California Tour

Day 1 – San Francisco

My flight from Washington, DC was early – pre-dawn with a stopover in Denver.  Such an early flight involves getting up even earlier to go through the normal post-9/11 airport BS.  As a result, when I arrive in San Francisco at 10:30 am, I’m quite groggy, but excited.  I had supposedly visited California with my parents when I was very young, but I didn’t remember it.  So, I was seeing the state with fresh eyes.  I was to meet an old college friend at his apartment in the Mission District.  To get there, I would use the BART train and walk the rest of the way.  Because I’m more accustomed to train systems like Washington DC’s Metro and Chicago’s CTA, I was surprised by how few stops it had and how little of the city it covered.

I enjoy my first views of the revered city as I ride east from the airport towards the city.  The buildings I saw were painted in lovely pastel colors, but had obvious age to them.  On that day, it was gray and misty.  An exception, I thought.  Surely, this city is otherwise bathed in that famous California sunshine.  When I make it to the Mission District and feel the California air for the first time I think Damn, it’s cold!  It was late August and the furthest thing from my mind was the need to bring a coat.  It felt like it was easily in the 40s.

I quickly find my way to my friend’s apartment, which he shares with at least 4 other roommates.  I get there slightly before noon, and it’s obvious that people were just getting up.  It was a Saturday, after all, and these were busy tech people.  My friend worked at Google and his roommates were equally employed by either Google or some other tech giant.  Considering at the time I was managing websites and retail databases for a chain of grocery stores, I honestly felt a bit of an inferiority complex hanging around them.  However, they were pretty welcoming and didn’t have huge egos about it – at least not on the surface.

It seemed clear with my friend that his agenda for the moment was just getting up, so I lay down my luggage and explored the city by foot.  I walked around for about 2 to 3 hours while snapping photos.  I’m not sure what other areas of the city were like, but the Mission District was crowded yet colorful.  It was a bit odd seeing displays of enormous wealth (supercars, etc) and displays of enormous poverty (homeless encampments, etc).  The vegetation was much drier and I was shocked at how steep some of the hills were.  I was thoroughly exhausted by the time I returned to my friend’s place.

Now, this particular friend and I became friends for many reasons.  However, one thing that distinguished us from others was our affinity towards pot.  Being together again in San Francisco, it didn’t take long for the joints to get rolled and the bong to get filled.  As a result, the rest of the day is a bit of a blur.  I had a fun night with him and his friends going to dinner and seeing a movie.  I had awoken at around 3 or 4 am eastern time that day and by the time the movie started, the weight of sleep was unbearable and I slept through most of it.  I barely remember walking through Golden Gate Park to get home on that misty night.  Before I knew it, it was Sunday.

Day 2 – Redwoods & Alcatraz

Day 2 was beautiful.  It was still a bit cold, but sunny.  To be honest, I barely remember the details of this day because before we set off, my friend and I both consumed acid-laced sugar cubes.  We headed over to Fisherman’s Wharf to catch an Alcatraz boat tour which would then pass under the Golden Gate Bridge.  It was then I first felt the drug.  It wasn’t my first time doing acid, but this particular dose was the strongest I ever had and didn’t completely quit until the next day.

Needless to say, the rest of the day was a bit of a blur.  I remember the most interesting thing on the boat tour was looking back at the city of San Francisco and noting how dystopian it appeared.  Like a 3D game of tetris, it appeared like tiny blocks methodically laid across a grid with varying heights.  With the different colors and the San Francisco Bay as the foreground, it truly seemed like a bubble detached from the rest of the world.

Following the boat tour, we went to the Muir Woods National Monument to see redwoods.  We hiked in and I remember most of all the absolute silence as we were surrounded by massive, sound-deadening tree trunks.  Driving through Sausilito was beautiful  We then spent the evening out in San Francisco eating delicious food.  It was a lot of fun and made me understand the appeal of the city.  It’s truly a classy, adult playground.

When we got back, more pot was consumed but it did nothing to quell the acid, which showed little sign of abating.  I know I eventually got to sleep and I know it was still kicking in some form when I got up the next morning.

Day 3 – Pacific Coast Highway

With it being Monday and my friend needing to go to work, I start the solo leg of my journey.  I walked about a mile to the car rental agency.  I’m greeted with my chariot for this epic trip.  It’s a red Pontiac G6 sedan.  I like it immediately as there’s a charm that Pontiac cars had with its funky styling.  I head back to my friend’s place to say goodbye.  I would be back in 3 days to fly out.  However, now I would be on my own with my destination being the PCH towards LA.

The Bay Area, I found out, had its own little weather system going on.  As I head west out of San Francisco and towards Half Moon Bay, the traffic thins out gradually and it warms up tremendously.  Before I knew it, I was bathed in sunshine and driving by orange groves.  It could not have been more idyllic California.  The rest of the day is probably one of the best individual days of travel I’d ever have.

How to describe it?  Perfect!  The weather?  Beautiful!  Low 80s perhaps with a gentle breeze and not a cloud in the sky.  My first view of the Pacific Ocean was majestic.  Shockingly blue and far different than the brownish-green color of the east coast Atlantic.  As I drove along, I passed by fields growing cherries and strawberries.  I stopped by a roadside stand to pick up some bags of the juiciest strawberries and cherries I’d ever had.  I passed through beach towns that looked almost exactly as if they were out of film from the 80s.

