An Afternoon at Newport Beach

Corrie and I spent a few hours with the volleyball a couple of weeks back at Newport Beach, a beach community in Orange County. On the drive in Texas in the truck, the route that Carol and I took came through the mountains, and we had to follow signs for "Beach Cities". My guess, since from that distance they would all be in the same direction, is that "Beach Cities" refers specifically to the Long Beach-Huntington Beach-Newport Beach threesome that line the shore south of the peninsular nub that houses Torrance. Long Beach is in Los Angeles County, and once you cross a canal leaving the city you enter Seal Beach and Orange County. Huntington Beach is the larger of it and Newport Beach, but they're both larger than Seal Beach and Sunset Beach (a community separated by canals and a destination for this blogger and his camera).

In any case, after some errands in republican Orange County, we wanted to play a bit on their beaches. We pulled into an area that said it had parking and beach access, and what we saw was this weird town-like thing, with the beach at the end of a short walk:



Two rows of houses separated by a tiny alley, the beach o one side, parking lots and the Pacific Coast Highway on the other, make up this Newport Beach "neighborhood":



The homes were nice:



The views from the beaches, though, might have left something to be desired:



In the distance, though, is Catalina Island. In doing personal research in finding out how to get to Catalina Island, it turns out it is a twenty minute helicopter ride, or an hour and a half long boat ride. The helicopter ride sounds crazy fun, but is most likely out of our budget.



Like many things in Orange County, this beach seemed overrated. It wasn't bad in any single aspect, it was just mediocre. The surf was okay, the sand was only just kinda polluted, many trash cans, which was a plus, but no bathrooms, cancelling out the waste-bins...oh yeah, one refinery. You just get a sense that the people who live in those nice houses right on the beach would rather not share the beach with the general public.