BigWeather's Blog

We woke up super early (5 o’clock or so) and had breakfast and were on the road right at 7.  After a bit of initial confusion with signs (Los Angeles road planning feels very haphazard, and the signage can’t help but follow) we got to the rental car drop-off point, hopped on to a shuttle, and were at LAX.  Despite a rather large crowd even at around 8 o’clock on a Saturday morning the line moved fast as we got checked in, went through security, and proceeded to our gate a bit earlier than intended (about 8:20 for a 10:50 flight).

We got some McDonalds to tide us over a bit, as well as some snacks and Genetta a sandwich as airlines don’t give a proper meal anymore, even for longer flights like Las Vegas to Raleigh (following our short flight from LAX to Las Vegas).  Addison and I napped a little while Michelle and Genetta read and such.

The 10:50 flight to Las Vegas was interesting.  I saw a sign on the runway about “no turn until shoreline” which was interesting — basically we took off and only over the Pacific did the pilot turn the plane eastward while gaining altitude.  Now facing the proper direction we passed back over the basin and the mountains to the desert beyond, eventually coming to Las Vegas.  Had a great view of the strip (which was surprisingly close to the airport) including a few fake NYC buildings, a large black pyramid, and a sphinx.  I didn’t have my camera on me, sadly, so missed a picture.

We dashed off the plane and bolted for out flight taking off from another terminal in 50 minutes.  We were worried we wouldn’t get to sit together or, worse, miss the flight.  We needn’t have feared.  They hadn’t even started lining up the A tickets (Southwest groups A, B, and C, 1 through 60 in each group).

Amazingly enough, we encountered one of Addison’s friends from Boy Scouting and his parents and sister (names withheld since I don’t know if they’d want to be mentioned by name here) going on the same flight as well.  Turns out they had stayed a week on the Olympic peninsula (the same place we visited early in our trip) and had just flown in from Seattle to get on the leg from Las Vegas to Raleigh just as we had from LAX.  Small world!

The flight itself soon boarded and we got decent seats.  This time I was prepared, camera in-hand, to take pictures.  There was a delay taking off as the pilots dealt with “weight balance” issues due to the heat (already 110F).  That resolved, we took off and passed over the beautiful desert of southern Utah, into the plains, and finally over the Appalachians and home.  Our plane, a brand new 737-800 was neat and had LED lighting that changed color as evening approached.  We arrived in Raleigh shortly after 8 o’clock to a light rain — the first rain since we left nearly three weeks ago, aside from that minimal 10 minute rain in Yosemite.  Amazing luck we had with the weather on our trip!

The Southwest flight attendants had been great all day and were often quite funny.  The funniest moment came at the very end, however.  As we were landing the head flight attendant said “Whoa!” into the com system then made some horse snorting noises and a clip clop clip clop as the plane slowed down.  Too funny.

Adrianne drove us home where we unpacked a little bit, started laundry, and watched some TV before heading to bed.

We traveled just over 3250 miles during our 18 days (no including the two days traveling to Seattle and back from LAX), slightly more mileage than our 2010 trip (but also had a few more days to do it in).  I think we’ve all agreed that 18 days was a bit much and will try for 15 or so next time.  We’re also going to try and use “hubs” from which to drive to nearby sites rather than have a different hotel every night.  During our 2010 trip we had two hubs, in the Black Hills of South Dakota and in Yellowstone, Wyoming, that worked really well.  It means a little more driving but has the benefit of not always unpacking and packing the car.

There were some deviations to the original plan, but not many.  We skipped Mount Hood and the Columbia River gorge in favor of spending time in Portland’s Rose Garden and visiting Cape Disappointment, Washington.  We missed the Valley of the Ferns in Prairie Creek Redwoods SP due to the difficulty of getting to it.  While we did visit Lake Tahoe we missed Emerald Bay — not a huge loss considering we had already visited Crater Lake.  Glacier Point in Yosemite was shut down by law enforcement so we had to pass on that.  We skipped Muir Woods for Muir Beach, a great trade-off since we had already seen many, many large tree groves at that point.  In San Francisco neither Coit Tower nor Alcatraz (due to time and being booked out a couple of days) happened, but we did visit the wonderful Musee Mecanique.  We didn’t go to Hearst Castle or the Mission San Miguel.  Finally, in Los Angeles, we didn’t get down to Venice Beach nor make it to the Rainbow.  A big list, I suppose, but we made far more than we missed.  Only big regrets on that list are Valley of the Ferns, Glacier Point, and maybe the Rainbow.