I could not get enough of the views of the Pacific Ocean.  At the beginning, I stopped at almost every overlook before realizing that I would never make it to LA at a decent hour if I kept it up.  As I drove along, I distinctly remember feeling proud and lucky to be an American.  It felt unreal to me that I would have the freedom to be able to take a car and drive along such a beautiful road with the ability to go anywhere at any time that I wanted.  At the time I was single and without a worry in the world.  So, I felt free!

Not being familiar with California landmarks, I would pass by the amazing sites of Big Sur and the Bixby Canyon Bridge without knowing at the time what they were.  I would also pass by Monterey, which would forever be etched into my memory.  As I write this years later, Monterey remains the most beautiful community I’ve ever seen and I aspire to be able to live there one day.

I would drive along in a trance, reaching into my bags of cherries and other roadside stand fruits to sustain myself.  Once I approached Santa Barbara, however, the magic started to fade as signs of the city life reemerged.  The PCH was ending and I would have to enter the LA freeway system soon.  It was nighttime now and I had to make my way to Glendale, where my uncle lived and agreed to have me for a night.

That process in itself was a bit awkward as this was an uncle I had not seen in several years and my father and him apparently did not have the closest of relationships.  When I called him to let him know I was there, he wouldn’t tell me his address and insisted on meeting me first in a Dunkin Donuts parking lot before making me follow him to his house.  There, he introduced me to his wife and daughter and let me sleep on the couch.  Koreans are a strange bunch, as I certainly didn’t feel that welcome there.  Most other cultures at least pretend they want you there if you’re staying over.  No matter, a free place to crash was what I sought and it was a comfortable night’s stay.

Day 4 – LA

My uncle woke me before 7am this day.  My head was definitely cloudy.  He told me to come by his deli before I set off on my journey and gave me the address before setting off.  That was nice, but I wanted to sleep some more.  After a few minutes, his wife came down to the kitchen and eyed me suspiciously for a few minutes before offering me some grapes.  Not feeling the warmest of receptions, I quickly packed my things to leave.

As I traveled through Glendale and went into LA I was struck by how much it reminded me of home (the suburbs of Washington, DC).  There are many parallels between LA and DC, in fact.  LA is way less humid, but equally as hot and sunny in the summer.  Obviously, the winters are different.  However, they are both filled with strip malls, traffic, fancy places, poor places, tons of residential housing, and diverse populations.  Both places also have major financial and political power that is mostly unseen.

I make my way to my uncle’s deli, where he feeds me and sets me off.  It was good to see him.  I came into LA with only one destination in mind, a mural near an electronics store that was the cover of Elliott Smith’s Figure 8 album.   This mural became an unofficial memorial to him after his death in 2003.  Considering how much Elliott Smith’s music meant and continues to mean for me, I too felt I needed to pay homage.

Silver Lake, where the mural was located, wasn’t too far from Glendale.  As a result, I had some time and decided to turn and climb some random hill I saw.  I find my way to Mulholland Drive, the name of which I know from a movie.  I continue driving it and see many beautiful houses behind large, imposing gates.  Eventually, I find a hiking trail and take some snapshots.

I half-heatedly thought I would do the usual touristy LA things, like the Grauman Chinese Theater and Walk of Fame.  However, as I approached that area and noted the crazy traffic in that area, I quickly abandoned that plan.  I was at a loss for what to do since most of LA simply looked like shopping centers and residential neighborhoods much like the rest of America.  I find a cafe to recharge my phone and laptop, grab some lunch, and figure out what to do next.

One thing that shocked me about LA was just how friendly everybody I encountered was.  Everyone I came across was in a good mood and greeted me warmly.  Maybe that’s the LA fakeness people talk about, but I didn’t care.  I’d rather take fake sincerity over the lack of any acknowledgement from strangers that I experienced in Chicago and back home in DC.

I knew I was tired of being cooped up in a car, so I decided to simply go to the beach.  I decided to do Huntington Beach since it seemed like they had decent public access and easy places to park.  I’m glad I went.  The water was cool and refreshing.  I have a thing where I get lulled into a trance by the sight and sound of ocean waves.  Time passes very quickly without me knowing.

The beach drew me in and I told myself to stay until sunset.  To this day, it was one of the most beautiful sunsets I had seen in my life.  This was a bit bad for timing, though, as I had to make my way to just south of Fresno, my next destination.  I planned to spend the next day in Yosemite National Park.  I didn’t realize Huntington Beach was in the southwest corner of LA and that it would take almost 2 hours simply to get out of the LA area.  As a result, I didn’t reach the hotel until 11pm, and quickly went to sleep.

Day 5 – Yosemite

I get up and look for the continental breakfast right away.  In my excitement to do all the things planned, I had forgotten to eat.  I had no idea what Yosemite would be like, having never been there before.  So, I gas up and make my way to the entrance.  The very first thing I notice is that parking is very limited and the use of shuttles is required to access many locations.  The first thing I do is see redwoods.

After returning with the redwoods shuttle, I was disappointed to see how long the whole process was.  I had lost almost half the day seeing one thing with the shuttle.  From then on, I decide to just drive around.  As I do, I find the half dome and other famous Yosemite sites.  It’s very breathtaking and I vowed to return one day to do some of the hikes.  With daylight running out, I could not do much else.

The day ended when I was informed that the road to the northern part of the park was closed.  Random road closures are a huge irritation with me when it comes to the federal National Parks Service.  I feel they need to let people take their chances and stop infantilizing tourists, who’ve often come a long way at great expense to see these places.

I savor every last view as I make my way to the southwest entrance.  I would be off once again to San Francisco to meet up with college friend.  I would spend one last night in California before heading home from this unforgettable and epic road trip.