Leaving San Francisco, some of us were a little bit cranky. We were going on a solid week of togetherness, which we look back on and laugh now. But at the time, certain members of our family were about spent. We left SF early because we knew we had a long drive ahead of us down to L.A. Our first stop was at the Winchester Mystery House. I jumped out of the rental car to get our tickets and Jayme was supposed to follow me inside. Only he didn't. Our tour time came and went and he still wasn't in. I went out to find out what was holding him up and he was still in the car looking for the smart key. You know the kind that just has to be inside the car in order to work. The car would start, so we knew it was in there somewhere. But he couldn't find it. If we couldn't take it with us, anyone could come along and take our car, or my camera gear, which I couldn't lock up. We started taking every single bag out of the car and seeing if it would still start without that bag. We emptied out the entire car of every bag and cleaned all the crap out from under all the seats and it still started. They had valet parking at the hotel we left in S.F. so we called them to see if they could tell us where they put the stupid key. The attendants on the phone were confused by or call -- being that they spoke very little English. They kept putting us on hold so they could go find our car in the garage. Then it hit Jayme, where is a stereotypical stupid place to hide a key where every car thief in every movie always finds it. On top of the sun visor! So there it was!
Well that was a nice wasted hour on our long S.F. to L.A. road trip, but we did finally get into the mystery house. I was so disappointed that they wouldn't let you take photos on the tour. Darn it! But we did enjoy it very much. It's a crazy house, definitely worth a stop if you happen to be in the neighborhood.
After the Mystery House we hit the road again ready for a long haul along the coastline. It was a long winding road but the scenery was gorgeous around every turn. Surprisingly there aren't many stops along the old Highway 1. Towns were few and far between so we were a little worried when The Boy piped up "I have to use the potty" and there was absolutely nothing on the map for miles. Fortunately, it was only number 1 and he's a boy so that made it a little easier.
Here are just a few examples of the amazing scenery we found on this stretch of our trip.
We came across some areas that were inhabited by elephant seals. We pulled over to watch them for a while and were fascinated with their behavior. The males were trying to show dominance over each other. It reminded me of a few human men I've known in the past.
It took about 10 long hours but we finally made it to L.A. just after dark. We checked into our haunted hotel, the Historic Hollywood Hotel, which was actually very nice, and we hit the hay, ready for a long day of Hollywood site seeing. I'll tell you about that part next time.
Lisa On Location Photography
No comments:
Post a Comment