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Visiting Orange County, California: The Local’s Take With Ava of ‘Be My Travel Muse’

May 18, 2012

John’s note: The Local’s Take is a series where I interview some of my favorite travel bloggers and turn the tables, asking them to share their hometowns with us. After all, what better way is there to learn about a destination than from a travel writer who calls it home? So join along and learn how to make the most of a visit to Orange County, California with Ava of Be My Travel Muse.

Name: Ava Apollo
Hometown: Orange County
Website: Be My Travel Muse
Twitter: AvaApollo
Facebook: Ava, BMTM
Stumbleupon: http://stumbleupon.com/avaapollo
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/avaapollo
About: Ava is a 20-something from Southern California who blogs about adventure travel, posts photoblogs of off-beat destinations, and plans journeys based on inspiration from the interwebs. Won’t you be her muse and share your best tips?

Tell us about Orange County.
Orange county (or the OC) is home to the most famous beaches in California – Newport, Laguna, and Huntington. Directly South of Long Beach (Los Angeles County), Orange County beaches are safer, nicer, and less polluted than their Los Angeles counterparts. Known equally well for the amazing surf, perfect weather, and silicone Barbie inhabitants, Orange County truly is a special place.

What makes Orange County unique?
I can’t drive this point home enough: the beaches are fantastic! Newport Beach is consistently rated as the top California beach by people who rate such things. Directly south, Corona Del Mar and Laguna beaches are spectacularly beautiful as well. I also really like the slightly more laid back, surfer vibe of Huntington Beach, known as Surf City USA.

What is Orange County best known for?
Either the surf or the movie, Orange County, that terrible show, the OC (which was actually filmed in Malibu), and that truly wonderful show, Arrested Development. Orange County was never a secret by any means, but the attention from Hollywood put it on the map as a ritzy, upscale vacation destination. There’s no denying that it’s an enclave for the super rich and plastic, but there are some cool areas fitting for young beach go-ers as well, mostly in Huntington and Laguna Beaches.

Where is the best place to grab a pint/cocktail/glass of wine?
There are many! In Newport Beach on the Balboa Peninsula (you can get there by taking the 55 South until it ends), there’s Mutt Lynch’s, which is a dive bar with big windows that open up to face the ocean. They serve schooners of beer and cider, or a “snake bite,” which is both. For something even divier, head to Beach Ball to play pool. For something divier still, Cassidy’s is for you. All of these bars are within walking distance of each other between 25th and 17th streets.

In Corona Del Mar, some classier establishments include the Quiet Woman and Landmark. Huntington Beach offers the Brewing Co., and Hurricane’s, which has a light up dance floor. If you want a club-like atmosphere, the nearest option is Sutra in Costa Mesa. Sometimes they have decent DJs, but if you really want to go clubbing, head to Vegas or Hollywood.

What’s a unique experience that can only be had in Orange County?
There are a few things: Watching the Wedge in Newport Beach – an area where the waves can reach up to 30 feet during the right conditions, is a personal favorite. Surfers and bodyboarders love OC because the waves break fast and the surf is world class. Also a fun activity, Huntington Beach hosts the US Open of Surfing every summer, bringing in top competitors like Kelly Slater, who won out in 2011. There is no question that this is a surfing hub.

If you have a little cash to burn, the sailing, diving, and fishing are great here too. The Channel Islands that border the California coast offer kelp forests, purple hydrocoral, sustainable California Sea Bass, scallops, and HUGE lobsters.

Lastly, though you can see dolphins all along Southern California’s coastline, I almost always see them here, along with harbor Seals, and endangered Brown Pelicans. Usually they can be viewed from the shore or one of the piers, but getting on a boat is even better. I am being truthful when I say that every time I get on a boat in Newport Beach (and SoCal in general) dolphins come and swim in the wake without fail. Every single time!

*a cheap dolphin-viewing option is offered out of Balboa Harbor across from the Balboa Pier. Discounts are regularly offered online (through Goldstar and Groupon) and in-person for $15 “whale watching” tours. You probably won’t see whales unless you pay up and take a cruise that spends much longer out in the ocean, but this cheap cruise has many dolphin sightings. Stand at the front or back of the boat for the best vantage point.

When is the best time to visit?
The shoulder seasons: May and September. The Orange County beaches are very popular. In the months of June through August, I sometimes wish I didn’t live here because if I leave my house to buy milk, it might take a half hour to get home and I may not be able to park when I get there.

