While I had been to California many times prior to living there – both on vacation and for work – my California adventures REALLY began in early 2021, when I half-moved to California to be with my partner Dean and his kids.

Dean and I had spent just over a year suffering through a long-distance relationship – and I *do* mean suffering, because about three months into our relationship the pandemic hit, which of course messed up so many of our travel/meetup plans. And at the end of the day, him moving to the east coast with a kid who had just entered high school simply didn’t make sense.

I won’t say that the approximately four and a half years that I spent in California, working east coast hours and being so far from my family and most of my friends, were easy. I think that if I had headed out there to live in, say, San Diego, or northern California, my enjoyment of life there would have been far more positive. Not that I hated it; I didn’t, and I certainly like the politics of California far more than those of South Carolina, which is where I have (temporarily, at least) returned to. But the place where I lived out in California is a suburban wasteland, an hour or more from anything interesting (in my opinion anyway). Not to mention the $600+ power bills in the summer, gas being nearly twice as much as it is most other places I’ve lived, and a nearly psychotic group of HOA people in our neighborhood that yes, have made for some hilarious conversations and memories, but who sure as hell will NOT be missed.

All of that said, I have to admit that I was extremely lucky that in my time there I was able to see and experience so much of California that I probably never would have seen or experienced otherwise. And so this blog is going to be about the amazing things that I did simply because I could.

LOCALLY[-ISH]
As much as I didn’t love Rancho Cucamonga as a place to live and certainly never could or would see myself spending much longer living there than I already did, there are some quintessential California experiences that I never knew about until I lived there. First, a thing called “The Pumpkin Patch”, which is a place you can go to in the fall/leading up to Halloween to buy overpriced pumpkins, ride crappy carnival rides or play in gigantic bounces houses (which I never bothered with, but the kids – even being teenagers/in their early 20s – enjoyed), and eat carnival-type food.

Then there’s this whole idea of “going to the snow”. This remains an absolutely HILARIOUS idea to me, mostly because the phrase “going to the snow” is even a thing. And even though we only did it once during my time there, the idea that we could leave RC and drive about an hour or an hour and a half (depending on traffic because LOL everything out there ALWAYS depends on traffic) and go from let’s say 50-60 degree weather to FEET of snow is crazy to me. After all, I grew up in New England where snow was just a constant thing from November/December through March or sometimes even April, and most of my adulthood has been spent in upstate South Carolina, where sure we GET a bit of snow now and then, but if you want to see REAL snow you have to drive hours north in the dead of winter.

Another thing we sadly only did once was taking the pups to the dog beach in Huntington. Another situation where it’s about an hour and a half away *depending on traffic*, it was still fun to see my pups experience the ocean for the first time, since both of them were born and raised (Ellie for 3.5 years, Sokka for 1.5 years) in upstate SC, which is several hours from an actual ocean beach. (P.S. Ellie didn’t care for it, but Sokka LOVED it, and I am honestly sad that they only got to go once.)

Weirdly enough, one of the little half-day trips we took was thanks to a friend of mine from SC, who had told me all about this gorgeous southern California hotel that she and her husband had a little getaway at. Turns out that the hotel she was talking about was the Mission Inn in Riverside, only about a 35-45 minute drive from where I ended up! We spent a long afternoon exploring the inn and grounds and having a delicious lunch, and I only wish I’d made time to go back before returning to the east coast…and I definitely regret that we didn’t wear Red Dead costumes and get photos around the hotel, though we DID do so on another day trip that we took out to Calico Ghost Town (a place that we visited twice in the years I spent in SoCal, though I do regret that both times we visited were basically during summer and it was errrr kind of miserably hot, haha).

We also went to Pasadena a few times (usually to meet up with friends), and got to go to a House of the Dragon exhibit at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles, PLUS a Paleyfest presentation in Hollywood, celebrating Amy Sherman Palladino of Gilmore Girls/Marvelous Mrs Maisel fame. This involved us seeing said presentation in the theater where they host the Oscars and having a bit of time to walk around the extremely touristy section of Hollywood Boulevard around that theater. Which to be fair I had visited before, but the ability to do this in an afternoon/evening – and most especially to see the Amy Sherman Palladino presentation – was so great.

