Southern California in Two Acts

Act 1: San Diego

Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it Sahn Diahgo. Here they established an animal sanctuary, better known as the San Diego Zoo. Many animals can be found here, but even more prevalent than animals are hills.
If you travel to the city named for Saint Diego then please be prepared to trek over many hills. At least in the area designated for animal viewing.

And to speak of the animal viewing! If you can possibly think of an animal that can be viewed at this astounding menagerie then it can be found. That is, unless you're thinking of the tiger. Evidentally it was the tiger's day off.

The day began late as our night prior was a late one as well, succumbing to the allure of "the mouse". Plus, in the morning we had to make a ritualistic sacrifice to the god Kenmore, ruler of all things laundry.

We (Rich, Chris, Kate & Matt) drove down a "the" highway and arrived in the southernmost San city the Golden State could muster. And the Zoo was spectacular! We saw birds, reptiles, fish, and mammals.
We elbowed with elephants, regaled with rhinos
, kibbutzed with koalas
and pandered to pandas.
Every alliterative allegory you could think of, except any regarding the tiger. No tigers.

We walked up hills and down hills, amongst the bears, birds, monkeys, marsupials, and all other flora and fauna.





















We concluded the animal viewing day with the only way Southern Californians know how.


Dinner at In-N-Out Burger. The fast food burger industry put up its dukes and asked "you think you can do better than this?" In-N-Out Burger replied with a resounding "Hell yes."






Act Two: Los Angeles

Remember, folks: You can't spell "lame" without L.A.

Wow! Who invited the jerk? Yes, I know, that seems harsh, but we were less than impressed with Hollywood. I'm sure L.A. has more excitement to offer, but all we took in was Hollywood. Not what we were expecting.
Tinseltown intself just didn't seem as glitzy or simply as clean as we'd anticipated. Nevertheless, we drove down Hollywood Boulevard and parked at a meter in front of Aaron Spelling, Gene Autry and Harrison Ford. From there we walked about 3 blocks to the Kodak Theater, home of the Oscars. Outside of here one may be greeted by celebrity of character impersonators. We saw Tigger and the Cat in the Hat, later to be joined by Shrek, Flash Gordon and Darth Vader - all of whom appeared and performed unconvincingly. We found out that we could park under the Kodak Theater and it was no more than $10 for the whole day. So it's cheaper than Boston. That's one point for Hollywood. Enjoy it.
Sure, it was neat to walk down Hollywood Boulevard and see the walk of fame and all the stars. You'll see some that you recognize, some that you've hardly even heard of. Except the night before Rich told us that the stars aren't awarded to anyone by a governing body of judges, they're purchased by the so-named star holders for an outrageous price. So if you've got money, you too could be on the Hollywood walk of fame. So that made it just a bit more disingenuous. Although this didn't stop Kate from having her picture taken with the Bee Gees.


We decided to take a bus tour, and Starline Tours (apparently Hollywood's oldest bus tourline) was our choice. This one offers a hop on-hop off policy, so you can take one bus, get off somewhere, and catch the next one that comes along. Tickets were purchased next to Graumman's Chinese Theater. That was kind of neat, where you can find actors' handprints and footprints plus a message written in the concrete slabs outside of the theater. John Wayne didn't put his hands in it, he punched his fist in. He had small feet.

So we rode around for a bit, looking at this building where River Phoenix died, down the street from where John Belushi died, and further down where Eddie Murphy's career died. We drove down and viewed the pretentiousness of Rodeo Drive and decided to stop off at the Hollywood Farmer's Market. We were hoping for something akin to our experience in Seattle. It was a bit less stuffy and plastic than the rest of what we'd seen on the tour. Still nothing great though. So we ate something and looked at stuff and then caught the next bus. From here until the end of the tour route we caught a glimpse of the Hollywood sign, Forest Lawn cemetery, and a bunch of other buildings where famouse people USED to live. As we arrived back to the Kodak Theater where we started there was a movie premeire taking place at the Chinese Theater. We took some pictures of this guy in aviator sunglasses being asked questions from other people. I assume he was famous. We were just ready to get out of there.

