In case you hadn't noticed, I was away for most of the week on travel in California, specifically Point Mugu NAWS about an hour north of Los Angeles. I spent more time shuttling between both coasts than I did actually working, unfortunately, but them's the breaks sometimes...

Thankfully, I did have a chance to do some sightseeing on Tuesday after I finished my meetings and aircraft surveys. I started with some interesting static displays of aircraft and missiles outside one of the gates at Point Mugu NAWS; it was nice to see both a Tomcat and a Phantom II in one place. :-)

After that, I headed down the 101 and explored one of the canyon roads (Kanan-Dume Road) between the 101 and the Pacific Coast Highway. That ended up being a neat way to cross the Santa Monica Mountains, although I'll admit that as expected I was a little white-knuckled in spots because of the nice, expansive views and very windy conditions. By the way, just east of this canyon road lies Malibu Creek State Park, where much of the M*A*S*H TV series was filmed. I didn't get a chance to explore the park, but apparently some parts of the set remain on the premises. Looking at the surrounding mountains, I could definitely see the resemblance to scenery from the show.

The canyon road ends on the coast at Malibu, and from there I explored the Pacific Coast Highway heading back north, stopping at some beaches and overlooks along the way. In particular, I was trying to scope out a good spot for some sunset photography, which was a little tough considering that the coast travels almost east-west along that stretch. Still, I eventually found a pretty good spot at Point Mugu itself, which presented a nice backdrop to a pretty decent, albeit somewhat cloudy, sunset (as seen above in one of my favorite photos of the bunch). I will state now that I froze my ass off taking dozens of pictures, as it was extremely windy, dropping a good ten degrees while I waited there patiently... ;-p

I've posted some pictures from my meanderings to my Photo Gallery (separated into a Point Mugu Missile Park gallery, with the rest of the pictures in a Point Mugu travel gallery) as well as to my flickr page. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!