Day 18 & 19 - Return to Los Angeles
Still Lean and Mean?
Calico Views
Frontier Tourism?
Day 18 - Las Vegas - Anaheim
I get up and slowly advance into the day, checking out at a slow pace. Not because I'm tired, but because there are so many people about it could be an evacuation during wartime.
Packing the car takes two journeys as the accumulation of interesting things like wine, souvenirs, leaflets, and more wine start to weigh down my suitcases.
Pulling away, I feel a mixture of feelings, especially now I know that the next time, if ever, I come this way the Luxor, Excalibur, and who knows what else will be gone because of the passing whim of some faceless office type who wouldn't know history if it sat in his lap and told him its name was history.
I drift away slower than this incarnation of Vegas will last, and I'm not sure I have the stamina to be a part of that future. This might sound mean-spirited, but I don’t care if I see Las Vegas again (although a visit to Pahrump is something I really want to do).
Vegas feels like it’s lost me in the melee of money grabbing ignorance, and I feel the place is as fed-up with me as I am of it.
There's a brief stop to buy supplies (well tons of water) and I head towards the I15 and then without my usual, ‘Bye Vegas, see you next time’ I head across the valley until I'm rising out, over a mountain and then away. You were fun in parts, and those parts tended to be away from The Strip!
I have to stop when I see, what looks like a mirage in the desert, but what is actually
a collection of gaudy shops, petrol station, food hall, and large hanger of nonsense entitled,’ Eddie World’, which I visit to buy a small pressie for somebody I know called Eddie. I don't know why the place is called 'Eddie's World' because I didn't see a sign. Could it be named after a gambler who lost everything but his shirt in Las Vegas, and then set up shop here to sell that final shirt? Might there have been a saleswoman of tacky items of tat called Edie, but over the years the name changed, but the frippery remains. Suffice to say it is one of the multitude of places which beg you to stop and see their strangest this or weirdest that, and it must work because the tourists (including myself) flock in.
'Eddie's World' is a packed assault on the senses with the multitudes milling around, picking up things, looking at them closely before putting them back. I don’t think this is to do with the sheer awfulness, it's just that even here, in the middle of nowhere, prices travel through the tin roof! I buy yet another fridge magnet and think about buying a bigger fridge to accommodate all the magnets I've bought on this trip.
Not long afterwards I'm turning off the road again to visit somewhere I've been before and enjoyed greatly, the ghost town of Calico, which is along Calico Road, and then up a short road into the hills.
Here I park, look quickly for any sign of shade, because the temperature is so hot I can feel my brain baking inside my skull, and after I've composed myself, I walk up to the entrance of what remains of a small town that used to mine borax, and silver, but that now harvests tourists, because like any self-respecting ghost town, the place is full of visitors trying to get that authentic feel of a deserted 19th working town.
The heat is still stifling and I now worry about spontaneous combustion, but the thought of this is off-set by the quest to get those final gifts for the folks back home, so after I have been in shops selling a multitude of tourist gifts, all containing the Calico logo, but made by those fine people in Wuhan China, and having a snack that is so large it has its own postcode, it's time to see what other gifts the place might have to offer.
Calico is an easy way to spend a couple of hours, and I would encourage anybody to do it.
The car now registers 111 degrees when I open the door and sit inside, and I expect to see a dozen devils soaking up the heat and telling me not to let the cold in.
I'd hoped to get to Los Angeles before the piles of traffic started heading home at a dizzy 10 mph, but even if I rush I'll be lucky to get to my hotel before the next decade.
The traffic starts to build up somewhere in the San Bernadino Mountains, and as you look at the road ahead you see miles of shiny metal stood still ahead of you, and you wonder if you'll ever see home again.
I pass cars that have not been properly prepared for the
The Lonesome diner
journey, and steam escapes from their bonnets, or fender benders litter the road like dead cattle in Western documentaries.
These things are not helped by the human vultures who slow down so then can really enjoy the misery of others, and ultimately it's these people who slow all of us down the most. If they’d have kept themselves to themselves I could have been at the hotel up to an hour earlier.
