July 17, 2020
The Leone's (Italian for "Lion") are our neighbors to the west of our new home. They started new construction on their home about 3 months after we did and we shared our home construction woes for over year. Now they rock a beautiful home with a pool and a hot tub and two of the tallest palm trees in North Redondo. Needless to say, they are quite the popular house this summer.
The youngest, Jake, is 8 years old and his favorite food is Pho. I don't know how that happened, but that's pretty cool for a half Filipino half italian kid. My favorite food at 8... rice. But to be fair, it still is my favorite. Mia is 12 and she goes through books like the BOOK IT club from Pizza Hut still existed; oh wait, I guess it still does. She also likes to run. So in that regard, Mia and I are complete opposites. Emily, (age asian, so you can't really tell at all) is a pharmaceutical rep, is a sucker for Creme Brulee and is equally as sweet. Lastly Derek is former FBI and current Santa Monica PD so he's had quite the year between COVID and LA looting and rioting. He's also more of a tech head than I am... if you can believe that!
We stayed at a VRBO that I've stayed at a few times before; there's either a new owner or they just remodeled it. There's a pool and a running hot tub, though it was set to 88 degrees which I think was just the outside air heating the tub. Bryson and Scarlet found the pool before they could even get the front door unlocked! The layout was nice with ample bed and bedrooms and a private bathroom for each room which is unheard of! Unfortunately, it seems like the kitchen was kept up by a college kid. There was even a short stack of cooked pancakes in the pantry that was likely weeks old, eww...
The third trip of the 2020 season bring together the Leone and the Wolf families (yes I know wolves is plural for wolf, but not Wolf). It also brings one of only two dogs that Miles can call friends, Max!
The Leone's (Italian for "Lion") are our neighbors to the west of our new home. They started new construction on their home about 3 months after we did and we shared our home construction woes for over year. Now they rock a beautiful home with a pool and a hot tub and two of the tallest palm trees in North Redondo. Needless to say, they are quite the popular house this summer.
The youngest, Jake, is 8 years old and his favorite food is Pho. I don't know how that happened, but that's pretty cool for a half Filipino half italian kid. My favorite food at 8... rice. But to be fair, it still is my favorite. Mia is 12 and she goes through books like the BOOK IT club from Pizza Hut still existed; oh wait, I guess it still does. She also likes to run. So in that regard, Mia and I are complete opposites. Emily, (age asian, so you can't really tell at all) is a pharmaceutical rep, is a sucker for Creme Brulee and is equally as sweet. Lastly Derek is former FBI and current Santa Monica PD so he's had quite the year between COVID and LA looting and rioting. He's also more of a tech head than I am... if you can believe that!
My sister and family are out for the first time in a long time. I think they might have come out last when Bryson was just a baby, so this time it was great to have all four of them out when the kids are able to swim and be more independent.
Alex took some time off in between jobs, congrats again Alex, so they decided to take a 4 week road trip from upstate New York through the northern part of the US to meet us in Lake Havasu to avoid COVID exposure and to explore all the great national parks that middle America has to offer. Pretty much every day we got updates of some natural rock slide or cliff that they went off. So to anyone who feels like they can't travel because of COVID, they are living proof that you can.
Day one opened up with a typical sunrise wakeboard session where we got all the kids and my sister up on skis. Back to grab Alex for a quick morning float, then back to the house to have lunch and get Derek. We spent the end of our day in Copper Canyon where there were several sessions of jumping off all three levels of the rock. Both Alex and Derek took a shot at the highest level at around 35-40' and brave Mia conquered the second level once everyone else took turns at the bottom level. We stayed as long as we could until the wind started pushing everyone's boats around in the cove then we pull anchor to head into the marina. This weekend we got super lucky got A dock; its the slips that are right across from the gas pumps. That about as close as you can get!
We stayed at a VRBO that I've stayed at a few times before; there's either a new owner or they just remodeled it. There's a pool and a running hot tub, though it was set to 88 degrees which I think was just the outside air heating the tub. Bryson and Scarlet found the pool before they could even get the front door unlocked! The layout was nice with ample bed and bedrooms and a private bathroom for each room which is unheard of! Unfortunately, it seems like the kitchen was kept up by a college kid. There was even a short stack of cooked pancakes in the pantry that was likely weeks old, eww...
Day 2 stars us out through another pass through the channel and a quick dip in Thompson Bay to cool off before taking the ride all the way down to the wakeboarding cove. People are ready to ski and we were lucky enough to have to cove to ourselves almost the entire time. That means glassy, flat and soft water that makes it easy to get up and stay up. Everyone took advantage of the conditions and let it rip with the longest runs of the weekend. Well, everyone except for Scarlet who decided that it was nap time...
Our last cove is Steamboat where the was plenty of space to social distance and let the boat float by its anchors undisturbed. We had a nice long soak before the crew found another set of rocks to jump off of. Today is the day that Jake found the courage to jump off the rocks also, and then he did it a bunch more times.
When everyone was done jumping off rocks we greeted them back to the boat with the towable inflatable raft where we put all 4 kids in the 3 person raft. Scarlet of course wanted to sit on Mia's lap. I gave the kids all the hand signals to let me know that they were OK, wanted to go faster, wanted to go slower or were done riding. Bryson was the first to call it quits, followed by Jake a few minutes later. But it was the ladies that wanted to ride the entire way back to Thompson Bay in the inflatable. In fact they took it all the way into the boat slip! I think that nap put Scarlet in the mood to have fun!
Back at the house it was yellow curry and margaritas for dinner. We completed the night was family time, dog tricks, music and general horseplay.
Just a few hours left in our Lake Havasu adventure and we decide to maximize our water time and stay in the channel. This is the first time I had beached the boat in the London Bridge channel, the only other time was up at Pirates Cove. There we no problems and the scags seemed to not mind the sand or we didn't embed them. We got the kids more jumping off the boat time and Max got a whole lot more time in the water. Hopefully we can get Max to jump in the water himself next season.
One last set of hugs goodbye for all the families and we were off. The Leone's and Holly and I raced each other back to Redondo while the Wolf family headed eastward back towards New York. Till next season guys!
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