So now we can say we've seen Hollywood.

A-ba-dee a-ba-dee a-ba-dee a-ba-dee a-ba-dee That's all, folks!

The 2nd Happiest Place on Earth

Disneyland pales in comparison to DisneyWorld, but it still proves to be a good time. If you can make your way around all of the double-wide babystrollers and slow moving electric wheelchairs. But it was still fun!

Upon entering the gates eagerly anticipating the "Magical Day" all the staff had wished us on our way in, we made a bee-line (or rather, I did) for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. For all of you Disney enthusiasts, you know that DisneyWorld mistakingly got rid of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and replaced it with Winnie the Pooh. How sad.
Having not been on this ride in over twenty years, I was very excited to go on. And it was just like I remembered. At the end of the ride you get hit by a train, and go to hell. Maybe that's why DisneyWorld replaced it with Pooh?



We had purchased park hopper tickets so that we could also go the Disneyland's sister park, California Adventure. It's kind of like all of the best parts of MGM Studios and Epcot Center thrown into one smaller park. Disneyland was way crowded, so we decided to go next door and see if the lines for the rides were any shorter, and they were. We were psyched to find that our favorite ride, The Tower of Terror, was also in California. The line was only twenty minutes long. Sweet.
This is probably the only ride that Matt and I could go on and on and on and on and NEVER get tired of. Every time you ride it, it is different. The basic plot of the ride is that you are checking into The Hollywood Tower Hotel, and it only has one workable service elevator. However, this hotel is in another dimension, or the twilight zone. So, when you go up the elevator it breaks, it falls, it shoots back up, it falls again, and so on. You never know what it's going to do. It's the best!

We made it back into Disney for dinner, and rode on Big Thunder Mountain, The Matterhorn Bobsleds,
and Pirates of the Caribbean. They have changed the Pirates ride to accommodate the movies that have come out, so now there is a Johnny Depp "Captain Jack Sparrow" animatronic pirate who lurks around the ride. I wasn't too impressed with it, but Matt enjoyed it.



Oh, how could I forget? Our last ride of the night was Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters, another one of our favorite rides. While we were in Florida for our honeymoon, Matt and I went on certain rides multiple times so we could anticipate when the 'hidden cameras' would capture us on film enjoying the ride, but we would pose for the pictures. My favorite was when we 'fell asleep' on the ride. I completely forgot about this out here in CA (it must be all of the sun), and my heart was set on killing the Evil Zurg. Matt was apparently intent on reading the park map for our next destination.

If everybody had an ocean...

The first full day in Southern California was a full day of Southern California nothing. And it was awesome. We lived the lives of Southern Californians to the fullest, which isn't that full at all - but that's the point. Life here is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo laid back.

We (Matt, Kate, Rich & Chris) headed out to see cousin John - son of Rich and Chris, heretofore known as JohnE. JohnE is an accountant for a hotel in the area. That's his job. His life is surfing. He's the stereotypical Californian surfer dude. But he was at work when we arrived. So we stashed our stuff at his Newport Beach apartment and headed down to the boardwalk along the beach. And how do Californians get to the beach and travel around? On bikes. The four of us were riding bikes. I felt 12 again. It was so fantastically laid back.

So we drove along until we made it to the Fun Zone, where there are dozens of shops, quick eats, and amusement rides. We had pizza for lunch, stuck our heads in some shops, and biked back up to the apartment to suit up for the beach.


This time we walked to the beach where we sat out on the sand, waded in the surf, and cooked ourselves in the southern Cali sun. They tell you to apply sunscreen, I stress to you to RE-apply...




After a while JohnE got off work and met up with us as the beach before heading back to his place and returning with his board. When he arrived back with his board the lifeguard stations still had the "black ball" flag out on their stations. A yellow background flag with a big black circle on it. The worst sight for a surfer. This means no surfing - too many people in the water. But the flags eventually came down as the number of swimmers decreased. As we and JohnE were in mid-sentence he was quick to make a bee-line for the surf
and was on his board in no time. His roommate Brian (B-Man) met up with us soon after and joined JohnE in the water.

