Today we spent in and out of the rental car. Everything is close by, but it takes forever to get to because of the traffic. First we headed to Balboa Island near Newport. An absolutely charming island (known for their Balboa frozen banana on a stick), but very busy and hard to find a parking spot.

Next we drove a little farther south to Crystal Cove State Park. This has always been state park land, but for years my uncle lived in a beach cottage there. It’s been turned into a state park facility now and the cottages are now nightly rentals. Curious to see if the cottage he lived in was still there, we stopped by and found that, yes it was still there and they were using it as an office so I was able to go in a take a look around. Brought back some memories . . .