About 100,000 people come to Newport Beach just for Independence Day alone. May and September are usually still hot months with slightly fewer tourists. Weekdays are always much better than weekends when it comes to traffic and parking as well.

Also, when the beach is super crowded, it’s black balled (a flag with a black circle will be hanging from the lifeguard towers), meaning you can’t surf! In the off season, however, the lifeguards board up their huts and surfing is open to all.

I love it in the off season, because we still sometimes get beautiful, hot beach days (we had a lot of them this winter). The only drawback is the cold water, which cycles down from Alaska. For most if not all of the year, the water is too cold to enter sans wetsuit. This is true all along the California Coast. Many are surprised that our water is so frigid.

What’s the best way to get around?
You really must have a car and a reliable map or GPS, and there’s no avoiding it. Public transportation in Southern California is pretty much nonexistent, and you really can’t walk from place to place – don’t believe anything to the contrary. I’ve lived here my whole life and have never taken a bus, and I’m a big fan of public transportation!

It’s really unfortunate, but renting a car and sitting in traffic will be unavoidable. Taking a taxi from Los Angeles to Newport Beach, for example, is prohibitively expensive.

Once at the beach, though, many visitors rent bikes and cruise along the bike paths from beach to beach. It’s a lovely way to spend a day.

Are there any good day trips from Orange County?
A lot of people would say Disneyland in Anaheim, which is 15 minutes north on the 55 freeway from Newport Beach. Get a park-hopper ticket in order to maximize the money spent. Those looking to spend time at the Orange County beaches without having to pay Ritz Carlton prices often choose hotels in this area.

From OC, you can also head north on the 405 or 5 freeways to Los Angeles in about 45 miles (I won’t quote minutes, it could be 45 to 200 depending on traffic). My favorite things to do in L.A. are seeing Laker games, finding amazing and unassuming eateries, and visiting the Getty Museum (it’s free!). Honestly, the Hollywood walk of fame is one giant tourist trap that I’d avoid.

Head south on the 5 freeway to reach beautiful San Diego, or even Mexico, in about 2 hours driving time.

*A word to the wise, as of this writing in April 2012, Mexican border towns are still experiencing some cartel issues and violence. It would be much better to fly in, and avoid Tijuana.

The San Bernardino mountains also offer great skiing and snowboarding, as well as the famously beautiful Lake Arrowhead.

In about 4 hours, you can drive to Las Vegas if you head east on the 15 freeway. In short, there is a lot to do around here – but you really must have a car.

What is the best aspect of living in Orange County?
Hands down, the beach and the weather. There are no mosquitos and the weather isn’t humid – my typical complaint of other beach towns. I never turn on the heat in my apartment and I don’t have (nor need) air conditioning. Also, it’s absolutely beautiful, and much cleaner than other beaches nearby. The central location between Los Angeles and San Diego is the cherry on top.

What is the worst aspect of living in Orange County?
In the summer time, the congestion and litter due to the influx of visitors who aren’t always respectful of keeping the beauty. Also, Orange County is essentially made up of very poor migrant communities and uber wealthy beachside communities. It’s odd to see such juxtaposition, and the obvious divide between rich and poor. There is no intermingling of the two – a common complaint about Greater Los Angeles. Since I’m not really part of either pocket, I feel a little out of place sometimes.

But, when the warm sun is shining on my face, I look up to see dolphins playing in the crystalline dark blue waves, and I’m surrounded by people I love, I know there’s no better place to be in this world.

Thanks again to Ava for her participation in the The Local’s Take. If you’re a travel writer and are interested in participating in a future edition of The Local’s Take, get in touch!

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Larger Than Life in Kansas City, Missouri

May 16, 2012

One of my new favorite websites is Roadside America – an online guide to offbeat tourist attractions across America. It lists the quirky, odd, eccentric, and unusual attractions that usually don’t make it into the guidebooks. I first started using this website on my recent trip to Kansas City and have been looking up unique destinations everywhere I’ve been since.

When I don’t have much time in a city to experience the larger, more time consuming sites, visiting these quick roadside attractions offers a great alternative way to experience aspects of the city. During a brief weekend trip to Kansas City in which I spent the majority of the weekend working, I was able to sneak a few sites from Roadside America in as I made my way around the city.

Castle Northmoor

My first stop on my self-guided tour was at Castle Northmoor, a residential castle built in the suburbs of Kansas City. The story goes that the builder, Harlan Shaver, was inspired by some of the other one-man castles around the country and began construction on his own. It is a three-story masonry tower with medieval paintings, massive wooden doors, a spiral staircase, and a rooftop patio, all guarded by a stately suit of armor.