Then there were the ‘little things’ – evenings out at a local winery, and, more often, evenings out at local breweries; some local hiking; checking out both Renaissance Faires in the area; experiencing a Golden Girls pop-up followed by a walk down Rodeo Drive; meeting my first WDWCP roommate for dinner at Downtown Disney; and even visiting Golf n’ Stuff of Karate Kid fame! Needless to say, as I’ve been writing this I keep thinking of more fun little Inland Empire and LA things that we did throughout the years and realizing that as much as I might have missed checking off a number of things on my “to do while living in California” list, I also fit a whoooole bunch of really cool experiences in 🙂

Anyway, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my absolute FAVORITE thing about living in RC – or really more so, specifically living in our neighborhood. Because we did Halloween BIG, there. Our neighbors on one side did so as well, and in 2024 our neighbors on the other side picked up on the vibe too, which was so much fun. For my first Halloween here in 2021 we were Cobra Kai themed; in 2022, we went with “Taco Hell”; 2023 was Mario; and 2024 was Ghostbusters. After the first couple of years we became known as a house that would provide not just candy for the kiddos but entertainment and other fun options for older kids and adults as well, and that’s the one thing I will miss the most about living there.

NOT-QUITE-DAY-TRIPS
While I suppose some of the things I’ve already mentioned might not technically be truly local experiences, they were things we did in a single day (often less)…and I also got to go on a couple of overnight ‘trips’ to nearby places that almost certainly never would have happened if I wasn’t living so close.

First, I highly doubt I ever would have traveled all the way out to California to run in the Disneyland half marathon. (And to be honest, having run that race, I’m glad I didn’t have to pay for flights and more than one night in a hotel to do so, heh.) Instead we drove in the day before, got a hotel right across the street from Disneyland, picked up my bib and wandered the tiny runners’ convention, ate at Downtown Disney, went to bed early, then I ran the marathon the next morning and we were back home by dinnertime.

A much more fun overnight trip was when we got to meet up with my good friends Rachel and Josh when they came to California for vacation 🙂 We picked them up from LAX and headed over to Venice, where we checked out the touristy beach area, had a touristy lunch, wandered the canals, had more drinks and food, stayed in a lovely little boutique hotel (you can actually see the building it’s in in the video game Dead Island 2, ha), and then walked all the way to the Santa Monica pier the next day – which was a weird culmination of my route 66 trip that began in January 2021 and only finished at the actual tail end of route 66 in October 2023.

And then – pretty much JUST before I left California – a good friend of mine, Jonathan, who I hadn’t seen in something like 10? 11? years was in San Diego for a work conference…thanks to proximity and Hyatt points we were able to head down there for an overnight to meet up with him. We had a blast eating at one of my favorite SD restaurants, Bencotto in Little Italy, and visiting the Ballast Point brewery in Little Italy, AND a really cool tiki bar called False Idol, plus brunch the next morning at Werewolf in the Gaslamp (though I would have preferred Cafe 21 in the Gaslamp, sadly that location was closed – at least temporarily – when we visited ::cries::). Dean and I even stopped at Tom’s Farms, a sort of famous roadside attraction, on the way back from San Diego…so basically fun things that I never had the time and/or energy to fit in when I was in San Diego for…

SDCC
I’ll be honest, if I hadn’t been living California during the summers of 2022-2024, I don’t think I would have bothered going to San Diego Comic-Con. The expense long ago started outweighing the benefits when it came to flights alone, not to mention the amount of PTO I had to expend to fly out even for a long weekend. Being only about a 2-2.5 hour drive away (depending on traffic! lol), combined with friends who lived in San Diego who I could stay with, or a hotel room I was gifted one year by some much beloved and truly generous friends, or even paying for a spot in a hotel room last year, was the only way it was truly…well, maybe ‘viable’ isn’t the right word, but certainly the only reason I was willing to spend the money to be there.

And wow did I have some GREAT times at SDCC the past few years. More than worth the drive, any money I spent on food and drinks, etc. Of course I spoke on panels each year, but I also got to meet up with old friends who I hadn’t seen in a long time, got TONS of free books (well, in 2022 anyway), was able to attend a meetup with fellow Red Rising fans, had some absolutely amazing times with my friends Paul and Orion and Fahad, among others…and then last year (2024) even had the privilege of hanging out with my friend Tore (who wrote Red Dead’s History) and the one and only Roger Clark, the actor who brought Arthur Morgan to life and did the audiobook for Red Dead’s History. And listen…if that was my last trip ever to San Diego Comic-Con, it was a GREAT way to wrap up my 9 years of attending that event!

Of course, there is SO much more to California (and to LIVING in California) than the Inland Empire, LA, and San Diego…so stay tuned for part two of my California Adventures!