Wednesday December 1, 2010

Well, our last full day of our seven week odyssey. We had to hang out at the Hotel until 10:00 am to get our 24 hour advanced boarding passes for our flight home tomorrow. After that, we drove to Crystal Cove State Park which is just outside of Newport Beach to go hiking for a few hours. We did a 5 1/2 mile loop in the park which afforded some great views of the Pacific and surrounding shoreline. The tough segment was called the "B. F. I" trail which took us up a ridge to the 850 ft high point. "B" was for "Big" and "I" was for "Incline".



Around 2:00 pm we were finished and headed into Newport Beach. Heading into town we happened upon the Newport Beach version of a typical auto mall with less than typical dealerships. The amazing thing was the number of cars in inventory.























We drove to the beach and did some walking and exploring. There are 6 miles of wide beach which is lined with multi-million $ beach houses.



We enjoyed sunset at Balboa Pier. Our last California sunset for a while although not as spectacular as last night.


A smog enhanced sunset over Catalina Island ....



We returned to our Hotel to finish trying to get our luggage packed for tomorrow and then went out for supper at a restaurant at the mall down the street. Soon after walking into the mall, we noticed it was not your ordinary urban mall. Christmas decorated to the hilt. Every major fashion designer had a store there, Gucci, Hermes, Armani, Prada, Coach, Rolex, Louis Vitton, Chanel, Montblanc, Oscar de la Renta and a bunch we didn't even recognize the names of. Must be someone buying this stuff to pay the rent.

We returned to the Hotel to enjoy our last bottle of Zinfandel and do the last blog entry.

Here is our statistical summary:

Days travelling - 43
Miles travelled - 4920
States visited - 6
Different beds slept in - 21
Number of National & State Parks visited - 16
Number of hikes - 19
Distance hiked - 95 miles
Maximum temperature - 90F
Minimum temperature - 20F
Saw (but did not play) the highest and lowest golf course in North America
Saw (but did not sail) the highest yacht club in North America
Sailed - an America's Cup boat
Saw - a Vegas Show
Visited with - some great friends
Wineries visited - 16
Highest elevation - 11,190 ft
Lowest Elevation - -282 ft
Photos taken - 4288
Hours not speaking to spouse - 0