A Land of Extremes

We’re currently living in Topanga, which is a little town up in the Santa Monica mountains. We’re 7 miles from the beach. It’s a beautiful, breath-taking drive – hard to comprehend just how gorgeous until you drive it, with rocky cliffs and vast high reaching peaks.

While weather in Topanga is normally in the 70’s, at times there will be a heat wave, like this past week. The amazing thing is, though, that even when there is a heat wave in Topanga, often the shore is still very cool.

Take today, for instance. It was 95 degrees and SUNNY at our house. We decided to do what we often do when there is a heat wave – jump in the car and drive to the beach. And in those 7 miles, the temperature plunged from 95 degrees to 70 degrees. And visually, it was incredible, too – the shore was thick with ocean fog, overcast and grey.

We drove 10 minutes. In the course of those ten minutes, we dropped 25 degrees, 1500 feets, and went from sunny to murky. It was incredible.

And really, this is hardly rare. Even when Topanga isn’t having a rare heat wave, you can almost always reproduce such variety by driving a little bit further into the San Fernando Valley (otherwise known as “The Valley”), where it’s almost always much hotter.

There’s something about living in a place where you can be incredible hot and then cool in a matter of minutes – one, it let’s you know that things can change quickly. That’s a good lesson to learn. And perhaps it’s fitting here in LA that the weather patterns can be split up like this, because here things can change especially quickly.

It’s also kind of comforting to know that you always have the option to travel a bit and be in beautiful weather. And to know that you can be thousands of feet in the air in a snap even if you’re literally at ocean level right now.