Today was primarily a driving day. First, we drove through Anaheim, where a local ordinance and traffic engineering experts have made it impossible for you to drive for more than a block without hitting a red light. In fact, if you do hit a green light at all, you're probably speeding. If you hit two green lights, they deploy a traffic SWAT team who will take out your tires to disable your vehicle. There's a light on every corner, and almost every one of them is perma-red.
Stephen was searching for a store that sells roof racks, but after driving for 20 minutes, the sports place he'd found didn't sell cargo pods; just bike and boat carriers. So then we ask our GPS to led us to REI, and it leads us to a big box district with no REI. Typical. Whatever. We give up on that idea for now.
Today, we're headed towards Fresno, which seems a convenient base between national parks, since we haven't a clear idea of what to do with L.A. I did want to see Watt's Towers. We input the address, and it calculates a route for us. Unfortunately, the highway department has closed our exit. The GPS recalculates our route, and now we're driving through Long Beach, and over some very big bridges. No scenic views from these bridges - just a long line of massive shipping cranes, and piles and piles and piles of shipping containers. It could almost quality as a park of its own: National Shipping Point. Thread your way through the maze of shipping containers, or climb on top of them.
I become suspicious when the GPS leads us to a nice suburban neighbourhood, with no towers in sight. Where the hell are we? We have no clue. We can't even figure out where we are on the map, because L.A. is too big to show in detail. The GPS can't find 'Watt's Towers' by name (too many things in L.A. for it to search properly), and we don't know the neighbourhoods well enough to narrow the search. Finally, we figure out we've got a typo in the address - it took us to 10th street instead of 107th street. Okay, backtracking now - we finally discover we're in the San Pedro neighbourhood.
Back onto one of California's many freeways. This time, the GPS spits us out near Watt's Towers, as requested, but we don't like the look of the neighbourhood.
"Wait," you say, "Watt's what?"
As Wikipedia puts it, they are: "a collection of 17 interconnected structures, two of which reach heights of over 99 feet (30 m). The Towers were built by Italian immigrant construction worker Sabato ("Sam" or "Simon") Rodia in his spare time over a period of 33 years, from 1921 to 1954."
Watt's Towers are very unfortunately located - I think they should be airlifted to a better location. :-) Yes, I know how that sounds - "hey, guys, you've got one nice thing here, and I want to take it away from you, because I don't like the look of your neighbourhood, and I don't feel safe here. No one wants to stop here, cause you're sketchy-looking." (But... it's kind of true.)
We park a short distance away, making sure the car doors are locked, because yes, we're those kind of paranoid, judgy people. The towers are fenced off - there are tours every half hour, but Stephen doesn't want to leave the car that long. Take a few clicky-pictures and we're off.
Now, we're heading to downtown L.A. Stephen is very dismayed that the GPS has chosen to lead us through the edge of Compton. =:-O I'm a little bit afraid that some one will shoot me if I'm caught taking pictures. I reassure Stephen that the Rough Guide claims we "should be safe during the day." Stephen wants to know the definition of "should be". I tell him not to think about how many guns are probably stashed in glove compartments in the vehicles alongside us. (Yes, paranoid judgy people - that's us. I know.) Safely out of Compton, and back onto the freeway.
What do you think of when you think of L.A.? Swimming pools? Movie stars? No, you think of concrete highways and byways (most of them littered with junk).
Approaching downtown L.A., the traffic gets ridiculously bottlenecked. The main highway is branching off into six different options, and traffic is crawling while people slowly jockey back and forth. Oh, looks like someone had a fender bender under this bridge. Maybe that explains it. But we're still crawling - driving slower than we did on the road to Toroweap. We're about 6 miles away from the Egyptian Theatre, which - at our current speed of 6 mph - means we'll be there in about an hour. Whoo! Hold onto your seatbelts.
Finally, we creep past the second bottleneck: some guy's car has died in one of the lanes. So, one accident and one dud car have throttled traffic for miles behind them. Now it's relatively smooth sailing again. At the first sign of street parking, we park the car and walk out onto Hollywood Boulevard. Yes, almost immediately, there are stars underfoot - we're trekking along their walk of fame.
Hollywood: What a gong show. Parts of it are like a less shiny, more dirty version of the Vegas strip - instead of guys flicking girly cards in your face, you have people hawking sightseeing tours and Hollywood maps. There's a bazillion souvenir shops, tattoo joints, bars.
