly got into construction traffic that lasted about 25 minutes. At least we were moving the whole time. We decided to eat out. I looked up on my phone and found Yolanda’s Mexican, highly rated on Trip Advisor. We got right in, very happy place, and food was delicious. He had fajitas and I am enchiladas. Our rating: Once A Week. Then we drove on home in light mist. A very pleasant day. NOTE: a week or so later and California received huge storms. Rancho Oso RV and the roads were so damaged from the rain that it is closed until at least March 1. 😦

New Year’s Eve. At 9:00 PM, we walked, in the pouring rain, across the driveway to the tent this campground (Malibu Beach RV Park) had set up professionally the other day.  They had a New Year’s Eve party and what a blast it was! Lots of cute hats and party favors, treats and drinks. There was a DJ there. It was a very fun and festive event. The DJ had a camera where you could get pictures taken, it would put it in a collage, and then text it to you. (Notice the spelled Malibu wrong! HAHA) We did it and they turned out really cute. Of course the music was loud and I could feel it. We kind of danced around with everyone.. A very nice day. If it wasn’t raining, we would have been outside all day but this was nice, too.

New Year’s Day. Even though we were up late, we woke up early. Today we drove to El Matador State Park. It is about 10 minutes west of us. We got there early enough, around 9:00 AM, that there were only a few cars in the parking lot. We paid $10.00 to park all day and walked down the steep stairs and embankment. You walk down 150 feet down  a cliff. What a glorious sight to see! There are rocks of every size on this beach. Some are extremely tall. The water has form caves in the rocks. The ocean waves are strong and violent to watch. A great place to just sit and “be”.

We set up our camp chairs and just watched and read our books. Soon the wind came up and was a bit chilly so we moved back towards the cliff but still very close to the water. It wasn’t long and there was a lot of people there. It didn’t feel crowded at all, because it is so long of a beach. We saw professional photographers with a family. Everyone that came had a camera/phone out taking pictures. Neat to see. Right near us was about a 2 feet steep drop off from where the high water reaches. I noticed that almost every guy would get down it, then turn around and help the lady down. I love that! Such gentleman and made my heart happy. Kevin said he noticed that too. The guys would also help the ladies up when leaving. Around 12:30 the clouds covered the sun and it was a bit too chilly to keep sitting there so we headed home. There were 5 cars waiting for our parking spot! It was a lovely spot to be for New Year’s Day.