Foy
Resident Geologist
Gents and ladies,
On Sunday we took our "baby" son, all 6'4" and 200 lbs of him, to the airport to fly to LAX, with the Navy Seabee base of Port Hueneme as his final destination. He'll be training there for around 90 days before deploying to Afghanistan with a Reserve Seabee battalion. He volunteered for the mobilization and deployment with a battalion other than his own, so there it is. He'll have no leave or opportunity to come home to NC while training, so the wife and I are looking to fly to southern CA and spend a week, even though we only expect to be able to visit with him in the evenings. We would otherwise be April/May 2014 seeing our little fella again, and that just won't do.
That being the case, we'll be up for some local/regional explorations on a day-tripping basis. I visited him at Port Hueneme some 6 years ago while he was on active duty there and took a solo trip over the mountains from Ventura to Carizzo Plains, up Badwater Road to Cholame, over to Paso Robles, then up US 101 to my sister's Watsonville area residence. I'd like to take my wife to Carizzo Plains to see the Wallace Creek site where the fault movement of the San Andreas Fault is so well-displayed. She and I had driven the PCH from Monterey down to Morro Bay at a point later in that trip (she'd joined me in San Jose and we'd day-tripped back to Port Hueneme in a day), so I don't know of further explorations we'd want up that way, but am open to suggestions.
We're considering a day trip out to the Channel Islands for some hiking but don't know where to start considering the various islands and what can be hiked in a day's time. I'll be perusing the various websites and maps, but some personal recommendations would be much appreciated.
Since I started following some of your trips here on WTW, I've been in awe of the Owens Valley and surrounding mountains. Just seeing a place where +11,000' of topographic relief is present would be worth a trip up to the Lone Pine area. It appears that would be a 200 mile run, each way, but if we could roll at 00:dark:30 out of Port Hueneme, perhaps we could get up there,look around a bit, and get back in a long day's time. That's at the far end of what we may be able to do in a day, but suggestions as to a drive-up or a drive-by up there, or something of a loop route, would be great. Having done so before, I'm aquainted with the Victorville-Palmdale-Santa Clarita-Ventura route to reach the high desert, avoiding the LA Basin.
At this juncture, we think we'd want to be in our harborside motel adjacent to the Navy base each night, in order to take our son and some of his buddies out for supper and beers, but there may be opportunities for one or more overnights if his training takes him up to Fort Hunter Liggett or Twentynine Palms while we're there. All in all, we'd be interested in suggestions for day-trips in a rental SUV, eschewing knarly off-roading (darn those rental contracts and the gps which enforces them!) within 100-150 miles of the Oxnard-Ventura area. Most anywhere in SouCal would be of interest, but our one day in the LA Basin when we visited 6 years ago should last us a lifetime, thank you. I have both the SouCal DeLorme and a CA Benchmark, so I should be able to "follow along" with any detailed suggestions offered.
Thanks in advance for any ideas. I'm getting pumped up already!
Foy
On Sunday we took our "baby" son, all 6'4" and 200 lbs of him, to the airport to fly to LAX, with the Navy Seabee base of Port Hueneme as his final destination. He'll be training there for around 90 days before deploying to Afghanistan with a Reserve Seabee battalion. He volunteered for the mobilization and deployment with a battalion other than his own, so there it is. He'll have no leave or opportunity to come home to NC while training, so the wife and I are looking to fly to southern CA and spend a week, even though we only expect to be able to visit with him in the evenings. We would otherwise be April/May 2014 seeing our little fella again, and that just won't do.
That being the case, we'll be up for some local/regional explorations on a day-tripping basis. I visited him at Port Hueneme some 6 years ago while he was on active duty there and took a solo trip over the mountains from Ventura to Carizzo Plains, up Badwater Road to Cholame, over to Paso Robles, then up US 101 to my sister's Watsonville area residence. I'd like to take my wife to Carizzo Plains to see the Wallace Creek site where the fault movement of the San Andreas Fault is so well-displayed. She and I had driven the PCH from Monterey down to Morro Bay at a point later in that trip (she'd joined me in San Jose and we'd day-tripped back to Port Hueneme in a day), so I don't know of further explorations we'd want up that way, but am open to suggestions.
We're considering a day trip out to the Channel Islands for some hiking but don't know where to start considering the various islands and what can be hiked in a day's time. I'll be perusing the various websites and maps, but some personal recommendations would be much appreciated.
Since I started following some of your trips here on WTW, I've been in awe of the Owens Valley and surrounding mountains. Just seeing a place where +11,000' of topographic relief is present would be worth a trip up to the Lone Pine area. It appears that would be a 200 mile run, each way, but if we could roll at 00:dark:30 out of Port Hueneme, perhaps we could get up there,look around a bit, and get back in a long day's time. That's at the far end of what we may be able to do in a day, but suggestions as to a drive-up or a drive-by up there, or something of a loop route, would be great. Having done so before, I'm aquainted with the Victorville-Palmdale-Santa Clarita-Ventura route to reach the high desert, avoiding the LA Basin.
At this juncture, we think we'd want to be in our harborside motel adjacent to the Navy base each night, in order to take our son and some of his buddies out for supper and beers, but there may be opportunities for one or more overnights if his training takes him up to Fort Hunter Liggett or Twentynine Palms while we're there. All in all, we'd be interested in suggestions for day-trips in a rental SUV, eschewing knarly off-roading (darn those rental contracts and the gps which enforces them!) within 100-150 miles of the Oxnard-Ventura area. Most anywhere in SouCal would be of interest, but our one day in the LA Basin when we visited 6 years ago should last us a lifetime, thank you. I have both the SouCal DeLorme and a CA Benchmark, so I should be able to "follow along" with any detailed suggestions offered.
Thanks in advance for any ideas. I'm getting pumped up already!
Foy