Roadtrip to Ventura Beach

There is so much happening around here. I don't blog nearly enough to keep you in the loop. I feel like our weekend needs to be prefaced with a couple explanations. I will try my best.

This weekend the kids and I decided to go on a road trip. A) Because my husband is doing Marine stuff in the desert so we like to be busy and B) Because we have a rental van that is way nicer than our van so we should drive it. Which needs to be prefaced with I got in an accident. Just a minor fender bender where someone crashed into the back of my car. His fault. No insurance. Head ache. Head ache. Thankfully we are insured and we don't have to pay for the uninsured driver's mistake. Thankfully.

Now we have this beautiful roomy minivan and what is one to do? Go for a road trip to the beach of course. Yes. The plan was to make it to Santa Barbara. Maybe even Ojai. I have never been north of Long Beach when it comes to the California Coast and beaches. Given the distance I thought I could make it to Santa Barbara. What I didn't take into consideration was it was an 80 degree Saturday. Everyone was headed to the beach. We hit traffic from the minute we started heading west on the 91. Oh such a novice I am! When we finally saw water near Ventura I just stopped.

 Ventura isn't any different than most San Diego County beaches. Although, they do have sand dunes. My kids loved it. Sand body surfing. It's the new thing. We didn't find our tide pools filled with colorful sea life but we spotted sea urchins. The kids were very happy.  And the sand dunes. We have never been to a beach with giant hills of sand. My kids spent more time throwing themselves down these steep hills and climbing back up. I will never understand. I just took a seat in the warm sand and took pictures. I figure they are creating memories that only brothers and sisters really understand. I can't interrupt that.

 We decided to drive home along the 101. We made a stop at Point Mugu, a cute little Navy base in the middle of nowhere. I forget  about life on a small military base. Everything closes at 3pm on the weekend. No public restrooms anywhere. No food sold at the gas station. Yes, we were hungry and had to pee! But neither was happening on Point Mugu!

We headed back down the 101. Gorgeous views through the Santa Monica Mountains. Soon we were in Malibu surrounded by big movie star mansions. Finally, we made it to the LA freeway system. Bad timing. It took us three hours to drive 67 miles. It was a Mickey Ds kind of dinner.

I thought for sure the road trip was a bust in my kids eyes. All that traffic. But my lovely children redeemed the trip. Thanks for taking us on the road trip mom. I loved it. How about that! All three. I'm not sure what there was to love but they did.

I guess we can check Ventura off the bucket list... as soon as we add it to the list for the sake of crossing it off the list. You know you do it too!