The inside of the castle is private, but the outside and roof top patio are open to visitors. I climbed the spiral staircase on the backside of the tower to the roof. It was a little surreal to be looking down on a suburban neighborhood through the turrets of a castle. There was a treasure chest on top of the roof containing miscellaneous odds and ends and a laminated magazine article about the castle.

Community Bookshelf at the Kansas City Library

When the Kansas City Public Library wanted to expand public parking at its downtown branch, they opted for a striking design, rather than adding a typical parking garage eyesore. Sticking with the literary theme of the library, the external façade of the garage is adorned to look like a giant bookshelf with the spines of classic literature tomes facing 10^th Street in downtown Kansas City.

The books’ spines are 25 feet tall and the titles were chosen based from a variety of reading interests suggested by Kansas City readers. Titles such as Charlotte’s Web, Truman, Catch 22, and To Kill a Mockingbird grace the side of this larger-than-life bookshelf.

World’s Largest Shuttlecocks

Ever since I saw Suzy Guese’s post about the world’s largest easel in Goodland, Kansas, I have been intrigued by these oft-forgotten world’s-largest roadside attractions. When I saw that the world’s largest shuttlecocks were in Kansas City (thanks, Roadside America) and were less than a mile from my hotel, I knew I had to go check them out.

I was surprised to find that the shuttlecocks are not a tacky tourist attraction but actually an impressive art installation on the finely manicured lawn of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Initially, I thought they looked a little out of place in front of the beautiful neoclassical building. But after poking around for a few minutes and photographing them, they grew on me. They add an element of whimsy to the grand lawn.

Kauffman Center

Before I ever knew what the Kauffman Center was, I saw it from the highway while passing through Kansas City on another visit. All I could see was this spectacular structure that resembled two abstract seashells in the Kansas City skyline. On my return visit to Kansas City, I was determined to not only find out what it was, but to see it up close.

The Kauffman Center is a performing arts complex that holds two separate venues – one theater and one concert hall. It is an architectural wonder and an incredibly beautiful building. The architecture is minimalistic and modern, and the acoustics are phenomenal.

Unfortunately, I visited during the day before catching my flight back home so I didn’t have a chance to take in one of the shows here. Consider it added to my list of things to do next time I’m in Kansas City.

Every city has its own unique, larger than life attractions. What are some of your favorites?

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Confessions of a State Collector

May 14, 2012

When I was in the second grade, we were learning about geography and our teacher handed out blank maps of the United States with a basic set of instructions: color in the states that you have been to. At the ripe old age of eight, I had never stopped to count how many states I had traveled to, but as I started recounting previous vacations with my parents and began coloring in the map, I realized that I had been to more states than I thought.

Of course there was Colorado, my home state. But also the neighboring states of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico (we do share a common border at the only place where four states come together, after all). And then there were all the states that I’d visited family in – Kansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin. And a family road trip to Minnesota the summer before gave me that state as well as Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, and Missouri on the way there and back. Finally, the requisite trip to Disney World when I was four gave me the far flung state of Florida.

And there I was at eight years old with 15 states under my belt. Some kids in my class had more, some had less, but I don’t think any other kid in my class was as profoundly impacted by that assignment as I was: it turned me into a state collector.

Today, it’s not something I like to talk about a lot for fear of being one of those travel braggarts, so rather than listing how many states I’ve been to in what would amount to an online pissing contest, I’ve decided instead to share some of my tricks I’ve used over the years for picking up states. If you’re a state collector, hopefully there are some tips in here you can use to inch you closer to fifty.

Get Creative with Road Trip Planning

Road trips are never about the destination, they’re about the journey, and when I plan road trips, I rarely plan the most efficient route. Instead I plan the route that will take me past the places that interest me the most, and hopefully I can pick up a few new states along the way. Road trips account for how I’ve picked up the bulk of my states.

When my sister moved to Florida for a semester in college, I helped her move. But instead of doing the drive straight through as fast as possible, we planned our route through some of America’s great cities that intrigued us. This roundabout route helped me pick up several of the states I was missing in the Southeast.

When it was time for her to move back to Colorado, I once again helped her make the drive. But instead of taking the same route back, we went a completely different direction, visiting some incredible cities and sites (and four new states) along the way.

The Alaska/Hawaii Problem

I knew Alaska and Hawaii would be the two most difficult states for me to visit. I certainly wouldn’t be able to pick them up as part of a road trip across the country – they’d have to be destinations in their own rights. Further complicating this issue is the steep prices associated with traveling to these far flung destinations.

