Recently Carol and I took a quick flight down to Orange County, CA to visit my Dad - where (among other things) the three of us committed a ruthless slaughtering and overdose of raw oysters at the fab Santa Monica Seafood Market in Costa Mesa. Over the course of three nights and four days we squeezed in a few others stops as well.

First up was (finally) a visit to the recently opened OCMA, aka The Orange County Museum of Art that now iconically anchors the Segrestrom Center for the Arts campus. I've had a long love affair with the place having first visited it's original iteration in 1973. At that time it was a small, inconspicuous two-room gallery within the historic Newport Harbour Pavillion that was piecemealed together on a shoestring by 13 women artists. Over the years it evolved, grew in size and stature across four different locations. The new OCMA, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis Studio took three years to build. I know 'cause I'd been bird-dogging the live cams they had positioned during construction. The place (IMHO) is easily the leading example of contemporary architecture within the ever budgeoning kingdom known as 'da OC'.

A highlight was meeting up with long time friends Candace and Kevin (former Sonoma County residents) for a lunch in San Juan Capistrano, CA that included a stop at a favorite native plant nursery of theirs. Isolated and out of town, it's a deceptively large operation with classic, vintage straw bale structures sprinkled throughout the grounds. Walking around, the place was singing with notes from Taos, New Mexico and Georgia O'Keefe. Definitely need a little more time there....next time.

Parting shot...I about flew out of our rental car's seat driving by new condo construction (the image with the black shade cloth). It features an incredible, monster tapestry of abstraction - a pure, public art installation that will no doubt have a short viewing window ; ).