I’ve got forty states now, Michelle has 39, and the kids 36 and 37 (Genetta lacks Ohio, which Addison most certainly does not due to summer camp).  We’ve got one more big trip, I hope, to the desert Southwest.  Probably using Las Vegas as a start / end point and going in a loop through southern Utah, Colorado, as well as much of Arizona and New Mexico and extreme western Texas.  That’ll pick up one for me (New Mexico) and two for Michelle (New Mexico and Arizona) and three for the kids (New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas).  Not too shabby, with the missing states being Alaska, Hawaii, and the rest in the Great Plains.

Is it worth it?  Yes.  It’s a fair bit of money and while there is little physical to show for it the memories last a lifetime.  It also means a good deal of concentrated family time which is really nice.  I’d always wanted to see this great nation of ours and share it with those I love.  If the kids decide to do the same when they are older and have kids of their own, great, but if not then at least they’ve seen it themselves.  The best part of any trip is that it builds an appreciation of home and of all of the unique, wonderful things that it has that other areas lack — such as sweet tea and barbeque.  Yum!

After a fairly leisurely pace for breakfast and showers we departed the hotel just before 10 o’clock.  Neil Diamond was getting a star at 11:30 but we decided to skip that in favor of seeing other stuff in the area.

The drive in to our hotel had convinced us that it was worth the $100 or so (for all four of us) to buy hop-on hop-off tour bus tickets.  We chose to just do the red line with StarLine tours, concentrating on Hollywood and Beverly Hills and giving us access to the sites we most wanted to see (mainly Sunset Strip and La Brea Tar Pits).  After taking a few shots of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre we piled on the bus, Michelle and Genetta remaining below and Addison and I going up top of the double decker bus.

We had a wait before the tour started so we observed the in-character people working.  Darth Vader did pretty well, though I was disappointed to see he was wearing huge platform shoes.  Captain Jack Sparrow did incredibly well — his look was pretty spot on.  There was also a Iron Man and a Hulk and you know the Avengers movie must’ve really helped their business.  Despite how “meh” their costumes were they were still getting bites.  And then there was poor Charlie Chaplin.  Despite being a convincing likeness nobody wanted anything to do with him.  He just twirled his cane, fidgeted with his umbrella, and made awkward waves towards people.  Sad.

The tour under way, we went by the Roosevelt Hotel where Marilyn Monroe did her first Hollywood shoot — right next to the pool.  Next up was a El Pollo Loco famous for having hired an aspiring actor to wear a chicken suit and advertise on the street corner years ago — Brad Pitt.  We passed The Laugh Factory where many comedians got their start.  On a sadder note we passed the Chateau Marmont where John Belushi died in 1982 and the Viper Club where River Phoenix died in 1993.  Drugs suck.

We also saw The Comedy Store, another comedy club.  Shortly after was the Whisky a Go Go, a club that features prominently in the rock scene from the late-60s through the 90s.  We had originally intended to get off the tour there and walk the short distance to the Rainbow Bar & Grill (it could be seen just beyond the Whisky) but it was much too early for lunch.  Instead we remained on the bus intending to get off at the La Brea Tar Pits and then coming back to the Rainbow.

The tour proceeded onto Santa Monica Boulevard past The Troubadour, a club famous for breaking many acts as well.  Shortly after we entered Beverly Hills, where I spectacularly failed to get a picture of the famous “shield” sign.  We learned that each street has a different tree species it is themed from, and it is that species planted at the entrance to the street.  Also there is an alley between the houses in Beverly Hills where residents have their trash picked up — not only does it hide the garbage collection from view but also protects it from prying eyes I imagine.

