I Shall be Released!

One last meeting with Dr Kelly and we're cleared to fly home

One last trip to the rooftop deck with the wind in her hair!

 One last chance to play with the neighborhood cats!

 One last sunset walk on the Manhattan Beach Strand and it's time to pack for home.

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Wond'rin Where the Lions are...

Wednesday we thought it would be a great idea to try to knock one more thing off of her "To-Do" list. Sea Lions have always been her favorite animal since childhood. Seeing them in the zoos is always fascinating, but she asked God to let her see some real sea lions "in the wild."

There were rumors they used to show up as Seal Beach, but our friends from Huntington Beach (the next town to the south) hadn't seen any there. So we Googled where to see seals and it turns out Long Beach has some tour boats that claim to see seals and dolphins in the harbor. Now, the writer whom Dana loves isn't very fond of boating, so we thought to just drive out to the harbor and see what we can find.

Well, we know that God has a sense of humor, and our experience was either the result of that or that Dana's prayers were a little mush-mouthed due to her brain surgery because rather than finding SEA LIONS at the Shoreline Park, we found FELINES:


So we walked a little farther along the Shoreline and were about to give up and find something for dinner when I heard a splash and Dana exclaimed "I just saw one!" and fumbled for the camera. However I didn't see it and we agreed previously that a wild animal sighting is not a confirmed sighting unless another person also witnesses it.

Sure enough, ol' Nessie popped her head up again and chomped on a fish! I grabbed the camera and went running closer and tried my best to get some pictures. She was very big and dark-skinned, and obviously very hungry because every time she popped her head up she was chomping on a fish. Next time we go there we'll have to bring some. I thought we should name her "Kitty" because of our findings in the earlier paragraphs, but Dana chose Nessie because she was so elusive to our camera, like the one in Loch Ness.

In this picture if you look closely you can see Nessie popping out of the water to eat a fish! It's kinda grainy because she was so far away I had to blow the picture up a lot. I know, it looks like a dog but it was a sea lion, really! It was a confirmed sighting. 

She later said goodbye and went back out to sea.

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Don't fly Mr. Bluebird I'm just walkin' down the road...

With the agony of stitch removal behind her, we were finally able to get out and see some of the countryside. Weather-wise It's been pretty overcast and cool the last few weeks. The call it the "June Gloom" around here.

After stopping back at the hospital to pick up her camera that I mindlessly left behind during suture removal, we headed north towards Malibu and into the Santa Monica mountains. Driving thru mountains was always on her "To-Do" List, which is the list formerly known as "Bucket List" which no longer applies! :-) Photos barely capture the awe.

We stopped at a roadside fruit stand and bought her some of the freshest & plumpest Rainier and Bing cherries she's ever had! It was actually pretty sunny as we were driving through the mountains, the first real sunny since her surgery. We drove into a State Park for a few minutes, and she jumped out of the car when she saw a bluebird. Still not sure what made her the happiest, the cherries or seeing the Mountain bluebird below.

It seemed that God really wanted us to enjoy the last few days before we headed home. This seemed obvious  as we started driving back south to the rental house, we could see miles ahead that it was very cloudy over "our" area of the beach towns! Back to the June Gloom. But we had a lovely time up in the mountains.

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