Enjoying Good Places and Good Weather

Having moved away from Las Vegas, one of the benefits is no longer having to suffer through tremendous heat during the summer. However, last week here in Southern California we experienced a heat wave, which made me reminiscent of living in Las Vegas, something I was not found of particularly because of the weather. To escape this unpleasantness, my mom and I ventured off to new areas of coolness, which were also new places for me to take some pictures.

Seal Beach Pier

When we moved away from Garden Grove, CA in 1993 to Las Vegas, NV, we seriously missed being near the ocean. Thus, my mom would pack up my sister and me in the car every few months for a weekend trip to the beach. We most often visited Huntington Beach, since that was where we most often went while living there. However, we also went to Seal Beach a couple times, which we also thoroughly enjoyed. We would stay at the Radisson Hotel in Seal Beach, spend our days walking up and down Main Street and the Pier, sit and walk on the beach (my mom's absolute favorite thing to do), and then luxuriously dine at Charo-O-Chicken. We made some of our favorite memories during trips like this, and it was a delight to revisit this area and these memories with my mom last week. 

Some lovely things I saw while walking along Main Street

Walking by a beautiful nursery and a tree perfect for climbing

Harveston Park in Murrieta, CA

A few days after our excursion to Seal Beach, my mom and I found ourselves in Murrieta on a day that was particularly hot in Lake Elsinore. For whatever reason, Murrieta is always about 5 degrees cooler than Lake Elsinore, so we were not eager to yet go home. To "waste" some time, we went to Harveston to just sit and enjoy the lake and cool weather. We did this for a few minutes, just barely long enough for me to snap these pictures, but then experienced something horrific. I happened to look up in the gazebo in which we were sitting and found myself gazing upon about a dozen very large, very active, and certainly very poisonous spiders. Needless to say, for hours I felt like they were crawling all over me. So much for a nice evening in the park.

Harveston Park a few days later

Well, these previous events bring us to this week, which is much cooler and more pleasant than last. However, my mom and I wanted to give Harveston Lake another try, since it is so lovely, despite its massive webs of spiders. Two evenings ago we hopped in the car, headed to the park and had a very nice time walking around it. Apparently this was my mom's first time ever walking around the whole lake. The spider incident was only her second experience there, and her first was just as short as her second, though not as unpleasant. This evening, however, was the most pleasant of them all, even though it was a little smokey from a fire on Camp Pendleton. The smoke added a nice haziness to my pictures, so I did not really mind.