The Queen Mary liner, Venice Beach and Canals, and the Eclipse - whooo!

We visited the Queen Mary docked at Long Beach first thing in the morning on Friday.  It was decommissioned in 1967 and has been docked at Long Beach since then, I believe.  Admittedly, we weren't inclined to pay the $40 each to take a tour, but the outside was pretty impressive.  I did spend the night on the Queen Mary when my family visited the Seattle for the 1962 World's Fair.  She was docked and being used as a hotel.  We stayed in what must have been "steerage" because we were at least 4 floors below decks and our room had about 10 bunks for the 5 of us.  I remember distinctly getting off the elevator on the ship to head into Seattle when a couple passed us on the main deck: an older gentleman and a pretty well-dressed woman.  She was very curvaceous, dressed to the nines, and wiggling down the hall, definitely not the man's daughter, but she was saying something like "I'd really like to go shopping, Daddy."  I'd never heard a grown woman in real life call her male friend Daddy.  Sure, Marilyn Monroe in the movies, but not in real life.  It was a pivotal moment for me at 13 years old.

Afterwards, we drove down the coast, found Venice Beach and strolled along the water's edge.  We took photos of each other in the surf and got splashed again, of course.  Then, we strolled down the "boardwalk" and later drove to the Historic Venice Canal District.  It was beautiful, but I didn't realize that there are only 4 canals and they aren't very long.

The Venice Canal Historic District of Los Angeles was built in 1905 by Albert Kinney.  He won the toss for choice of the best plot of land and amazed his former partners by choosing the sand dunes and bog.  They laughed when he said he was going to re-create Venice, but he surprised everyone by creating an attraction that is still drawing visitors today.  There are 4 East-West canals and 2 North-South canals.  There once were gondoliers, fairy-lights at night, and camel rides during the day.  But, after the automobile came along Venice was eventually considered old-fashioned and the canals fell into disrepair for over 40 years.  It was declared a National Historic Site in 1982 and renovated in 1993.  Now, canal front properties are some of the most expensive in the area.

This is a North-South canal.  The next photo looks to your right.

This is one of the longer East-West side canals.

Later, we had a lot of trouble finding a reasonably priced place to sleep all along the coast.  (Malibu was VERY disappointing, as you might expect).  Finally, we found a marginal motel in Oxnard, very marginal and I was very, very glad to leave it this morning.

The coast after Oxnard was the Pacific Coast Highway that I had hoped for.  Gorgeous views of the ocean, winding roads with guard rails, salt spray, and clouds of mist (or smog, but that would break the mood).

We finally stopped at a wonderful AirBnb location in Santa Maria, CA.  We are going to stay here for four nights until the Eclipse is finished and the associated tourists and traffic are gone.  We'll be heading north again on August 23rd to check out Hearst Castle and what we can see of the Monterey to Morro Bay coast.  But, in the meantime, we plan to play; yes, lay around the house in Santa Maria, go to the beach when we feel like it, and maybe check out Morro Bay.