The four of us (M, K, R & C) went back up to the apartment, showered and changed and met up with JohnE and BMan to head on back down to the Big Belly Deli, a local deli and watering hole. Dinner and cold ones. Good times. Kate, JohnE, BMan and I rode bikes back down. And we imbibed, and rode bikes back up.


Such is life in southern California.

13 Hours to LA

Thursday was our longest driving day yet, clocking in at over 13 hours. We didn't realize this until we counted it up when we got there. Previously our longest day was driving from Rapid City, SD to Cody, WY. And that was about 9 hours. Oddly this 13 hour trip wasn't so grueling due to the fact that we didn't actually THINK about how much we had driven.

Our plan was to drive down the Pacific Coast Highway and cut across to Santa Barbara where we would shoot straight down into Riverside. However, the road that we wanted to use to get to Santa Barbara was closed due to a brush fire that had been burning for a month or two. So we had to double back and eat up about an hour of driving time.

This put us on the 101. By the way, that's the thing around here. At home we say "Take 495 to route 2 all the way to 128". Here they say "Take the 91 to the 101 and stay on that until you hit the PCH". We're in "the" territory. In fact, it seems like the entire country, save New England is "the" territory.

As we were driving along "the" 101 further south we saw more of the cliffside vistas and would occasionally get out and take some pictures. This one stop we made we heard
the most peculiar sound from below and realized that there were seals parked out on the rocks below. And flying around us at eye level was a California Condor. Wicked cool.

We drove along for a while until we saw a huge throng of people parked aside the road and taking pictures on the beach. I looked ahead and saw that they were photographing seals. But these seals seemed too big to be seen from far away. It turned out they were elephant seals. Never thought we'd see those in the wild.






The 101 drives right through Hollywood. We were driving on it at about 10:00 at night, and the traffic nightmares we'd heard of were not to be seen. Not much of Hollywood was not to be seen either, because it was dark. But inevitably my car was hit by Lindsey Lohan. Paris Hilton and Britney Spears were in the car too. Phil Spector denied it ever happened.

A little while later we were there, in Riverside, home of Uncle Rich and Aunt Chris. We talked for about a half hour and then crashed. Rightly so.

Hello, Frisco!

Today we slept in and left the Manchester, CA KOA around 10:30 to drive further south on CA route 1, hugging the coastline at 200 feet above jagged rocks and breaking surf. We drove until we reached 101, then south for a jaunt until we reached our next KOA 2 1/2 hours later. Extremely odd for us to be checking in to our tent site when it's a) daylight and b) just minutes after your earliest available check-in time.
The plan was to check in early and then find a way into San Francisco. We figured there would be public transportation from a local suburb that would be easy enough to follow, just like our trip into Chicago.
It turns out that there isn't a local commuter rail line. Most people when commuting via public transport use the ferry system. The ferry system in San Francisco wasn't going to cooperate with our plans. We asked at the KOA front desk for any ideas. The girl said that we could take a bus from a nearby town. That would take 2 hours. So I said to myself that I've driven all this way across the entire country, driving into San Francisco wouldn't be terribly difficult.
So with the blessing of a former San Franciscan named Cutter, we drove in.
We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, which was exciting. Couldn't see much though because of the fog. We drove up to route 1 and parked in the Haight-Ashbury section.

Five years ago Kate and I were fortunate to spend some time in the city by the Bay. We were flying back from Osaka, Japan where I suffered an acute sinus infection and had to "decompress" for a day - EMT's orders. So we made the most of it while we were here in 2002. Although we didn't have time to see the Haight-Ashbury section, which was disappointing to me because of my affinity for the Grateful Dead and the counterculture movement. I was promised then that we would come back and see it. So today we did.

