Southern California, April 2009

We have this week off from work, an unprecedented shutdown for the week, the first of four for the year. In light of the time off, we decided it is a good time to head to SoCal, visit the cousins, and hit Disney for a couple of days.<br />n<br />nWe drove down yesterday, taking about 8.5 hours with three stops, to get to Oceanside. One of the stops we made, to reset the littlest among us, was somewhere south of the grapevine. It looked to be some kind of regional open space preserve or park. Where we stopped were two really old structures, I think they were actually old rail cars, but the undercarriages from both were missing, so they rested on the bottom of the cars themselves. There was some sort of liquid fuel powered engine on top of both, maybe a refrigeration system, but they didn’t look as old as the cars themselves. The hinges on the big side doors of the cars looked old, though, maybe from the middle of the first half of the twentieth century. Wish I took some pictures, just to have.<br />n<br />nToday, Easter, we hung around the house and took it easy. As usual, cousin Ted did fabulous cooking, they had a couple of people over to share the nicely set table, and we feasted on two different types of fresh quiche.<br />n<br />nThere are rumblings of Legoland for tomorrow. Not really interested, but I may be able to get in as my cousin’s double. In any event, <a href=”http://www.optcorp.com/” title=”OPT”>OPT</a> is having a sale. I’d hate to miss that while I’m down here!<br />n<br />nUPDATE: I found that place on I5 where we stopped, new Newhall, CA, which is near Santa Clarita. Here’s the link to <a href=”http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=34.357941,-118.55502&spn=0.003096,0.006432&z=18″ title=”google maps”>the place in Google Maps</a>.