Trona CA, and beyond

It only took a day or so before I was completely comfortable in the car. The first few hours were somewhat hairy but I was mostly on the motorway and they are so straight and long you can actually eat an entire snickers without looking once at the road. It got dark before I had even made it out of the rush hour traffic in LA but I battled on and got to the delicate town of Trona by 10pm. 

I stayed at the only motel in town, a grim but serviceable little place with two remotes but no TV, strangely. Coming into Trona at night was perfect. The town is a gain borax mine with a giant causeway carved salt lake at its heart. WIth a population of only a few hundred it's area is greatly increased by the insanity of the mines and refinery. Huge, shining, silver pipes large enough to house a lorry burst from the ground like the sand worms in Dune. The whole landscape is Tatooine-desolate and was actually used as the film set for sections of Planet of the Apes. 

Its beauty is breathtaking and driving over the mountains down into its salt-scarred valley on hat clear night actually had me telling myself outloud how wonderful it was. Parts of the plant run all night and their yellow hazard lights bounce off the rest of the refinery, as the heat does during the day, to make for a glowing piece of manga dumped in a wasteland. 

I ate the next day at the Desert Rose cafe where I ended up staying a couple of hours (popping out occasionally to put more quarters in the washer/dryer up the road) chatting to the owner and the young girl who worked there about living in such a place. She was a real go-getter, the proprietor, having hooked up the only internet access in town and invested in a smoothie maker. They made me a strawberry smoothie to pass the time and served me orange juice in a glass cracked the whole way down. When she told me that the Chinese actually secretly owned 80% of the USA and that the town was better off before the police, when townspeople metered out their own justice, I decided it was time to take my leave and go on the desolate road to death valley. 

I'm not going to say much about the drive north because the silence and the desolation are indescribable. Suffice to say I was completely taken aback by how incredible and endless it all was. If there was ever a road to insanity, it probably runs mostly through death valley.

I likewise don't have the words to describe coming over the mountains and into Sequoia national park but if you have ever driven in the alps imagine a scaled down version with (for me anyway) no cars at all. Luckily, actually as it turned out, since at one stage I flew all over the road on some black ice and very nearly sailed off the mountain. Eep.

A good chunk of my journey was freeway about which I have nothing interesting to say. *shrug*.

There was some significantly interesting countryside between Sequoia and the coast and about half way along I left the freeway to drive about 20 miles through orange groves. The road was not much more than a dirt track and I was only a few feet from the oranges all the time which was pretty ace. Thats all there really is to say about that which is a shame because it was actually a really wonderful half hour.

Santa Cruz with its sealions and pelicans was next, but I mentioned that already, and the Winchester Mystery House which I visited after I will allow to remain a mystery. Go and see it - its a thousand times more impactful than Graceland despite being devoid  of furniture. 

Oh actually I will say one more thing about Santa Cruz : I got there just in time to see the last Monarch leave Natural Bridges park. I wanted to see them all there but actually, this was far more romantic and I'm glad. I was also thrilled to find a small plastic deer in the sand as I left the beaches. I'm not sure why.

Silicon Valley was my last day 'on the road' and after a pretty comfortable night watching 'Gavin and Stacey' (who knew that was so good?) in a business hotel in Cupertino it was time for San Francisco. Or, 'home'. 

Mesa City, CA

(Cattle brands in Mesa City, through the ages)

LA, CA

LA was a bit brief to really get to grips with the city. Mostly I wandered and wrote but I had time to see Krys (some of you may remember him as Foxy Cotton) at his place of work "The Pleasure Chest" and Akbar - the silverdale bar that has distressingly little do with Star Wars. Curses.

It was beautifully warm and I did a lot of walking which reminded me how much I enjoy a wander. Where I was staying was mostly residential and all felt like a fancier souped up version of the house John Conner lived in in T2. Fewer cyborgs though. Mores the pity.

On my last day I got the car on Hollywood blvd and drove my first few terrifying miles… I actually had to have someone in the rental place show me how to operate the vehicle since it was an automatic and it turns out you have to be pushing the footbrake to put them 'in gear'. My left foot was punching at a non-existence clutch the whole damn time too and it was not until the following day that natural breaking spasm vanished. Its like driving a gokart. A giant, hefty, lethal gokart. 

Having grabbed the thing I went to pick up Krys from his cute little house and we headed down to Venice beach to get swarmed by seagulls and run about on the rocks.

A couple of times Krys had to remind me to move onto the right hand side of the road but otherwise it was a fairly safe journey, I thought. When I parked the car the attendant offered me the full day for just $5 which may well have been him doing his civic duty by keeping me off the roads as long as possible… or it may have been a slow day.

There was even wildlife on the beach. A handful of confused stoners were manhandling a giant starfish and poking sand dollars. The rocks themselves seemed to have been dedicated to a particular life guard and who knows if he is buried under them but it would be a pretty idyllic site to rot, even with the hippies. Don't bury me there though, I have other (better) ideas.

I ate some ropey beach food the highlight of which was its purchase; having paid my money I was given a one inch square disk with 'Chicken' written on it. Oh how I wished it was space food and swallowing the disk would have given me the experiment of a whole roasted bird, but no. The token was to be swapped for the real food when it was cooked. Curses.