In order to visit these states on the cheap, I began looking at the travel deal sites (such as travelzoo) for special pricing to the 49^th and 50^th states. On rare occasions, these sites will have ridiculously low prices for off season travel or last minute availability.

For Hawaii, I ended up finding a last minute flight + accommodation package (which I almost always avoid) for the ridiculous price of $337 for 4 days/4 nights on Kaanapali Beach in Maui. A coworker of mine spent close to four times that amount for his trip to Maui only four months earlier.

This deal had a limited range of available dates and required immediate booking, but I was able to convince work to let me take a few days off on short notice and took off for Hawaii a few days later.

Don’t Miss Opportunities at Border Cities

Cities like Washington D.C., Memphis, St. Louis, Portland, New York City, and many others have metropolitan areas that straddle state borders. If I ever found myself in these cities, I would make a point to spend some time exploring the portions of the city that were in other states.

Some border destinations to consider: Portland, Reno, Las Vegas, Kansas City, and Omaha.

While many destinations straddle two states, there are a few that occur at the intersection of three states. While the majority of the Memphis metropolitan area is in Tennessee, the city spills over the Mississippi river into Arkansas and south of the Tennessee border into Mississippi.

National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee

Another destination that lies at the intersection of three states is Yellowstone National Park. Though most people think of Wyoming when conjuring images of Yellowstone, small pieces of the park (and a good deal of lodging for visitors) lies just across the Wyoming border in Montana and Idaho. Visiting Yellowstone was actually how I first picked up Idaho, before a return visit to Boise cemented it in my list years later.

Find a Reason to Visit North Dakota

I don’t want to pick on North Dakota, because I actually really enjoyed my trip there. But before I ever went to North Dakota, I struggled to find a reason why I’d ever go there. It wasn’t on the way to or from anything for me unless I was going to Saskatchewan, and I didn’t have immediate plans for that.

To this day, the question I get most about this endeavor is, ‘how did you visit North Dakota?’ and my answer is simple: I made it a priority and found a reason to go. For me, that reason was Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which features broad, sweeping badlands landscapes with impressive buttes, herds of bison, and wild horses. Classic western vistas are the highlight of this park, and I wanted to see it for myself.

So I planned a weekend trip with a stop by Mount Rushmore on the way, spent a couple days at the park, explored the small town of Medora, and enjoyed every minute of it. Now when I hear people criticizing North Dakota, I’m quick to defend it and I always recommend Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

So the question to answer when trying to collect states is what is your North Dakota and how can you make a visit out of it? What is the state that is either impossibly out of the way or that you think you have no interest in actually visiting, and how can you get there? Who knows, you might end up finding something spectacular that you never knew existed.

Finally, I think it’s worth noting that destinations should not be visited just to ‘check them off’ a list. I think this can sap some of the fun out of travel. But, if I have the opportunity to visit a new place, I’m going to take advantage of it.

Now It’s Your Turn

Are you a state collector? How about a country or continent collector? What tricks have you used in order to visit a new place? Let me know in the comments.

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Making the Most of It: Or How I Squeezed in a Visit to Colonial Williamsburg Before My Coworkers Even Woke Up

12 May 2012

In business travel, business always comes before travel in regards to my priorities on the road. In other words, I have to take care of things in the office before I can enjoy the sites of whatever city I may be in. At times, this has posed significant challenges and limitations to what I can [...]

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Doumar’s Cones and Barbecue – A Taste of the Past in Norfolk, Virginia

10 May 2012

As I drove around the streets of Hampton Roads, I kept seeing one pervasive bumper sticker. It seemed as though wherever I was, at least one car on the street would have this sticker clinging to their bumper or their back windshield. It had different manifestations – as black sticker, an orange sticker, a white [...]

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The Kentucky Derby Infield Experience

8 May 2012

If you’re going to The Kentucky Derby for the infield experience, don’t go expecting the high class affair you see on television. That experience can be found at Millionaires Row and the Grandstands. Instead, the infield is a much more low-brow affair, though many would argue that it is the more fun experience of the [...]

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Fun Facts for Kentucky Derby Day

5 May 2012

Greetings from the Kentucky Derby in beautiful Louisville, Kentucky! Today I’m taking in the ‘Run for the Roses’ from the legendary Churchill Downs racetrack. While I’m out in the infield with the masses experiencing the festivities (and doing my best to actually see a horse), I wanted to share a list of interesting facts about the [...]

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