one of my goals this year was to make it to spring trials in CA. luckily mitch indulged me. {perhaps it was because we had sky miles that needed to be used and it was practically a free ticket for one of us.} either way i was excited to see 2014 plants. i spend practically every day at work so far this year.{the perks of being double duty manager and the only full time employee}. i made sure the store would be well staffed for the saturday i was gone. bright and early april 6th, mitch and i got up and headed to the airport. we arrived in LA around 9:30, headed to the rental car shuttle, picked up our rental car and headed north to santa paula. we had the option of upgrading from a full size sedan to a mustang convertible... of course mitch made the upgrade. partly because seeing how traffic was, he figured he'd be able to maneuver better. who are we kidding though.... a convertible mustang in CA!?! who wouldn't. we arrived in santa paula right around 11:30 and enjoyed a few hours touring ball's facility and previewing plants. so maybe i was the beside myself with excitement {hello plant nerd}. once we finished at ball we drove into ventura and checked into our hotel. mitch felt underwhelmed with the trials. he wished we were able to see the growing facility too. i wished i had made arrangements to stop in at a couple other suppliers and see more plants. i guess there is always next year....
we freshened up a bit at the hotel and than headed to check out the beach and ventura pier. the sunshine was delightful and we fell in love with ventura and santa paula area. we day dreamed about living their and visiting the beach everyday. plus CA is so dog friendly. i wanted to love on every dog we walked passed.... i was obsessed with watching them play on the beach and chase the waves. the sound of the waves was heavenly. i was smitten with the all the plants too. perhaps i was {and still am} a tiny bit jealous of their growing conditions. the downside is there is no yards!! houses 6-10 ft apart from each other.... no thank you.
at the pier we enjoyed walking past all the docked boats, listening to the tourists, the sea lions, the water moving.... it was delightful. we had dinner at blackbeards {?}. we sat on the porch and watched everyone walk past, ate amazing food and realized we had a little too much sun. hello minor sunburn.
back at the hotel we curled up in bed and realized how exhausted we were. i kept trying to talk myself into getting back up and enjoying our evening {it was 6pm}. i couldn't manage though. i kept dosing. mitch was a sweetheart and let me sleep.
sunday morning we got up early again and decided to drive the coastal hwy back down to LA. our flight was at 6pm and we wanted to make the most of our day. we put the top down and the mustang... and soon realized that it was too chilly to keep it down. i'm pretty sure it screamed tourist to all the CA residents. lol. the coastal hwy was breathtaking.
1 comment:
I am so glad you both enjoyed your trip together! And got to mix a little pleasure with your business. :)
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