{"id":12776,"date":"2006-03-11T02:30:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-11T02:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/2006\/03\/11\/point-mugu\/"},"modified":"2006-03-11T02:30:00","modified_gmt":"2006-03-11T02:30:00","slug":"point-mugu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/2006\/03\/11\/point-mugu\/","title":{"rendered":"Point Mugu"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DrikoLand<\/a>
In case you hadn’t noticed, I was away for most of the week on travel in California, specifically Point Mugu NAWS<\/acronym><\/a> 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…<\/p>\n

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. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, where much of the M*A*S*H<\/i> TV series<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

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

tags: <\/p>\n