We’ve been super busy at the Pomona Rally so I got behind again on the blog… here’s what we did the day after we arrived. I’ll follow this up with a separate post summarizing the Rally for you.
Wednesday was basically a “free day” at the FMCA Rally since it doesn’t officially kick-off until Thursday; with seminars for attendees; and Friday with vendors/exhibitors for the public. So we took the opportunity to drive towards the beach to do some sight-seeing.
There are several organized tours that attendees can sign up for here at the Rally. I believe they bus you to the attraction and baby-sit you for the duration of their tour(s). At least I would hope so – for the prices they advertise for some of those tours! Anyway, one of the tours was for the luxury cruise-ship ‘The Queen Mary‘. We thought to ourselves; that sounds cool; why don’t we just drive there ourselves in the truck and then afterwards drive up the coastline? So we plugged it into our trusty iPhone and used it as a GPS to get there.
When we arrived at the Queen Mary we parked and walked up to the ticket booth. The admission price pegged out our value-meter. No wonder the advertised prices back at the Rally were so exorbitant. The $33 pp admission price was a little much for us and would require that we leave little dog “Coach” in the hot pickup truck and we certainly couldn’t do that.
We just parked the truck and walked with little “Coach” in tow along the harbor area while we snapped some pics:
There was even a Russian submarine next to the Queen Mary that you could tour. Here’s the entrance building and gift shop.
Here’s the submarine named the “Scorpion“. (Click on the name for more information).
After we finished our walk, we exited the parking lot and had to pay $5.00 because we went over the 30 minute “free” time-limit.
Then we headed north along the coastline.
And drove through the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
We stopped at a parking area next to the cliffs and did another short walk.
There’s lots of rules around here… we’re starting to see a trend.
We continued north along the coastline to Point Vicente Interpretive Center. We parked in the lot (surprise! no cost) and wandered around the center which was also free. 🙂
Around the back of the center, many “whale-watchers” were on duty.
And we even got to see a whale from a distance. Stilla’s first one 🙂
Stilla and I then took turns going through the Interpretive Center because there were no dogs allowed of course, and one of us had to watch little “Coach” outside.
Little “Coach” sure enjoyed the wide-open grass for a change.
This was a really nice place, and the interpretive center was very interesting… well worth the time it took to walk through.
We continued north and drove past Redondo Beach because we couldn’t find any convenient parking. It looked like a nice area.
Finally, we came to Manhattan Beach. We pulled into a parking lot and found a spot… of course it had parking meters 🙁
After we fed the parking meter, we went over to the pier and beach access point to find out that no dogs are allowed. So, we didn’t go out on the pier, but took the chance and carried him down to the beach. We made it there and back without getting any California citations.
I think this beach should be renamed as the “no fun beach”. It was pretty much NO to everything here… pretty soon they might not even allow people.
We snapped some pics of the beautiful sunset as we headed back to the Rally.
With all the heavy traffic on the freeways, we decided to get off near Hollywood and drive around a bit since we didn’t have to hurry back.
We drove down Beverly Blvd for miles and miles until we connected with a freeway again.
We got back rather late, but it was worth it.
Check back in for a summary of our activities at the Pomona Rally and then I promise to bring you up to date with where we’re at now.