Huntington Beach and Newport Beach, California

A few months ago, I was sent out to Santa Ana, California to tear down an exhibit for the Betty Brinn Children's Museum. I was instructed to bring along a helper, whom you can see "photo bombing" the next photo.

Carl has been to California many times before so when I told him that my one thing that I wanted to do while I was in California was see some beaches, he jumped at the opportunity to share his knowledge of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach.

We boarded the bus early and it was about a 45 minute trip to Huntington Beach.

It was sensory overload for me! I haven't been to a beach in years. The sand under my feet, palm trees towering over me, the sound of crashing waves. I missed all the sights and sounds.

And the water was so clear!

After walking up and down the beach, we decided to head over to the boardwalk and see what they had for food and souvenirs.

From the pier we got a great view of the beach and water.

When we headed back to land we ran across a sidewalk art show where two women were demonstrating a marbling technique.

For those of you that are not familiar with marbling, these women are "floating" oil based inks on the surface of water, and then running sticks or special tools through the inks to intermingle them. The ladies explained that this technique dates all the way back to Feudal China. The Chinese people used this technique to prevent counterfeiting on bills and important documents.

I just had to grab a shot of this for Yvette. I thought she would love this.

Eventually it was time to leave, we hoped on a bus down the Pacific Coast Highway and found ourselves at Newport Beach.

Newport Beach was completely unlike Huntington beach. Huntington Beach seemed more like a tourist area, while Newport Beach seemed more like a :college town." I don't really know how to describe it based on what I know. I would compare it to living on the lower east side of Milwaukee, which is predominantly college kids renting. The beach houses were very close together, even closer then the houses in Milwaukee, and it looked like just about every one was occupied by drunk college aged adults.