The Egyptian Theatre is in a quiet mostly-ignored little corner around from a cafe - I think its heyday was in the 1920s. I'd like to see inside, but no go.
Grauman's Chinese Theatre, on the other hand, is a complete zoo. The sightseeing buses are all stopping here and tourists are spilling out. Here are all the street performers, the people dressed up in costume. Dumbledore was crossing the street by us (and he REALLY looked like Dumbledore). There's at least three Darth Vaders; a Marilyn Monroe is standing in the hot sunshine; Iron Man is hanging out with Batman and Wonder Woman; and someone's dressed as a Transformer. I stop just long enough to kick the Transformer in the knee - "I really hated your movie, and I'm still angry about it!" - and we move on.
We stop at a mall, mostly because it has giant elephants perched at the top of some pillars, which seems to give it an air of importance (or ridiculousness - I'm not sure which). There's a Cold Stone Creamery there, so we get some ice cream (brownie batter with M&Ms mixed in), then wander back to our car, stepping on stars as we go. Oh, hey, it's Jimi Hendrix - we remember him from before, so we must be going the right way. Thanks, Jimi! I try not to stomp too hard on him.
Okay, found the car. Now let's get out of here. At this point, L.A. isn't looking like anything more than a pretty big obstacle on our map.
Back onto the freeways, then the Interstate, and eventually out of L.A. Whew. Nice to be back on the road. It's brown and hilly. (When we were driving near downtown L.A., you could only just barely see the outline of these hills through the layers of smog. Ick.)
***
It's a long drive to Fresno, through lots of farmland. Looks mostly like wineries, although there are some corn crops.
Why Fresno? Because it's conveniently located between Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks - at 400K people, it's large enough to have a lot of hotel rooms, without being too large a centre.
Another great thing about Fresno? It has an REI (which is the American MEC), and we finally got our roof-mounted cargo pod. We bought the floor model, carried it out into the parking lot and installed it. Whoo hoo! So much space. The tent and camping equipment are now all stored up in the pod. This means we can open the doors of the vehicles without having things instantly start spilling out. We can tilt back our chairs! We can pick up hitchhikers! We can buy more crap and bring it all home!
It also means that Stephen's big vehicle is now even bigger. We're going to have to calculate his clearance. But it does make the X-Terra really easy to find in parking lots!
We had supper at Logan's Roadhouse. Best dinner rolls ever. It's kind of a bar/restaurant. The food is yum!, but there was so very much food. I waddled out of there, a fat American. I may never need to eat again (but I'll probably eat again tomorrow).
Labour Day is mucking things up again - we're trying to figure out our best bets for tomorrow.
Stephen was searching for a store that sells roof racks, but after driving for 20 minutes, the sports place he'd found didn't sell cargo pods; just bike and boat carriers. So then we ask our GPS to led us to REI, and it leads us to a big box district with no REI. Typical. Whatever. We give up on that idea for now.
Today, we're headed towards Fresno, which seems a convenient base between national parks, since we haven't a clear idea of what to do with L.A. I did want to see Watt's Towers. We input the address, and it calculates a route for us. Unfortunately, the highway department has closed our exit. The GPS recalculates our route, and now we're driving through Long Beach, and over some very big bridges. No scenic views from these bridges - just a long line of massive shipping cranes, and piles and piles and piles of shipping containers. It could almost quality as a park of its own: National Shipping Point. Thread your way through the maze of shipping containers, or climb on top of them.
I become suspicious when the GPS leads us to a nice suburban neighbourhood, with no towers in sight. Where the hell are we? We have no clue. We can't even figure out where we are on the map, because L.A. is too big to show in detail. The GPS can't find 'Watt's Towers' by name (too many things in L.A. for it to search properly), and we don't know the neighbourhoods well enough to narrow the search. Finally, we figure out we've got a typo in the address - it took us to 10th street instead of 107th street. Okay, backtracking now - we finally discover we're in the San Pedro neighbourhood.
Back onto one of California's many freeways. This time, the GPS spits us out near Watt's Towers, as requested, but we don't like the look of the neighbourhood.
 |
| Watt's Towers |
As Wikipedia puts it, they are: "a collection of 17 interconnected structures, two of which reach heights of over 99 feet (30 m). The Towers were built by Italian immigrant construction worker Sabato ("Sam" or "Simon") Rodia in his spare time over a period of 33 years, from 1921 to 1954."
