Q's Adventures: Memorial Day in Ventura and LA

This past Memorial Day Weekend, I headed South to go spend time with my good friend Jimmy B in Ventura! We always have a great time together, and since he just, finally, after years of hard work, finished his masters thesis, it seemed like a great time to go visit!

So Friday after work I trekked South on 101 to see my friend.  The drive was uneventful, and I made it down in time for dinner.  Dinner was at a local Thai place that was freaking delicious.  Then we went back to the apartment complex, got a workout in at the little gym there, and that was that!

Saturday, we woke up, had breakfast, and hit the road for Simi Valley.  The destination:  The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.  I have wanted to go here for a while, and being as Simi is a mere 30 minutes from Ventura, it seemed like a good chance to get out there!  Also, Ronald Reagan is one of the more intriguing Presidents ever, so seeing the museum and learning more about his life and Presidency really appealed to me!

It did not disappoint.

The Reagan Museum was phenomenally well done.  It was well laid out, well paced, and had numerous interesting things.  The historical artifacts were, of course, interesting...but they had interactive kiosks throughout, which really gave a pretty sweet hands-on way to learn about Reagan and the 80s.  I think Jimmy B said it best in that it was a great museum in that it was both entertaining and educational.

Grabbed a few pictures on the camera phone that day (I forgot my regular camera at home this trip).

Here's me giving a Presidential Address!  Nancy Reagan in the background looks especially pleased!  This was the station set up so we can see what a teleprompter looks like and how it works.  Very interesting.

They also had a true replica of the Oval Office, as it was on his final day in office.  Obviously that's a model of the Resolute Desk (as the current one still resides in the White House), but the pictures and the chair, and some of the other artifacts around the room are original to Reagan's Oval Office.  Very neat!

The real prize of the museum is Air Force One!  This is the actual Air Force One used by Reagan (and others like Ford, Nixon, Johnson, and Carter) before it was retired for the current (much bigger) jumbo jet they now use.  Very interesting to walk through...as this plane is much smaller than you might expect!

The most interesting part of the entire museum, at least to me, was all the stuff about the cold war.  That period always fascinated me in history class...and here it was, live and in person!  The video clips shown were very interesting.  They even had a real piece of the Berlin Wall outside the museum in the gardens!

After we had our fill of Reagan, it was back to Ventura.  We decided to BBQ that night, so we went to the store and got some burgers, some fruits to make a fruit salad, and I got an ear of corn to grill up as well.  After dinner we went down to the beach for a walk to the pier and back.  It was a nice evening visually, but it was brutally windy (as you can tell by my messy hair here)...

After the walk we went to the gym to work out.  This particular workout was a short warm up run and then a 30 minutes arms and shoulders weight routine.  Nice to change it up from doing cardio all the time.  Gotta try and build some muscle too.  Following the workout we headed to a local sushi place for half price sushi, and it was delicious!

Sunday's plan was to head into Los Angeles and hit up Pink's Hot Dogs followed by an afternoon in the museum district in Hollywood (on the Miracle Mile!).  Pink's was delicious, as always.  It truly is a treat when I get to go there.  Of course, new health-conscious me doesn't eat hot dogs anymore...but I had to make an exception for Pink's!  Their chili-cheese dogs are to die for!  TO DIE FOR!

Then we rolled down LaBrea and headed to the museum district.  The goal was two different museums.  First up, the La Brea Tar Pits!

The Tar Pits had always intrigued me.  I mean, here's a shitton of tar just pouring out of the ground in the middle of one of the biggest cities in America.  This tar has been here for 60,000 years or so, and this city just sprung up around it.  So its very interesting.  They've also pulled a ton of full skeletons out of there, animals trapped in the tar.  My favorite prehistoric animal was quite prevalent, the Saber Tooth Cat!  Also quite prevalent were skeletons that would make Joe Thornton's knees weak:

Oh yeah, look at those tusks!  The museum was short, and then we wandered outside to check out the tar pits themselves.  Here's a clutch tar pit shot of their biggest pit.  It smelled like asphalt.

Once we had our fill of tar, we headed next door to the LA County Museum of Art (LACMA).  The LACMA was not great, honestly.  At least for me.  I love art...but I love specific kinds of art.  There were loads of Picasso's, but he's not my favorite.  And there was way too much modern "art" (seriously, one room had just a stack of oversized plates...that's not art).  The Mexican section was cool, all kinds of ancient serpent carvings from the Aztec and Mayan times...as was the Japanese section.  I didn't really take any art pictures (sorry, no real camera...phone was dying).  From top of one of the buildings, though, got a decent shot of Hollywood:

The famous HOLLYWOOD sign is actually in that shot, right of center.  Hard to see, though.  Upon finishing at the LACMA, the last thing we had on the agenda was dinner in Malibu, so we cruised out of Hollywood, through Santa Monica, and into Malibu to my favorite restaurant there, Gladstone's!

Gladstone's is on the PCH, at the South end of Malibu, right where Sunset Blvd. meets the PCH.  Its quite the location.  We were there about an hour before our reservation, so we hung out on the beach there and took some pictures.  Here's one of me, and then the coastline down towards Santa Monica:

And here's a clutch picture of the beach and coastline looking North through Malibu:

Not too bad a place to kill some time!  Dinner was, of course, excellent.  We got crab cake appetizers, and then I had a seafood risotto that was killer.  And huge...I had the rest of it for lunch on Monday before I left.  After dinner we cruised up the PCH to Ventura, where we crashed.  It was a long, yet pretty awesome day.  Monday was a travel day, so we arose, ate breakfast...then I wanted to get a run in before I left, so we hit the complex's gym again.  Ate the left overs for lunch after my shower, and it was time to head North.  I was making great time for most of it...until I got through Salinas.  Traffic was shit from Prunedale on (it took me an hour and a half to go the last 30 miles to my parent's house...ugh)...but mom and dad had a Tidal Wave and delicious dinner waiting for me, so that made life better!

All in all, another great weekend hanging out with Jimmy B!  LA is actually a pretty awesome city...one I haven't spent nearly enough time in.  I'll have to get back there and spend more time there.  And I definitely need to hit up a Dodgers game.  

Back on the road next weekend...this time headed North to check in on Bubs and Kent.  Should be good times yet again!  Probably not worthy of a Q's Adventures, though...since I do Williams a lot (and its not the most picturesque locale).

Cheers!