Today was Estate Sale Day. We traveled up to Riverside to go to an Estate Sale hosted by one of our favorite estate sale people, Home Sweet Home Estate Sales. Check out their web site here.
We bought a few thing at the estate sale and then called Debbie to see if she was home. She said she was having brunch at the Flabob Airport Cage with Tony and her Dad. So we decided to join them. You can read about the airport here on their web site.
Flabob Airport Cafe
Inside the Cafe
The place is decorated in aviator motif with airplane photos, etc everywhere. The food was good, I has french toast, Elly had an avocado omelet.
Phil, me, Elly & Tony at the Flabob Airport Cafe
This cafe is a very cool local hangout. We didn't even know it existed until Debbie told us to meet her there. She found the place by accident one day when her horse ran away and ended up at the airport.
Here is a video from youtube about the Flabob Airport Cafe:
Large Wright Bros. sculpture outside the Cafe
After hanging out for a while chatting and drinking coffee, we headed home to put stuff up on eBay.
The forecast was for 100 degrees today, so we decided to take the day off an have a "field trip". We decided to go to San Clemente for lunch and then find a beach to spend the afternoon at. We took the Ortega Highway to San Juan Capistrano. If you look at our May 1 blog post, there is a map of the Ortega Highway. It is the only way over the mountains from here to Orange County. The only other ways are up through Corona or down through Oceanside. It is a very winding road, and although Capistrano is only 20 mile as the crow flies, it takes an hour on the Ortega Highway!
The San Juan Capistrano Mission (you know the "swallows") is very disappointing. It is on a street corner downtown. Plus there seemed to be a lot of construction go on inside. I am sure it is nice to visit inside, but it just wasn't in our plans for today. Here is a google maps street view of the mission.
That's the Mission behind the van.
We did walk down the street to a large antique shop and spent some time browsing around. I saw a nice amber necklace that I wanted to buy for Elly, but we passed on it to save money. This shop also charges 12% sellers premium in addition to rent if you want to sell in a space at this mall.
This is the amber necklace that I liked
Me in one of the booths
You can tell we are in California!
Elly in the Antique Mall
One of the antique booths
After looking around the shop for some time, we decided to head to San Clemente for lunch. Once in San Clemente we decide to eat at Nick's. The place was real nice and the food was fantastic! It wasn't too pricey either.
Nick's Restaurant
Elly at the restaurant. Her hair is getting longer!
Downtown San Clemente
After lunch we decided to head towards San Onofre State Beach. We decided used our GPS to take all the back roads in San Clemente that would take us to the shore. If we found a nice beach we would stay there, rather than go to our original destination of San Onofre. As luck would have it we found the San Celemente State Beach at Calafia.
This beach was great, a lot of parking, not crowded and really nice sand with no rocks. There were condo apartments overlooking the beach. I bet those are expensive!
Looking down the beach
Condos overlooking the beach
Elly Relaxing at the Beach
Just like in Del Mar, the train tracks run right along the back of the beach. You can watch this youtube video I took of the train going by.
After we had enough sun, we drove down to our original destination, San Onofre State Park. The State Park surrounds the nuclear power plant which is currently shut down. There is a lot of controversy and public meeting surrounding the restart of this plant.
The State beach was packed with all sorts of vehicles with surf boards. There must have been over 300 "surfer dude" vehicles and only a few parking spaces left. This is where all the surfers go.
San Onofre State Beach in 1963. I think some of those cars are still there!
San Onofre State Beach today.
We sat at watched the surfers for a while and then headed to Carlsbad on the way home. In Carlsbad we stopped at the Coyote Grill to relax with a few drinks and nachos.
Coyote Grill & where we sat
The band started playing and they weren't that good, so we decided to call it a day and head back home. We decided to try and do at least one outing like this each week before we have to head back to to New England.
The large antique mall in Temecula is called Grannies Attic Antiques. It is a group shop with over 200 dealers. Occasionally they have a flea market in their parking lot for dealers and to attract more customers to the shop. We signed up late for the flea market, but luckily there was a cancellation, so we got a prime location, the 3rd booth from the entrance! We packed the car the night before and arrived at Grannies at 6:00am to set up. Most dealers were already there setting up! With the two borrowed tables from our condo neighbor, we unpacked the car and set up the booth.
Elly Arranging the Booth
It was a nice day that started off cool so we needed jackets and coffee. But by 9:00 the sun was out, it was warm and the customers were there.
Some of the early customers
Our booth from our vantage point
We did fairly well for our first time here, we got rid of a few big items that we didn't want to store any longer and met some very nice people. We also leaned a lot about the Grannies Attic Group shop itself.
Here in California, the group shop owners charge a 10% sellers premium in addition to the rent you pay! So if your rent is $250 a month, and you sell 4 times rent in sales ($1000), you own them $350 ($250 + $100). That really cuts into your profits! The lady in the next booth has been a seller at the group shop for 15 years and rarely does 3 time rent in sales. So unless she gets her merchandise really cheap or charges high prices, it would be difficult to make a profit! This reinforces my conviction that the that the only ones making any money in these group shops are the group shop owners. Luckily the outdoor flea market vendors didn't have to fork over the 10%!
It was a great experience doing this and hope they have another soon.
After we got back to California, Elly & I both came down with a flu-like illness. This thing knocked us out for two weeks. I was sick in bed all day while they were installing the air conditioning, so Elly had to attend to all the details. I eventually had to go to Urgent Care to get some antibiotics and cough meds. They seemed to do the trick. We are both well enough now to go out and do things, but we both still have a low level cough. We think we caught this thing on the plane.
Friday night we went to open mike night at Pechanga again. Michelle's nephew, Scott, and aspiring stand up comic performed. We thought that this was his best performance that we have seen do far. We went to the early show so that we could go home and rest. Sunday we went to Debbie's for dinner. Had a great time and seem to really be over this stupid illness.
Since we will be leaving in January, we have to get rid of some of our stuff, so we decided to do the outdoor flea market at the Grannie's Attic Antique shop this Saturday. We were lucky we got a spot due to a last minute cancellation. I will post some pictures of the Flea Market when we are there, Should be fun!