We passed the Beverly Hills City Hall again (I have a picture of it in yesterday’s blog) and learned that it was used as the police headquarters for Beverly Hills Cop series of movies.  Nearby was the Presbyterian church where Jimmy Stewart would read Christmas stories on Christmas eve.  Next up was Rodeo drive.  Many people got off there but we knew we’d get the reception Julia Roberts got in Pretty Woman, with the exception that there would be no scene where we’d later come back with loaded bags and say “I was in here yesterday, you wouldn’t wait on me.  Big mistake.  Big.  Huge.”  We did see a men’s suit store called “bijan” that you must have an appointment to even enter.  The suits are in the $15,000 range.  Cuh-razy.  But it looks like they had one customer that could afford it — a Bugatti Veyron was parked out front.  They go for $2.4M and can get up to 267 mph.  What (on both counts)?!

We later passed this fancy mall called Beverly Center before passing a number of restaurants including The Stinking Rose, which specializes in garlic.  Passing a statue of John Wayne we drove down the Miracle Mile, a stretch developed in the 1920s to be auto-centric and giving rise to not only Los Angeles’ “car culture” but in some ways the rest of America’s.  It was the first stretch of road to have timed traffic signals and where every business had parking spaces for cars.

It was in this area of tall buildings that we stopped and got off the tour.  The Los Angeles Count Museum of Art, or LACMA, occupies an area along with the La Brea Tar Pits and the Page Museum dedicated to excavating, researching, and preserving the fossils from the pits.  Across the street we saw a long line of food trucks of many different sorts of cuisine lined up for lunch customers.  That’s simply something we haven’t seen much of in North Carolina but it sure would be nice — why go to Mexican when Mexican can come to you?!

We opted instead for Marie Callender’s right across from the NBC / E! / G4 building.  I wonder if it is the one Conan O’Brien convened his staff at after deciding to leave NBC during that whole Jay Leno debacle?  Michelle, Genetta, and I had the pulled pork sandwich while Addison had a burger.  The pulled pork was great, though of course “western style.”  Still, very tasty.  They had apple pie for dessert while I had a coffee-like pie with a wonderful Oreo crust.

We headed to the La Brea Tar Pits.  It smells like tar, or more correctly, asphalt.  There is a lake in front of the museum that is partially covered by the asphalt and as sections where bubbles percolate to the top — natural gas bubbles.  They have statues of a mother mammoth being unable to escape while the father and child mammoth watch helpless.  Cheery!

In the museum we learned that excavations began in 1913 and to date there have been well over three million bones found, from 600+ species.  Animals would get trapped, unable to remove themselves from the muck.  The larger the surface area of the animal the harder it was to break free.  They had an excellent interactive display where we could try and lift smaller surface area items out of the asphalt versus larger ones, which were much harder.  Trapped animals would inevitably attract predators and scavengers which could themselves get trapped leading to an ugly chain of entrapments.

Where did all of this asphalt come from?  Millions of years ago the area of Los Angeles was a sea bed and thick deposits of dead sea life accumulated, which later became oil.  The area was uplifted about 100,000 years ago and fractures led to some of the oil percolating to the surface.  The fossil record in the pits starts at about 40,000 years old and extends to about 10,000 years old when many species met their end (whether due to climate change after the Ice Age or by man, or both, is not known).

The museum had an impressive display of over 400+ dire wolf skulls.  It also had many complete skeletons, including a 13′ high Columbian Mammoth weighing (when alive) 15,000 pounds.  Wow.  We learned that it was a Sabertooth Cat, not Sabertooth Lion.  In additon there was a jaguar that was even larger than that!  Finally, horses were from North America but many migrated to Europe and Asia while the local ones died out — imagine how different history may have played out had the Indians had horses when the Europeans initially arrived!

The museum also had a cool room called a “fish tank” where we visitors could observe fossils being attended to and found by the mostly volunteer force.  They were currently at work on a mammoth named “Zed”, having found and assembled most of the skeleton.  There were also two movies, the first was a bit boring but the second had potential.  That is until a visitor decided to take a picture each time a new closed captioning line appeared — and he had it set to loudly click on each picture.  Michelle and Genetta couldn’t hear it but it practically ruined the movie for Addison and I.  People!

