A bit more of Huntington Beach...including some shopping.

DH's cousin took us to some of her favourite places along the beachfront at Huntington Beach.

Here we are standing on a rock wall where A often takes photos of surfers and people fishing from the rocks...

Looking out to sea, the oil wells in the distance. Huntington Beach is now a classy neighbourhood but its origins were as an oil town.

We walked along the beach; that's a lifeguard lookout tower behind us.

I noticed these large cement bowl-shaped structures on the beach...

With their warning that they may be hot...

These structures stretched in a line up the beachfront. They were, of course, fire pits. So it must occasionally get cold in California.

On another day we went shopping. Through the power of Google, DH had discovered that there was a sporting goods shop called Dick's at HB. (It's a chain of stores which we had noticed on the east coast on our 2011 US holiday) So one morning A took us out to find the store that DH really wanted to look through... 

Well! You wouldn't believe it, but in the same shopping precinct there was a Michaels store! So A and I went looking through that store while DH checked out Dick's. 

The first thing I noticed was the displays for Autumn/Fall decorations. 

Then A decided we should have some fun...it's legendary in the family, a story about another one of DH's cousins who was visiting Cousin A from Australia. This cousin convinced A that they should be at the door of the Michaels store by 5.30am to be first in line grab the bargains at a big sale. And when the store opened, this cousin bought up big and posted a number of parcels of the sale items back to Brisbane!

So A took these staged photos of me for the purpose of posting the pics on Facebook and tagging the other cousin...

Only staged...I didn't buy any of these items! lol

Then I checked out the yarns in Michaels...

There was row after row, shelf after shelf, just filled with yarns!!

And there even 'Ginormous' balls of yarn!!

I 'posed' this one to give an idea of how big it was! lol

And no! I didn't buy a Ginormous ball; I bought a much smaller ball of variegated yarn and some scrapbooking flowers that I will use to make gift tags. But I certainly had lots of fun looking!
In the meantime, DH bought a polo shirt at Dick's.
After that, on the way home, A took us to a suburban street in HB to show us a 'celebrity' house. (DH and I had chosen not to do a 'celebrity homes' tour in Hollywood)

Apparently this house is owned by former porn star Jenna Jameson. Some sources suggest she paid $2 million for the house. So a local 'celeb' apparently!