I Am a Resident - Walking the Neighborhood

When Jay and I married, 12 years ago, we decided that I would move into his home in Playa del Rey, we would live there for 3 years and then find "our home" to move to. Three years passed and we went house-hunting but always said when we returned to Playa del Rey, "Home, sweet home. There is no place we like better than this!"  So we remodeled the house and now it feels like "our home."

Playa del Rey is a coastal community situated between the Los Angeles International Airport

and Marina del Rey.  Most of the community is built on what are actually sand dunes with west facing houses viewing the ocean and east facing houses viewing the San Bernardino Mountains (on a clear day!).  Our house faces east.

But if we walk just three blocks, we are greeted with this fantastic view:

On mornings such as today, we will grab each other and head out the door to walk the neighborhood.  We are not alone.  There are dog walkers

 headed to the little triangle Dog Park...which often seems to be a little lunch time "meeting place" for various people!

and fitness runners

We see the fruit trees

and landscaping ideas.

We notice some homes optimistically up for sale despite the current real estate slump.

We see a tree trunk that was uprooted during the recent rain storms, waiting to be hauled away.  Makes me wonder how my "age rings" are evidenced on my "trunk!"

We have some homes with "stories attached to them" like this vintage house that once hosted parties for movie stars in the twenties...like Ronald Coleman and Myrna Loy.

This is the entrance to Marina Del Rey.  The houses below it are locally referred to as "the Jungle" I guess because of the "wild life" that occupies them, especially during the summer months...young adults and college students from nearby Loyola Marymount University or UCLA.  On clear days like today we look at the curve of the bay and see the city Santa Monica and all the way to Point Dume.

This gradual path ambles along a restricted area and takes us all the way to the beach.

The restricted area is property claimed by the City of Los Angeles years ago by eminent domain due to an airport expansion and is now protected as a habitat of the El Segundo Blue Butterfly.  I have never seen one!

It is an interesting neighborhood and we always see something new. We often tell each other that right now people are saving their money and planning a future vacation to travel thousands of miles to visit the location that we have right outside our front door.  Los Angeles may be very crowded, have horrendous traffic on gnarled freeways, have blighted areas and dismal crime statistics, but on the other side of the coin, we are fortunate to live in Paradise.  And, at the end of the walk, like today, 1.06 miles later, we return to "Home, Sweet Home."