Mark Twain once said "The coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in San Francisco." From what I understand, today in Boston saw nearly 100 degree temperatures and 5 tornadoes touched down in New York City. San Francisco was a blustery 57 degrees. As we walked up and down Haight Street we were lamenting the fact that we had dressed for a summer's day in California.....on a summer's day in California.

We had a late lunch near the corner of Haight and Ashbury streets at the
Magnolia Brewpub. We had a few of their brews and an entree. After that we browsed the shops of Haight and then walked back to the car so we could drive across town to make it in time for....


...ANOTHER baseball game! This time we walked right up to the box office of AT&T Park (formerly SBC Park, formerly Pacific Bell Park) and bought two tickets. 24 hours earlier you couldn't sell your soul for a ticket, but since Barry Bonds* had hit that home run the night before, no one cared enough to go tonight. And we confirmed a few facts we were speculating earlier. For example, National League games are boring. We look around and no one is invested in the game. This guy is reading, that guy is browsing on his laptop (the stadium provided free WiFi). No energy, unless Bonds* got up. And in case you didn't know, he hit home run #756 yesterday. And if you didn't hear the first time they reminded you, they took care of that every 2 minutes. But despite all that falderal, the Giants are in last place. So we also realized that there would be no baseball in October because they experience October in August. It's so cold.

California Roll

We've made it.










It almost seemed that once we crossed the border from Oregon to California, the weather immediately got better. Our first stop was in Jedidiah Smith State Park, home of the Redwoods. This is the area (although technically it was truly Crescent City) where they filmed the Endor scenes for Return of the Jedi.
Thick forest landscapes with the most gigantic trees you've ever seen. In fact, they are the tallest trees on earth. You couldn't help but feel dwarved by standing next to or even in them. Some of the trees have been hollowed out by fire, but their exoskeleton shells remain.
We kept looking for Ewoks or Stormtroopers on speeders. No luck with that. We did find, however, some of the best tourist traps northern California could offer, such as Trees of Mystery and Confusion Woods. Kitsch at its best.

The further south we traveled, the more forest we saw, more redwood behemoths. We even took a ride down a road parallel to US 101 called "The Avenue of the Giants" which were lined with miles and miles of redwoods on either side.



We continued southward until we reached California's Route 1. This is the road we've been waiting for! We couldn't wait to see the Pacific Ocean from atop rocky cliffs, the road snaking and hugging the edge. But that would be the COASTAL highway. We had to get there first.
CA route 1 should come with motion sickness pills and a medical disclaimer. Sure, I can feel nauesous if I'm a passenger, but never when I'm in control of the wheel. CA 1 fixed that, alright! So we had to stop. Had to. Not only for our health but we were running out of gas.
We found a tiny little community store with a single gas pump dispensing only 89 grade gasoline. Are you sitting down? We paid $3.99 a gallon. But I'd rather pay that ridiculous price than be stuck on a highway in the middle of nowhere. And don't be too alarmed. That price was about 60 cents more expensive than anywhere else in this state.


But we were finally there, on the coastal highway. Exactly what we thought it would be, and we enjoyed our first sunset over the Pacific.



We made it to our tent site after dark and set up with headlamps on. I fired up the grill and Kate made (Jenn, are YOU sitting down?) guacamole with fresh organic California ingredients. She's outdone herself once again. Now I'm the luckiest guy.

The Leave It To Beaver State

It's official. There's no more "West" to our trip.

















It's only South and East from here.


Our route took us down the west coast of Oregon today. We were hoping to see the highway wind its way down along the shoreline, displaying Oregon's rocky coastline below 90 foot cliffs where the road lies.

Nope.


We agreed today that you could take Boothbay Harbor, ME, Hampton Beach, NH, and most of route 1 from Massachusetts to Maine and stretch it out on the west coast, you'd get Oregon.

This realization came to us after our stop at Cannon Beach, OR though. Here is the home of Haystack Rock. It may look familiar to you as it was used in the movies The Goonies, Kindergarten Cop, and 1941.