My
first time to Southern California...
My
first time to Southern California...
It has only been in recent times that my work with the U.S. Government has paid well enough that I can take an all-out, cost-is-relatively-no-object, vacation somewhere. I was at work, putting in way too much effort (as is usual), a couple autumns back, when I said "I want to go to Southern California". I actually said this when I visited the travel agent to buy a round-trip ticket from Washington, DC to Orange County, California and book a car rental (which of course you need there). I had seen this place all my life on TV and in the movies. Now it was time to visit it in real life.
Day 1--8 February 1996--From Coast to Coast
I had never taken an East Coast to West Coast non-stop flight before, although flying once from Chicago to Honolulu and another time on business to Phoenix gave me some of the feeling. It's not like the usual little "hop" I take to visit my mother and father in Detroit. That one is barely levelled out before it starts coming down. No, this was 5 hours in a 757 to Los Angeles International. It was all grey and miserable outside the window in Washington when I left, but the plane pulled up into the bright sun when we got there, and I rode by bus to the commuter terminal, in 80-degree weather, to ride one of those turboprop aircraft around the coast to John Wayne Orange County airport in Santa Ana.
It took awhile to get reoriented. I made it over to the car rental desk, feeling extremely ready to take a very long rest. Lucky for me, it was a short drive to the Marriott in Irvine, which looked like it had the best mix of amenities from its description on the WWW and in the Mobil Travel Guide. When I was growing up, we never stayed in real business-class hotels, so this experience was quite the thrill, on top of all that air travel! I dumped myself inside the front door with my 50 pounds of baggage, and the bellhop saw me in my plight and took me up to my base for the next 5 days, room 1236.
Day 2--9 February 1996--San Diego and the PCH
The next day I woke up ready to do more, so I headed out to the car to drive down the coast to San Diego. Not directly down the freeway (or "fwy" as they call them), but using the long, casual route down the Pacific Coast Highway, past all these oceanfront "beach culture" communities, where the coast stretches as a narrow flat ribbon next to the rugged mountains inland. I would stop occasionally by the beach, drop into a local shop to add to my collection of T-shirts, or whatever suited my taste. Such a different place! I soon approached northern San Diego, passing through the verdant, apparently-irrigated resort town of LaJolla. As I drove past the Torrey Pines Country Club, I saw the Buick Invitational golf tournament in progress. San Diego itself turned out to be just a place to get something to eat and turn around. I'm sure there's more there to be done. I came back up the more direct route, the I-5 freeway, and returned to the hotel, where I spent some time sitting on the balcony looking out over the palm trees. Actually, I was in some sort of "Irvine Business Center", with lots of office buildings. It must be there because of its convenience to the airport.
Day 3--10 February 1996-Towards Downtown and Universal Studios
Having seen what lay south of Irvine, where I was staying, I decided that this was the day I would drive up into the central city of Los Angeles and spend some time around Hollywood. I had settled on a visit to Universal Studios (actually, in Universal City, not Hollywood proper), and after studying my freeway maps in great detail, I went downstairs to the hotel dining hall to have a good breakfast. As I said, I can afford trips now where I'm not thinking so much of cost, so I don't mind paying a bit for a meal at the hotel if it's good eating that gives the right start to the day. This particular Marriott had both all-you-can-drink coffee and (most importantly!) all-you-can-drink fresh-squeezed orange juice! By the time I had stayed there the full time, I tried most of the entrees on their breakfast menu. I liked charging things to my room and all. It turned out they had a weekend special (being mostly a business travelers' hotel near the airport), so I got Saturday and Sunday breakfast free.
