During our time in Malibu we spent a couple days exploring areas outside of Malibu.  One day we drove to the Santa Monica Pier, passing the Getty Villa on the way.  The Santa Monica Pier, built in 1909,  was a fun place with somewhat of a carnival atmosphere with roller coasters, ferris wheels, bumper cars, and many vendors.  We enjoyed the lively atmosphere with live musicians playing at various places on the pier and walked out to the end to hopefully see dolphins or whales.  Just as we were about to give up we saw a sea lion and her cub and even though we stood and watched them for quite awhile, we were never able to get a very good picture as they bobbed up and down in the water, playfully swimming under the pier. 

We found the end of the famous Route 66  and also the end of Interstate 10 which runs from Jacksonville, Florida to Santa Monica, California.

On Saturday we drove from Malibu to Long Beach.  We stopped at Venice Beach which was as wild and crazy as I had read with many interesting characters walking along the boardwalk as well as plenty of tattoo and massage parlors, a place to buy medicinal marijuana, and many places to buy food and souvenirs.  We finally found a place where you could park for an hour so we put a dollar in the meter and walked down the boardwalk.  Bill did find a store specializing in Native American items and found two tee shirts to purchase. We found that an hour was plenty enough time for us to explore Venice Beach.

Leaving Venice Beach we followed the Pacific Coast Highway and found some beautiful scenery as we passed through Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, and especially in the Palos Verdes area with huge mansions overlooking the ocean.  We even grabbed a geocache in the area when stopping at an overlook with a splendid view. 

We arrived in Long Beach later in the afternoon and drove pass Long Beach Shipyard where we saw containers stacked 8 containers high.  We also saw the Queen Mary from a distance.  We will come back at a later time for a tour.  We had dinner at Beachwood Barbecue and then walked down the street to a Walmart to pick up a couple items.  This was a very urban Walmart with a pay as you park parking garage.  We checked out through the self checkout and when we asked where the plastic bags were, we were told we could purchase a paper bags for 10 cents each but they did not use plastic bags.  We had read awhile back that California was going this route, but this is the first city we have encountered a plastic bag ban.  Since we only had a few items we just carried them out in our hands.  I told Bill I have a gold mine at home with all the plastic bags I have accumulated.  I usually take my own bags in to the grocery store to keep my frozen items cold, but I guess I will have to start taking my own plastic bags into Walmarts in California from now on!  It is California, you know!

Monday we leave to drive further north up the coast.  Our next stop will be a state park so no more of these fancy resorts with full hookups and cable tv for awhile.  That suits us just fine as we enjoy the more natural setting of national and state parks.  We are really enjoying our time in California, in fact we love it.  We are continuing to add to our list of possible winter destinations, with Malibu being another on our list.  The price of gas is outrageous and the ground has shaken us with some minor earthquakes and aftershocks for several days so we are following the news closely, but the weather and beauty has won us over!