We recently went to the beach again - Newport Beach this time. It’s great to lay on the sandy beach and soak up the sun, but don’t try to go in the water - it’s COLD. Better to just relax on the beach.
Found a pretty good restaurant in Anaheim - Short Stop BBQ, where I would recommend the pulled pork. Found a really good restaurant in Newport Beach - the Greek Town Grill, where I would recommend the gyros, hummus, pita bread, fries - pretty much everything we tried.
This is the first time we’ve been in Southern California in the summer. I’m really happy about the low humidity, which is quite a change from the shower-level humidity of the Midwest.
On the minus side, traffic sucks. Everything that defines bad traffic happens here on a daily basis. Bumper-to-bumper traffic crawls along for MILES. Crazy drivers dart in and out of lanes, and of course they don’t have the faintest idea what a turn signal is. The too-packed-to-drive time zones are between 7 am and 10 am, and again between 3 pm and 7 pm. That really limits where we go and what we do.
Back to the plus side - in the summer time southern California is covered in flowers. I’ve never seen such gorgeous bougainvillea, even in Arizona. Here it grows in solid blocks of red, pink and lavender.
Creamy-white magnolia blossoms are out now, beautiful and scented And this is the first place I’ve seen these amazing blue trees, called Jacaranda. They are everywhere around the Anaheim area.
On one stretch of road between LA and Bakersfield they have planted (and are watering) miles and miles and miles of flowering bushes in the medium between the lanes. It looks great, but in a state that is constantly broke I sort of wonder why they do it. Oh well, I’m sure they have much worse ways to waste money.
All of this color and greenery requires a lot of irrigation. Just take a short drive outside the city and it’s obvious that this land is supposed to be a desert. The mountains are covered in dry grass and scrubby trees; on the big mountains all that short brown grass gives the landscape a velvety look, but it's easy to see why fires can get out of hand so quickly. If this started to burn, nothing would stop it.
Further out on the planes, the dry mountains are a backdrop for the cultivated lands. But if that irrigation stopped for even a short time, it would all look the same.
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