Our stay home vacation

My son was away at High School Cross Country camp for three days, and we already had this week planned off work. So, we decided to have a stay home vacation. We played tourist in our own backyard! When people come to Southern California, what do they do? There's amusement parks of course, but we've been to them all. There's lots of desert activities, but my hubby refuses to go to the desert during the summer. When we meet out of town people the first place they want to go is Hollywood and Venice Beach. We've been to Hollywood, but never been to Venice Beach. So away we went.



Here is a photo of part of the canal system that gives Venice Beach it's name. It's beautiful and very ritzy! Then we headed to the beach. I heard that a lot of artists make Venice Beach their home. So, I expected: art studios, sculpture, upscale boutiques, and souvenir shops. What we saw were lots of homeless, tattoo parlors, tacky T-shirt and poster shops, drug dealers, and drug users right out on the street.

Well, next stop was Muscle Beach... again another disappointment. I guess the beautiful people all have jobs (we were there on a Monday). There was only one fat guy working out.



Here is a picture of the famous part of Muscle Beach. You can see the workout area behind the stage where the guys (and girls) get pumped up. Then they come up on the stage to pose. I'm standing in the bleachers to take this photo. I tried to get my hubby to pose with his shirt off, but he wouldn't do it. He also wouldn't go up on stage alone, so our daughter had to go with him. LOL!

The next day we headed to our local beach. We go to the beach all the time to picnic, surf, and run; but thinking again of what a tourist would do, we decided to rent jet skis!



Here's my daughter. She's ridden jet skis before on Lake Havasu. She's already a real pro.



I decided not to drive. It's kind of expensive to rent one, but free for a rider. My daughter has a waterproof digital camera, with video mode. Here's a short video of our ride. We got it up to 55mph!

I took my daughter on a marathon day of school shopping. I also tried getting tickets to a Broadway play, but everything was sold out. So I got tickets for her and my hubby to go to the Galaxy-Pachuca game. It was a rough/wild game. David Beckham got hurt again and may be out for the rest of the season... MAJOR BUMMER! I watched the game on TV... double overtime and a shoot out. Galaxy lost, but it was still a great game!