We picked up a few magnets from the gift store (I’ll need to make room for all of these new magnets!) and headed outside to see the other pits.  Honestly they weren’t as impressive as the lake in front.  It didn’t help that in addition to being stinky there was some litter in most of them (a product of being in the middle of a huge city, I suppose).  There were curious areas that were set aside by little square areas of fencing, though — turns out that some of the pits are very, very small, some less than the size of a coin.  They certainly don’t want people stepping into them, though.

Hopped back on the tour bus near an area of LACMA that had a huge number of light posts of various sizes arranged about.  I don’t know if it is art but it’s something alright.  We passed by the Writer’s Guild, Farmer’s Market (formed in the 1930s during the depression), CBS studios, Paramount studios (saw, but could not nab a picture of, the famous water tower), Nickelodeon studio where they film iCarly and Victorious, and the Capitol Records building (which I failed to snap a decent picture of either, grrrr).

Also saw a few other theaters like the Pantages and the Pacific, and learned a bit about Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre built in 1922 right about the time that word of the discoveries in Tut’s tomb were reaching the United States.

After heading back to the beginning of the tour in front of Grauman’s Chinese we decided not to hop back on to go to Sunset Strip (and the Rainbow) due to the late hour — no way the kids should be there on a Friday Night.  We were also worried that we’d miss the last tour bus and have to taxi it back.  I kinda regret that we missed out on the Rainbow (with such a rich rock history and the potential for a Lemmy sighting!) but it was for the best.

Instead we opted to walk along Hollywood Boulevard all the way to Vine Street to get a decent shot of the Capitol Records building as well as see John Wayne’s star.  On the way we got some drink at Popeye’s Chicken, Fanta Strawberry was incredible.  We then turned back west along Sunset Boulevard where the crowd was noticeably lighter (and a bit of a concern).  We passed a neat building called “Crossroads of the World” built in 1936 as well as Hollywood High School, home of many, many famous authors, actors (John Ritter, Fay Wray), and even some statesmen such as Warren Christopher.

Our goal was finally in sight.  At the beginning of the trip one of my goals was to eat at a In-N-Out Burger as I had heard much good about it (well, good for fast food).  We had seen many but for various reasons (not hungry, wrong side of the road, place was packed, what-have-you) we never stopped.  The place was packed yet again but I would not be deterred.  We finally got some food and the burgers were solid, though I didn’t care for the “secret sauce” too much.  The meat and cheese was good, though, and the toasted bun was excellent.  I’d say a tad above Char-Grill but not earth shattering.  On the way out of In-N-Out Burger we saw that the drive through line was around the building and onto the street.  Popular place!

Walked back to Hollywood Boulevard then to Highland Avenue and the hotel for some packing, blogging, and TV.  Big travel day tomorrow!

We started the day with a pretty decent breakfast at the FogChaser Inn.  Reluctantly leaving the really nice accommodations, we hit the road before 10 o’clock and continued our journey towards Los Angeles (specifically, Hollywood) on route 1.  Before too long the road turned inland and our route merged with 101 as we traveled through scrub-covered brown hills inland through San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria.

South of Santa Maria we passed through a stunning mountain range, the Santa Ynez, one of a few entirely east-west mountain ranges in the United States.  The mountains were once the bed of an ancient sea, thrust upwards and tilted almost 90 degrees (to near vertical).  Also these mountains were more tree covered than many of the hills and mountains a bit further inland.

Once to the coast again we went through Santa Barbara.  We took a very slight detour to see the county courthouse, the exterior of which is used as the police headquarters on the show Psych (which is mostly filmed in British Columbia).  As the view was on the left hand side of the car (stupid one-way roads!), Addison did photo duty from the backseat of our car.  We had considered parking and taking pictures on foot but we didn’t want to delay getting to Los Angeles (and beating, hopefully, rush hour) and there weren’t any parking spaces to be easily had.  Also, in a moment of almost pure zen — just as we were nearing the courthouse Hall & Oates’ “Private Eyes” came on the radio — not only relevant as that is what Psych is about, but because they did a commercial to that song not long ago.

