One of the things I love about this RV trip is the variety. When the pendulum swings away from the serenity of redwoods and rainforests, you get places like L.A. and Hollywood. This is where we spent the last week.
We kicked it off by going to a Jay Leno taping (Uncle Walter and Aunt Sue kindly watched our under-age children):
See?…told you:
Monday “headlines”…always a crowd-pleaser:
Guest Amy Adams is a well-liked actress in the Arnold family. She’s been in a lot of movies but my girls know her from Enchanted and Night At The Museum 2:
I had never heard of the Rocket City Rednecks (hillbilly scientist guys), but they were entertaining nonetheless:
Miranda Lambert was the musical guest. I bought an album of hers back in June, so it was cool to see her live. If you don’t know who she is, she’s like Carrie Underwood but way more trailer park. She was great:
After the show, we met up with everyone at a cool diner in Hollywood:
Walter, Sue, my girls, and my cousin Jason who lives in L.A. (his friend Mark also joined us and kindly took this photo):
Amy and the girls at school on the sand dunes, overlooking the beach and watching the LAX traffic fly by:
As requested, Emily celebrated her 10th birthday in Hollywood on Tuesday:
I had planned on getting a cool shot of the Hollywood sign, but we were so busy actually doing stuff, this was as close as I got:
That evening, we went out to eat at this Hollywood italian place:
The waiters and waitresses — who for some reason are also operatic singers — sang happy birthday to Emily. It was amazing. I wish I had recorded it:
After dinner we walked down to the El Capitan theater to watch Cars 2:
…but they were not open to the public that evening :(
So, we went back the next night, fighting traffic the whole way. That’s one thing we learned about L.A.: the highways are a slow moving parking lot between the hours of 2pm and 10pm. It was maddening:
…but we made it just in time for a 7pm showing. Cars 2 was a good movie, but I don’t know that there needs to be a Cars 3:
More downtown Hollywood scenery:
A crew taping a scene for a Jimmy Kimmel bit. The line was “Can you get me a cheeseburger?” and then two guys would jump into a car. I smell Emmy:
The Kodak Theater where the Academy Awards are held:
This was at the Columbia Memorial Space Museum that we went to later in the week. I can’t remember where it was or what day it was, and Amy is not around to ask, so sorry. Cool place though:
Toward the end of the week, there was a plumbing…incident. The water pressure at this park was comparable to that of a fire hydrant, and it made the faucet leak underneath the kitchen sink. Undetected, it drained into one of the basement bays and got a portion of the carpet wet under the couch. It smelled like old wet carpet in the RV for a couple days. Nice. Nothing some baking soda and a butterscotch-scented candle can’t fix though:
We left L.A. on Friday and boon-docked at an ocean-side park about halfway between Santa Barbara and Malibu. We left the windows open and slept to the sound of the ocean:
There was a railroad track up the hill from where we camped, so the next morning I showed my girls the old penny-on-the-train-tracks trick.
Place penny on track:
…wait for train:
…admire smooshed penny:
Saw some dolphins:
…and more surfer dudes:
We drove North a ways and stopped at this place where monarch butterflies congregate:
There were hundreds of clumps like this:
And then further down the road, we stopped at this place where sea elephants congregate. These creatures are quite possibly the world’s laziest animals:
…unless it’s dudes fighting over chicks:
This weekend, we mostly drove along Highway 1 which hugs the shoreline — often treacherously. It’s a beautiful drive, as this staged cheesy family photo illustrates:
It was getting late (and dark) on Saturday, and we needed to stop for the evening. But finding a place was trickier than we hoped. The first place we stopped didn’t have potable water, and the 2nd place we stopped didn’t have room for an RV our size. When we finally found a place that would take us, it was dark and the campsite was down a very steep narrow road into a black abyss of redwood trees. We didn’t even know what the place looked like until daylight the next morning:
I notice these dents regularly caused by my ill-stacked bicycles at the beginning of the trip. I’m trying to take the attitude of one of the characters from the Cars 2 movie, however. Mater (the beat up tow truck) likes his dents because they remind him of the people he was with when he got the dents. So too it will be with these:
Yesterday we hung out in Monterey for a few hours. It was sort of rainy:
See those big lollypops? $99.
We arrived in Saratoga by sundown. It was a beautiful drive but tiring with the constant twisty roads. We missed a couple turns along the way, and with no easy way to turn this rig around on narrow roads, tempers flared. I’ve never been so glad to get to a campground and chill out.
There is barely any cell service and zero internet service here, but we really like this park. I’m not working much this week with it being Thanksgiving week, so it’s fine to be off the grid for a few days:
Besides, we’re just a couple miles from town where there is marvelous 4G (I’m sitting in one of the lovely coffee houses as I type this.)
I really, really like Saratoga. The main drag feels homey, and the houses are beautiful without being pretentious.
I’m not ready to settle down anywhere yet, but I could totally get used to this place and am looking forward to spending the week here.