Ventura County – A Relaxing Getaway

What I find I think is really unique about this area of Ventura County is that we’re really proud of our town.

You know, the business owners are there. You can actually walk inside and learn about the business. When you go to the farmers market, people will talk to you about the produce. If they’re serving a lemon scone, the lemons came out of the orchard here in town. The cultural scene has really changed and become pretty vibrant. This is really within an hour of Los Angeles, one of the most affordable and diverse places to enjoy any type of entertainment you enjoy. Having moved to Camarillo 20 years ago I’ve really seen a lot of change in the town. You come here and the pace slows down a little bit. There’s beautiful hiking here, we have our old town Camarillo that has an art scene. We have a wonderful organic farmers market on Saturday morning.

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Saturday night we have what’s called Sessions at the Loft, where they have music from chamber music to folk music, and it’s a very intimate setting. So for years and years, the Hartley family has run a very successful nursery and psalmist. In the summer I teach yoga classes there, but the nice thing about that garden is that you can go there and just walk around the waterfalls, beautiful bamboo trails. Enjoy the outlet malls in Camarillo. We have world-class shopping for the ladies. While you’re playing golf, send your wife over to the outlet malls, have some fun over there. The Hueneme Beach is great. A lot of times my wife Rita and I would go on vacation and found out that we would need a vacation after our vacation. We were always trying to recover financially from seemingly paying twice as much as things actually cost and Hueneme I think it has a lot of the things that people who are on vacation are looking for, but without the lines. You go to the beach and you want to read a book and you want to watch your kids build sandcastles and you can do that here without the crowds, without paying $30 for your fish and chips, you could pay $6 for your fish and chips and then just enjoy yourself and have a good time.

In Ventura we have a lot of funky little businesses. The downtown is a really neat place. There’s a lot of culture downtown, great restaurants, cool shops. So Betty Belts is one of my favorite places to shop at. I’ve known Donna, the owner, for a very very long time. Beautiful jewelry, kind of ocean inspired lifestyle products here, and then we have another kind of boutique shop which is still fairly new in Ventura called Wet Sands. It’s a family-owned business so you get to go in there, you get to meet everyone, you get to shop, you get to have a good time. We have the harbor. Right there, you can find The Greek, Andria’s Seafood, and one of my little favorites is Brophy’s. I can order a bowl of cioppino and sit out there and look at the harbor, have a glass of wine or one of the local beers and just enjoy an afternoon or evening out there.

My partner has the 805 Bar and Grilled Cheese and they’ve got every kind of grilled cheese you can imagine. Have a bite before you come over to the comedy club. Eight years ago, I purchased this comedy club and we have been doing comedy here, world-class comedy, every weekend. For the last five years, I have produced the Ventura Comedy Festival. Last year we had over 200 comedians perform Adam Carolla, Cristela Alonzo, from her own sitcom, Bobby Lee from MADtv, Louie Anderson, Jeff Garcia. This year the festival is August 1st to 7th. Grant Park, you can stand up there you can see from Port Hueneme to Oxnard to Ventura and then you turn your body and over here are the avocado orchards with a citrus orchard. 360 degrees you can drive up there, you can hike up there, as a friend of mine said, she said this is my Zen place. San Buenaventura State Beach is a little find to the draw is The Jolly Oyster. Mark Reynolds is one of the owners and he’s the one who made me like oysters.

I never liked oysters, but here’s are fresh and you shuck them right out there. Take a bottle of our baubles bubbly, you can enjoy it right there on the beach and head up to the pier which is right there, or along the walkway that continues all the way along the boardwalk to the northern part of Ventura. Kid-friendly, lots of stuff for the kids to do, and just run around and play and have a good time.

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