I chug along, creeping and moving slowly forward like a blind person in unfamiliar territory (not as blind as the driver who is either drunk, or has fallen asleep, and veers from side to side, nearly exiting the road prematurely, and almost hitting us in the side before speeding up and veering some more until he eventually finds an exit and only just manages to stop at the traffic lights).
I arrive at my hotel, which looks quite homely in a Mediterranean way, park the car and then head out to a local bar that lies on the other side of a freeway that means I'll have to walk under it and past some of the many homeless types who life has dictated this to be home for the moment, or possibly forever. It's only 400 yards, but seems like walking through the Sahara, although the desert has a safer vibe than I'm feeling at the moment.
The bar is a find, and a real local hangout. You can tell this because the prices are fairly reasonable and the staff are willing to give you a bit of time. The food is basic California pub grub of the Mexican variety, but I love Mexican food, except for a place I visited in Mendocino, and this is tasty and filling, although there's so much on my plate that I think I've ordered enough for a week!
It's a sports bar, but in America that means nothing, because every bar in America shows sports and has people at the bar nursing a drink as they study pass percentages and return ratings.
I watch hypnotically as baseball lights up the screen, and I only look because it’s there, right in front of me. The rules are a bigger mystery than Trump’s economic policy, and it washes over me with a minimum of real interest, unlike Trump's economic policy.
Singing Cowboy
Day 19
After a breakfast that gives bland and boring a new definition I head up toward Griffiths Park and the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, although I wonder if I’ll ever get there with all the traffic that clogs the freeway. Thank goodness it's Saturday otherwise this might resemble a hostage situation.
No matter what you’ve read, or what you’ve seen of Los Angeles freeways, it never prepares you for the time you’re on therm, stuck going nowhere fast and cursing the reason you ended up here.
My soul doesn’t take long to be destroyed and I cannot believe that locals subject themselves to this torture every day, including weekends. Where are they all going, and don’t they get fed-up being stuck on freeways trying to avoid looking at others in the same
position?
Finally, I reach the museum where I'm looking forward to looking at the Wild West memorabilia, reading about the legends who existed, and enjoying a wander around this marvellous museum. They have some exhibits that chart various stages of the move west and its role in the history of America and the psyche of Americans, and I've often found that the place provides one or two moments when I understand what might stir at the heart of every American.
I enter, pay quite a lot, and start to wander around the exhibits, but instead of heroes, legends, and people who form the fabric of these moments of history, the place has become like an art gallery of pictures that tell nothing about that history, but everything about the small man, the walk-on artist of a story that was forged in the mind of people by larger than life characters who often can only be summed up by the word 'audacious'.
It’s as though the museum has decided to put the legends into the background to bring forth those who are not the major players, who in turn have been relegated and diminished, and it’s as though by not mentioning them the truth of the story, no matter how terrible or bloodthirsty can be hidden. This is no longer a museum based on history, it's some officials moment to put forward their view of history.
Homes for Modern Families
Off the main roads, and through Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Brentwood and probably a few other areas beginning with B, and the manic traffic movement, and anonymous and dehumanising city are not to be seen in neighbourhoods where greenery feels natural and roads don’t look like they’ve taken steroids.
The everyday life looks like it can be achieved here. People can walk here, because security patrols and armed guards warn you that they will pounce if you step out of line, or pause in a suspicious way.
My reason for being here, besides seeing how the Uber Rich live is because this is where the houses that feature in the television show, ‘Modern Family’ are located, and I'm a massive fan, and as I park outside each once, whip out of the car and take quick photos, I cannot help but envy those who live in these houses on these streets, because in the frantic mania that is Los Angeles this is where the normal comes out to play, and that gives these streets a totally unreal air.
Thinking back about some of the signs I've seen, I imagine that if I did something as bland as taking a walk, a beefy gun-totting patrolman would be stood in front of me stern of face and eager of weapon. Now, can that be deemed as normal?
​
My task is achieved and I get back on the freeway, punish myself with a journey that should only take about thirty minutes, but which takes an hour and a half as I go so slow that at times I'm sure I'm going backwards. At least it cements the idea that for my last few days in this City of Angers (not Angels) I will not travel long distances, or in directions where the traffic jams will bring a new meaning to the word atrophy.
Beach Enjoyed