I found my way onto the freeway going north into the city, passing alongside the coast by a great many suburbs. When you travel around Los Angeles, there really isn't much, besides a couple of square miles downtown, that doesn't have a wide-open "suburban" look to it. That's what I liked about LA, when you compare it to a close-packed eastern US city like Washington (or even worse, New York City!). I was impressed by the amount of industrial development I saw as I passed the great port of Los Angeles and the Long Beach waterfront area. There you would see oil refineries, sprawling factories which appeared much newer than the ones crumbling along the Amtrak line in Philadelphia and Newark, and off in the distance, the docks, where the cargo ships from all around the Pacific Rim and beyond came to load and unload. Then, I moved north, past Los Angeles International Airport, where I first touched down only two days before, and past Santa Monica, to the point where I turned inland towards Bevely Hills and Hollywood. This section involved a long, continuous climb into some spectacular mountainous terrain, considering I was in the middle of an "urban area". Off from the freeway on both sides, you'd see these fantastic homes, like you'd expect from the Beverly Hills TV shows, some sitting precariously on top of hills. People in southern California have built lots of homes on the top edges of high cliffs.
Finally, I reached the point where the map said I had to exit for Universal Studios. I drove some streets in the local neighborhoods there, and soon, I reached the enormous parking structure that served the Universal Studios theme park. I had to pay $6.00 to park my rental car there. Most parking in that part of the US turns out to be $6.00, for some reason. The "Studios" grounds itself turn out to be more of the tourist attraction than the serious movie production facility they claim it is--although I didn't take the "Backlot Tram Tour" to see where things might actually be shooting, since I had my Nikon SLR with me and saw from the handout that they drove the tram through water. I didn't do the wild rides there for that reason, either, plus I hate standing in line.
Universal Studios Hollywood is actually built on two levels, one about 300 feet above the other on an immense hillside. At the top, there is an area to look out over the Burbank area and towards the mountains in the distance. The day I was there, the smog was truly intense, and I couldn't see everything in the descriptive chart. I could barely see the Warner and NBC studios. After riding down a long, long escalator, you'd enter some of the soundstages they had converted into attractions. One, sponsored by First Alert smoke detectors, was devoted to "Backdraft" (with a warning about intense heat--no thanks!). I did truly enjoy their special effects demo, however. This included stage setups that showed how "Back to the Future" and certain Hitchcock thrillers were produced.
Day 4--11 February 1996--Mission San Juan Capistrano and the Beach
On Sunday, since I'm the type who likes to get to church (and who does a lot of volunteer work there), I decided I wanted to see what Mass is like in the Orange County area. I had spent some time looking up the locations nearest to me in the phone book, but finally chose to drive instead to see what they had at the famous Mission San Juan Capistrano, a few miles down the beach from me. After breakfast at the hotel, I packed up again in the rental and drove down the freeway to the proper exit. There is a modern-day Mission-based Parish there, so the parking lot was full from the services going on. I had to park across the street, in a social services lot. I saw a sign declaring skateboarding to be illegal in San Juan Capistrano. It must be a worse "problem" in California (especially near the beach) than it is here.
After going in with the local crowd for the service, in the new church building, I found my way around to the entrance to the old walled compound, which dated from Junipero Serra's founding in 1776. Inside, there was a courtyard area surrounded by gardens, including olive trees and grapevines, and an adobe quadrangle. Today they run what they call a "cultural center", in which they do demos of the way the Spanish and Indians did things in the old days. There was a model showing the magnificent old stone church, which was destroyed around 1810 by an earthquake. The new building, which I had just left, was modelled after it. Still standing is the original chapel, built in the classic Mission style, with a timbered ceiling. It is a dimly-lit, very solemn place. It is hard to cut big windows into adobe walls, apparently. There is a plaque there commemorating the time President Richard Nixon came and rang a certain one of the old bells. This location is famous for its yearly return of migratory swallows, but I was there 5 weeks too early, since they don't come until 19 March, when there is a huge festival.
After absorbing some of the peacefulness of the Mission, I got back into the car and drove the rest of the way down to the beach, and started driving back into town along the Pacific Coast Highway. I was listening to some of the "oldies" music on the car radio. Southern California has to be the world's hottest and best broadcast radio market. Our programming where I live doesn't come close to matching it. I drove over 500 miles in the 6 days I was there, with either AM or FM radio playing nearly the entire time. People spend so long driving, and good traffic reports are essential. In between, they have great music and talk shows. I came up the road through Laguna Beach, which is known for its Mediterranean seaside architectural style and art galleries, and found a store that had more of the film I like to shoot, Kodak Royal Gold. Almost back into Newport Beach, I stopped at Crystal Cove State Park, which I had noted both on the map and on the trip to San Diego as having a good-looking beachfront.
