This morning we are on to an adventure. Ed took the day off from work to spend some “quality time” with his parents, while Meg stayed home to work. As they both work from home, it makes raising Cooper much easier! We first left the condo around 9:00 for a quick drive to Nat’s Diner for breakfast. Deb had scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and hash-browns. While Mark tucked into a turkey sausage scramble, accompanied by hash-browns and toast, Ed opted for scrambled eggs with toast. Copious amounts of coffee were provided. We can heartily recommend this diner to anyone traveling to the LA area.
We returned home for a quick freshening, and then headed for our destination of the day, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA.) Deb had been to this museum a number of years ago, but found the current exhibits new and exciting. The building is an amalgamation of multiple buildings near the La Brea Tar Pits. We spent hours in the modern exhibitions area, which is one of the most extensive collections of modern art in the world. Mark was particularly taken with the Picasso room, surrounded by twenty Picasso works on the walls or pedestals. We wandered the exhibitions for hours, separately and together.
We can’t leave a museum without a visit to the museum shop for Deb to add to her earring collection from museums around the world. Next door to LACMA, and formerly known as LACMA west, is the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, which we didn’t have time to enter. But as there is no entry fee for the museum shop, Deb was able to step in and again add to her collection.
We left the parking garage and fought the traffic back to the Sherman Oaks neighborhood. Meg had taken a break from work and walked to the local Ralph’s supermarket for some baked potatoes and steak for our dinner. We enjoyed the meal, chatted at length, and then Mark and Deb climbed to the top floor to repack their luggage for the next day’s early departure. A truly enjoyable though quick visit.
Tuesday morning we left the house early, Meg driving us the quick 20 minute trip to the Burbank airport for our morning flights to Tucson for the next leg of our trip. Fifty minutes to Las Vegas, a two hour layover, Then another forty minute flight into Tucson. Mark read, while Deb dozed on both flights. for the final leg, we had an aisle and window seats with one seat between, which was occupied by a quiet black gentleman who also dozed on the flight. After landing, as we were leaving, Deb turned to her seat mate and said, “nice sleeping with you;” to which he replied “Ditto.”
Tom was on hand to meet the flight and we tossed the luggage into the vehicle and headed to their home in Oro Valley. As we settled into the guest bedroom, Mark discovered that in the rush to get off the airplane, he had left his Kindle reader in the seat pocket of the plane. We quickly filed a “lost belonging” report with Southwest in the hopes that it would turn up. Thankfully, the Kindle application on his iPad was linked to his reader so he was able to open the book he had been reading and continue.
Kevin had been grocery shopping, so that after cocktails and a quick catch up and admiring the pink glow of the Catalina Mountain range from our seats on the patio around the pool, he placed the filet mignon steaks on the grill, produced the salad from the refrigerator and the scalloped potatoes from the oven. A great meal and fun chatting about the world, trying not to get too worked up about the latest machinations of the Orange Felon and his cohorts in the Washington. We retired to our beds for a good night’s rest.
