Weekend Recap
Saturday was the first of many days that we will be taking photos at Balboa Lake. I usually get up very early so I can get there and get a decent parking space. I got there at about 10 AM and the first person I could find was Matt (Maguma). We chilled at some table eating some to the breakfast items that I had brought. We weren't aware that slave_to_anime , talonomega , and chase_the_bunny were there, but in a totally different place than we expected them to be. Aldo found us and lead us to the base for the day. After finishing my breakfast, I decided to go on my inspection of the park. As far as cherry blossoms, there weren't a lot. There was one large tree that looked really good on the far side of the lake near the boat ramp. Other than that, a lot of the small trees lining the road looked really good and some of the larger trees had a few branches with cherry blossoms, but nothing really spectacular. It looks like there were a lot of trees that were a few days from looking really good, so hopefully, they will look good this weekend unless the heat kills them. Some trees look like they are a few weeks from blooming. Some trees look like they will not bloom at all. We definitely won't see anything like what we saw 2 years ago and earlier. I dunno. Maybe something is seriously wrong with these trees and it will take a few years for them to return to normal.
It took awhile for everybody to start filtering in, but a little after noon, we decided that it was a good time to take some photos. A bunch of us headed to the north side of the lake.
The road is back for this year. I've always liked this road since 2 years ago. We lost it for over a year because of the restoration of the park, but I'm glad it's back. It's nice to use when other people aren't hiking or biking on it.
Of course there are plenty of trees to put people in. This first photo expedition to the north was pretty short. A lot of people didn't have lunch yet so we headed back to base for a rather long lunch break. Throughout the day, more people came in. I guess about 30 people joined the party on this day. When it started to get a little cooler and we started to lose the sun, I tried some more shooting, but I stayed near the camp.
Once again, no cherry blossoms, so we just take photos anywhere that looks interesting.
I even used the much dreaded area under the bridge. ycysusan wanted to go down there, so we did. Hopefully, next weekend will be better for cherry blossoms.
After the day at the lake, a lot of us went to Cocary out in SGV for ravendarkwings 's early birthday dinner. Since it took many cars to get all of us out there, everybody arrived at different times and since there were so many of us, we had to sit at many tables in almost every part of the restaurant. I had never been to this restaurant before, so it was a new experience for me and at first, I didn't understand the format. Apparently, you go to the refrigerator and get whatever you want to cook and you cook it. At the end, somebody comes by and counts how many plates you took from the refrigerator and charges you for them. Interesting idea. Plates of meat were $3 and I ended up having 3 plates, so it's actually pretty cheap. It was a very good meal and I really liked it. I'd love to try this again if it wasn't so far. Being spread out at about 6 different tables was really interesting. By the time I left, I had managed to spend at least a few moments at each table. I had fun visiting everybody and seeing what they were eating. Also, it seems that some guy from the Korean boy band Super Junior was in there having dinner. I love K-pop, but Super Junior?--not so much. Only Eve seemed to really care. The rest of us were just kinda meh...
After Cocary, we went to Diamond Plaza. I really wanted to have cheesecake crepe. Some of us hung out at Genki Living for a few hours I guess. Some people went to the arcade. I checked it out, but didn't really feel like playing anything. Some people went for purikura. Because of daylight savings time, I decided to leave at about 11. I couldn't really say goodbye to everybody since we were all spread out, so I just said goodbye to whoever was still at Genki Living.
I had a bit of difficulty getting up on Sunday because of the time change. Since nobody had expressed interest in going to the lake today, there was no reason to go. I ended up relaxing on Sunday and enjoying the nice weather. The weekend was alright. Got to do a lot of fun things.
It took awhile for everybody to start filtering in, but a little after noon, we decided that it was a good time to take some photos. A bunch of us headed to the north side of the lake.
The road is back for this year. I've always liked this road since 2 years ago. We lost it for over a year because of the restoration of the park, but I'm glad it's back. It's nice to use when other people aren't hiking or biking on it.
Of course there are plenty of trees to put people in. This first photo expedition to the north was pretty short. A lot of people didn't have lunch yet so we headed back to base for a rather long lunch break. Throughout the day, more people came in. I guess about 30 people joined the party on this day. When it started to get a little cooler and we started to lose the sun, I tried some more shooting, but I stayed near the camp.
Once again, no cherry blossoms, so we just take photos anywhere that looks interesting.
I even used the much dreaded area under the bridge. ycysusan wanted to go down there, so we did. Hopefully, next weekend will be better for cherry blossoms.
After the day at the lake, a lot of us went to Cocary out in SGV for ravendarkwings 's early birthday dinner. Since it took many cars to get all of us out there, everybody arrived at different times and since there were so many of us, we had to sit at many tables in almost every part of the restaurant. I had never been to this restaurant before, so it was a new experience for me and at first, I didn't understand the format. Apparently, you go to the refrigerator and get whatever you want to cook and you cook it. At the end, somebody comes by and counts how many plates you took from the refrigerator and charges you for them. Interesting idea. Plates of meat were $3 and I ended up having 3 plates, so it's actually pretty cheap. It was a very good meal and I really liked it. I'd love to try this again if it wasn't so far. Being spread out at about 6 different tables was really interesting. By the time I left, I had managed to spend at least a few moments at each table. I had fun visiting everybody and seeing what they were eating. Also, it seems that some guy from the Korean boy band Super Junior was in there having dinner. I love K-pop, but Super Junior?--not so much. Only Eve seemed to really care. The rest of us were just kinda meh...
After Cocary, we went to Diamond Plaza. I really wanted to have cheesecake crepe. Some of us hung out at Genki Living for a few hours I guess. Some people went to the arcade. I checked it out, but didn't really feel like playing anything. Some people went for purikura. Because of daylight savings time, I decided to leave at about 11. I couldn't really say goodbye to everybody since we were all spread out, so I just said goodbye to whoever was still at Genki Living.
I had a bit of difficulty getting up on Sunday because of the time change. Since nobody had expressed interest in going to the lake today, there was no reason to go. I ended up relaxing on Sunday and enjoying the nice weather. The weekend was alright. Got to do a lot of fun things.