I was surprised to find the parking attendant at the beach in February. I guess they never close, since it never gets that cold. Although I had to wear my nylon jacket, it was warm enough to take off my shoes and use the new Island brand slippers I had bought at the open-air Fashion Island Mall in Newport Beach. I wanted to walk into the Pacific with them on, at least once, before I left. Some later day, I'd dunk them in the Atlantic, too, I said to myself. I walked down the steep bluff, with its set of stairs, and set up my tripod and camera to shoot a few pictures of me and the ocean. It was bright and shimmering on the water, and I could see a vast number of small vessels out there in my Bushnell 10 x 25 compact travel binoculars. Some were on their way out of Newport Beach to Catalina Island, which must be an excellent day trip. There were also surfers in wet suits. It is far too cold that time of year to swim any other way. I began to realize that there must be some guys who consider surfing to be part of their self-definition, if not what they do most of the time. Then--what was that I saw floating out in the water--it looked like a floating rock at first, until I looked longer and harder--it was a seal, right up by the shore! I hadn't expected to see any marine mammals on that coast! I stood photographing and watching the animal, as it ducked about by the surfers, like it was making fun of them. A woman who appeared to be spending the entire day slowly walking the water's edge stopped to see what I was looking at. I let her borrow my binoculars. Then she headed on her way south. If I were more the patient sort, I suppose I could have used my parking pass all day to see the sun set. I said to myself, "that'll be for another trip".
Day 5--12 February 1996--Disneyland, out of real curiosity
The next day, things were winding down. I got back in the car, after watching some TV in the hotel room (nothing like watching local TV to learn an area, I always say), and drove up the freeway into town towards the Disneyland exit. I was curious about Disneyland, since it was so highly touted when I was a youth in the 1960's (and especially before there was a Walt Disney World). I drove down the boulevard from the exit to the entrance to the park, which somehow didn't seem to befit a real Walt Disney theme park. It does not compare with the development of Walt Disney World, which is its own city, rather than a mere part of Anaheim. This looked more like the older style of amusement park, with none of the grand landscaping of the Orlando park. I bought my entrance pass (turns out you get in for about 30% less if you're from the LA area), and went in. Disneyland has the same basics as the Magic Kingdom, but you can tell it has been there longer. It's hard to put one's finger on the difference; it has been under lots of renovation. Since I wasn't into wild rides and had no one to watch my camera, I didn't wait in any of the lines. I just spent some time walking the place, watching the kids. They were having a much better time! I bought some souvenir postcards to send to my 5-year-old nephew and 2-year-old niece, who went with me to Walt Disney World in Feb 1997. They had some excellent live music stationed here and there, however, including a band that appeared to play native South American music, and a ragtime pianist by the Main Street. I also enjoyed firing off a few rounds at the "Shooting Exhibition" in Frontierland, where you can make electronic targets flinch with a hit.
Day 6--13 February 1996--The return trip, SNA - DEN - IAD
Monday the 13th I was up early to catch my returning flights to Washington, DC. I drove for the last time down the palm-tree-lined boulevard in front of the John Wayne Orange County airport (just like in the Beverly Hillbillies opening credits) and lugged my baggage back to the United Airlines counter. It's a rather simple airport to use. I would prefer it over the bigger Los Angeles facility. I took a connecting flight through Denver. The first leg climbed up through clear skies and you could see the grand, sun-drenched, arid mountainous country just outside of Newport Beach and Santa Ana, which defines the limits of growth. We climbed to altitude past these and headed out over the vast deserts, then rugged Rocky Mountains, all the time with a female captain. That was a change! At the transfer in Denver I could see the mountains in the background, and said to myself, "I just flew over those!". The remaining flight was pretty standard. I got back home and started putting my things away. Winter was back, and life had to resume.