Eating a bowl of cereal before we left... mmm...almond milk.
Packed and ready to go! 
We flew into Long Beach which, by the way, is the BEST airport to fly into in the LA/Orange County area because it's so discreet. It's a far cry from LAX, which SUCKS. So we were on a teeny plane and landed in Long Beach right on time. By the time we got there it was around lunch time so we headed straight to one of my favorite restaurants that I used to frequent as much as possible: Rutabagorz. It's (of course) a healthy-ish restaurant with lots of vegetarian and fresh options... and meat, too, if you're into that. It's really amazing, despite my crappy description right now. I got the GIANT BOWL of salad above, that would have fed about 20 people. It was the vegetarian salad so it just had about every veggie possible crammed in there. I was in heaven. Tim got an egg sandwich and we followed it all with two warm cookies. SO. GOOD.
After eating, we ventured to a park that I always loved when I was down there. We went on a short little 4-5 mile hike... since we weren't totally prepared and just threw on the shoes we had in the car. We were just relishing being in sunny, warm weather.
OH YES WE DID. Our rental car was a focus. Classy.
Dressing for Seattle weather upon arrival to the California sun = rolled up jeans. I don't think it's the most attractive look. Oh well.
At the top of the peaks that we climbed to. Gorgeous views.
And a shot of the hills...the ocean was the other direction. I forgot how freaking much I love southern California.
We ended up staying in Huntington beach at the Hilton. Several years back on our drive up the coast when I was moving from Phoenix to Seattle (see here for some history...hard to believe it's been 3 years!), we stayed in Huntington for a few days and it was a good central spot. So, it was a good option again. And I'd definitely recommend the Hilton beachfront resort in Huntington.
Gorgeous pool looking out at the ocean. Seriously, to us Seattle-lites we felt like we'd died and gone to heaven. After DAYS of rain, cold, evergreens, and BLAH, seeing palm trees, sun, and ocean just left us drooling.
That night, because we were fairly tired from the night before, we just walked down the beach to Dukes, another place that I used to frequent quite frequently in the time that I lived in Southern Cali. I always used to go to the Malibu location, though, but I like this Huntington location a lot.
A picture of us as we were making our way to dinner... a little sidetracked by the look of the pool and the ocean. 
A shot on our beach walk.
Not an awesome picture due to the sun (craziness, sun?!!?) but here is Tim at dinner with his fruity drink. I had wine, of course. No pictures of what we had for dinner but I remember it being very good.
And an awesome sunset to wrap up the first day in California.
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