Hopped back on route 101 until Oxnard when we decided to proceed to Los Angeles via route 1 hugging the coast.  As it was well past noon we stopped for lunch.  Once again we missed an In-N-Out (I WILL have one before we fly out!) and ended up at Elena’s Kitchen, a Philippine restaurant.  I had the beef steak with onions in a salty broth over noodles, as did Addison.  Michelle and Genetta had little egg rolls with some sort of meat (pork, I think?) in them as well as some chicken with rice.

The stretch from Oxnard to Santa Monica was impressive (but not as much as Big Sur).  We particularly enjoyed seeing Malibu (beautiful town and beaches) and the planes outside the USN base — a F4 and I think a F14.  When we got to Malibu we could see a really impressive thunderstorm off in the distance but I imagine it was far, far away as none of the area we subsequently drove through had any rain.  We also got radar scanned by a CHiP — an actual California Highway Patrol officer sitting on his parked bike and wearing the beige uniform.  Fun!

Upon arrival in Santa Monica we drove up the California Incline (which was a bit steep, but nothing by San Francisco standards) to Ocean Avenue.  Caught a quick glimpse of the pier (didn’t see Iron Man there, though) before turning left on Santa Monica Boulevard.  We decided, for better or for worse, to just drive to our hotel (in Hollywood near the Walk of Fame) by traveling the entire time on that road.  Not only because we didn’t want to deal with the freeway but also because we wanted to see some of the sights along the way.

We saw a bit of Beverly Hills, the Troubadour, and the Beverly Hills City Hall (very impressive).  The traffic was pretty heavy at times, and we saw the fire department and an ambulance attending to a downed bikers.  Speaking of which, are they all crazy on the West coast?  Both in San Francisco and Los Angeles they seem to like to go between lanes of traffic stopped at lights to get near the front of the line.  Is that even legal?  I thought they had to behave like cars in all regards.  Anyway, a healthy example to the kids not to get into riding motorcycles (at least not at their young ages).

Turning up Highland and passing the Highland and Hollywood intersection where the Dolby (formerly Kodak, of Oscar night fame) theater is located we quickly found our hotel and turned the car over to them for safekeeping until Saturday when we drive to the airport to drop it off.  We went up to the room for an hour or so to rest before setting out to explore a little bit on foot at about 5 o’clock.

We headed down to Highland and Hollywood, soaking in some of the atmosphere.  Many people milled about dressed as movie characters and posing for pictures (and some money, of course): Zorro, a stormtrooper, Darth Vader, Jack Sparrow, several Batmen and a Bane or two, you name it.  On the ground were the famous stars of the Walk of Fame.

Just beyond the Dolby Theater was Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, built in 1927 and home to the Oscars a few times and many, many premieres including Star Wars in 1977.  In addition to the interesting style of the theater there were many concrete block with stars’ handprints, footprints, and signatures on them.

We returned back to the Dolby Theater and saw that there were posts with the best picture winners for every year since the first (Wings in 1927) on them.  Nifty.  The Dolby Theater was really more than just the theater (which hosts the Oscars) as there were five stories of shopping and restaurants as well.  Michelle checked out the Fossil store before we headed to California Pizza Kitchen for dinner.  A friendly saleswoman at the store told us about the recent Yorba Linda quakes and that the Dolby Theater mall itself was on wheels so as to move with any quakes.

From the CPK’s balcony I could clearly see the Hollywood sign in the distance.  Dinner was decent, if a bit safe.  Afterwards we went back to the central courtyard of the mall, which had some impressive statuary and decoration and also a water fountain that people (who were waaaay too nicely dressed for what they were doing) stood in to cool off.  Took some pictures and also of El Capitan Theatre (1926) which was covered for renovations, unfortunately.

Returned back to the entrance of the Dolby Theater as we had not realized that the staircase to the entrance was the staircase seen on Oscar night.  I mean, yeah, it had to be, but it looked so different without the golden statues on either side and all.  Turns out that prior to the awards they cover up all of the stores adjacent to the stairway with huge red curtains, change the sign that says Dolby Theater, and put in the red carpet.  Totally transforming the place, as you’d expect for an awards show about movie magic.

Headed down Hollywood towards Vine in search of John Wayne’s star but turned around as it was getting dark and it was a bit farther than we had anticipated.  We did, however, see the star for Rush and Thomas A. Edison, probably the most important star on the whole Walk of Fame.