Watt's Towers are very unfortunately located - I think they should be airlifted to a better location. :-) Yes, I know how that sounds - "hey, guys, you've got one nice thing here, and I want to take it away from you, because I don't like the look of your neighbourhood, and I don't feel safe here. No one wants to stop here, cause you're sketchy-looking." (But... it's kind of true.)
We park a short distance away, making sure the car doors are locked, because yes, we're those kind of paranoid, judgy people. The towers are fenced off - there are tours every half hour, but Stephen doesn't want to leave the car that long. Take a few clicky-pictures and we're off.
 |
| Corner store on the edge of Compton |
What do you think of when you think of L.A.? Swimming pools? Movie stars? No, you think of concrete highways and byways (most of them littered with junk).
Approaching downtown L.A., the traffic gets ridiculously bottlenecked. The main highway is branching off into six different options, and traffic is crawling while people slowly jockey back and forth. Oh, looks like someone had a fender bender under this bridge. Maybe that explains it. But we're still crawling - driving slower than we did on the road to Toroweap. We're about 6 miles away from the Egyptian Theatre, which - at our current speed of 6 mph - means we'll be there in about an hour. Whoo! Hold onto your seatbelts.
Finally, we creep past the second bottleneck: some guy's car has died in one of the lanes. So, one accident and one dud car have throttled traffic for miles behind them. Now it's relatively smooth sailing again. At the first sign of street parking, we park the car and walk out onto Hollywood Boulevard. Yes, almost immediately, there are stars underfoot - we're trekking along their walk of fame.
Hollywood: What a gong show. Parts of it are like a less shiny, more dirty version of the Vegas strip - instead of guys flicking girly cards in your face, you have people hawking sightseeing tours and Hollywood maps. There's a bazillion souvenir shops, tattoo joints, bars.
 |
| Walk like an Egyptian... |
Grauman's Chinese Theatre, on the other hand, is a complete zoo. The sightseeing buses are all stopping here and tourists are spilling out. Here are all the street performers, the people dressed up in costume. Dumbledore was crossing the street by us (and he REALLY looked like Dumbledore). There's at least three Darth Vaders; a Marilyn Monroe is standing in the hot sunshine; Iron Man is hanging out with Batman and Wonder Woman; and someone's dressed as a Transformer. I stop just long enough to kick the Transformer in the knee - "I really hated your movie, and I'm still angry about it!" - and we move on.
We stop at a mall, mostly because it has giant elephants perched at the top of some pillars, which seems to give it an air of importance (or ridiculousness - I'm not sure which). There's a Cold Stone Creamery there, so we get some ice cream (brownie batter with M&Ms mixed in), then wander back to our car, stepping on stars as we go. Oh, hey, it's Jimi Hendrix - we remember him from before, so we must be going the right way. Thanks, Jimi! I try not to stomp too hard on him.
Okay, found the car. Now let's get out of here. At this point, L.A. isn't looking like anything more than a pretty big obstacle on our map.
Back onto the freeways, then the Interstate, and eventually out of L.A. Whew. Nice to be back on the road. It's brown and hilly. (When we were driving near downtown L.A., you could only just barely see the outline of these hills through the layers of smog. Ick.)
***
It's a long drive to Fresno, through lots of farmland. Looks mostly like wineries, although there are some corn crops.
Why Fresno? Because it's conveniently located between Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks - at 400K people, it's large enough to have a lot of hotel rooms, without being too large a centre.
Another great thing about Fresno? It has an REI (which is the American MEC), and we finally got our roof-mounted cargo pod. We bought the floor model, carried it out into the parking lot and installed it. Whoo hoo! So much space. The tent and camping equipment are now all stored up in the pod. This means we can open the doors of the vehicles without having things instantly start spilling out. We can tilt back our chairs! We can pick up hitchhikers! We can buy more crap and bring it all home!
We had supper at Logan's Roadhouse. Best dinner rolls ever. It's kind of a bar/restaurant. The food is yum!, but there was so very much food. I waddled out of there, a fat American. I may never need to eat again (but I'll probably eat again tomorrow).
Labour Day is mucking things up again - we're trying to figure out our best bets for tomorrow.
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