Stopped by McDonalds for some sweet tea and then headed back to the hotel for Olympics and blogging.  On the Olympics saw some BMX, including one quarterfinal heat where seven of the eight riders were taken out by one accident.  Ouch!

Woke up, got our free breakfast, and booked it out of San Jose as fast as possible, wishing to get an early start on the drive to Cambria, a town mid-way between San Francisco and Los Angeles.  We took 101 south and then switched to route 1 in to Monterey.  In Monterey we took the roads that got us closest to the beach so that I could take pictures and such.

It was really nice as there was very little traffic — much fewer cars than I feared — and the viewpoints and parking areas mostly had plenty of room.  Addison and I looked around for starfish but found none, we think the problem is that we’re not hitting the beaches at the right time.  Starfish attach to objects below the low tide line, so we’d have to be there at low tide and then still need some luck to see them in the (now more shallow) water.  We did see some amazingly big strands of kelp (like 2″ plus in diameter) so that was cool.

Once around the top half of Monterey peninsula we hopped on to 17-mile drive (they charged $9.75 for the privilege, ouch!) and enjoyed several vistas there as well as a view of the Lone Cypress, long a symbol of Pebble Beach.  The Lone Cypress almost fell in the sea in the past and has since had its area shored up and cables help support it.  The Lone Cypress is a Monterey Cypress, only found on Monterey peninsula and in Big Sur.  It has a life expectancy of 300 years.

Once off of 17-mile drive we realized we needed to get some lunch (it was after 1 o’clock at this time) as the drive further south was pretty desolate food-wise.  We ate at this place called Bistro 211 in Carmel.  It was nothing to write home about, the food (all of us got burgers) was adequate but quite overpriced.  I can’t wait to return to North Carolina prices!

We headed down route 1 through Big Sur.  I don’t know if I’ve every seen a more breathtaking coastline, much less any type of scenery.  The road clung on the side of mountains (or really large hills) as they plunged into the sea.  Rocks were everywhere, breaking up the surf and launching huge plumes of sea spray into the air.  There was very little tree-sized vegetation on the hills so the view was almost always unbroken.

We got to this point called Hurricane Ridge.  The wind was blowing at a constant 40 – 50 mph, at least — even almost knocking me down.  Small clouds were coming in off the ocean and sweeping up the hillsides at tremendous speed.  It was simply amazing.

A bit later we passed Point Sur with its lighthouse standing on a very large rock connected to the mainland via a low-lying land bridge.  The land bridge had sand dunes, mostly covered with vegetation, on it.

The road became quite twisty just before straightening out in the final push for San Simeon and Cambria.  Impressive bridges (mostly built in the 1930s during the Great Depression) spanned gorges and small ocean coves.

At this point on the coast the mountains were further inland, leaving a much flatter coast.  We lucked out when we pulled in to a vista point and there were elephant seals just off the boardwalk.  We all enjoyed watching them lay in the sun and occasionally using their flippers to smack themselves or toss sand on themselves.  There were a fair number, both the very large males and the considerably smaller females.

Pulling into Cambria we located our hotel, The Fog Catcher Inn, and checked in.  What a nice room!  Huge ceiling, plenty of room, nice HDTV and Wi-Fi, gas fireplace, and they even knotted together some of the towels to look like two swans.  Relaxed a tiny bit then headed to dinner at the Moonstone Bar and Grill.

The Moonstone Bar and Grill was good, if a bit pricey (as with all things in California — though the gas isn’t nearly as bad as I expected, hovering below $4 as at home).  I had New York strip that I shared with Addison along with some steamed vegetables and mashed potatoes.  Quite good.  Michelle had clam chowder and shrimp cocktail (she’s really taking this opportunity to fill up on seafood which is great, since we so rarely have it at home), Genetta had herb-crusted chicken, and Addison the kid’s chicken strips (and some of my steak).

Headed back to the room.  The girls decided not to swim but Addison and I headed to the heated outdoor pool and hot tub.  Very enjoyable!  On return to the room they watched some Olympics and played with the iPads while I blogged.