cali trip, day 4

day four was nature IN OUR FACES! slogrl thoughtfully loaned us her car and we set out on route 1 after dropping her off at work. our original destination for the day was hearst castle. i'd been there when i was a teenager and instantly fell in love with the swimming pools and the general tackiness of too much wealth.

alas, when we arrived, it was a geriatric convention of epic proportions (read: several tour buses) in the parking lot and we had not yet bought tickets. we, like the germans who were with us in the lobby, decided that it was best to skip the grey haired foray into yellow journalism. (read: no swimming pools. but i DID take this picture in the parking lot.)

this turned out to be a great decision as it left us a lot of time at rocas blancas where the elephant seals hang out. note: this is not a picture of the elephant seals but of the rocks.

HERE is an elephant seal!

we were told by some of the volunteers that staff the site that we had just missed a big migration of the sea beasties. that we would only be able to see sleeping juvenile males that would occasionally flip their flippers. fine by me! like i ever get the chance to take a pano of an elephant seal in washington state!

i think this may have been my favorite part of california. there were so many animals!







i could have stayed there all day but route 1 was calling.

after the elephant seals, we stopped in a small coastal town to check out slogrl's mural. (try to find the skull in the chicken. heh!) while there, we saw some monster feet. ok, not really but i like to play like we did.


(here's another lame video of water. this time the pacific in cali. (link.))

route 1 had been so fun and uncluttered of a drive that leff and i decided to continue on the road for a while. little did we know that we would end up in the middle of a mountain range where the first chance of turning around was gordy.

ah, gordy. the land of $10 a gallon gas. where meth heads suggest that you try the fucking pepper sauce so frequently that you want to punch them. it's such a lovely place and not opportunistic in any sense of the term. /sarcasm

gordy and the mountain range leading up to it cost us some serious time so after bidding the meth heads farewell we returned to slo. sadly, things did not improve once we arrived at the sanitarium as leff was stung by a bee (although i'm sure it felt like he'd been stung by 50 of them.) and then slogrl's bus (newly purchased by the city!) broke down.

sigh... we all needed a nap.

fully recharged (well, kinda'. my cold was making itself known at this point. ugh.) leff, slogrl, c and i headed to los alamos which, not only has buffalo parking

but is also the site of the union hotel where michael jackson and paul mccartney filmed the "say, say, say" video!



i snuck down the staircase like mac and jack did at the 4:20 mark.



we were given a wonderful tour by the manager of the hotel. if you're ever in los alamos, it's definitely worth dropping by! they even have the video in the bar!

i also hear that the place is haunted, if that's more your speed.

this day's tiny bullet list:

• in california, all alcohol is available in the grocery store. i found a bottle of jack near the frozen pizzas, which, brilliant product placement!
• the union hotel has a hidden room behind zee bookcase! (we didn't have to put the candle back.)
• the snake in the above photo scared a lot of people, most notably a a japanese lady who was screaming at it. i tried to calm everyone down by explaining that the snake was very slow moving as it had just come out of the ground. you know, cold bloodedness being what it is and all but it didn't really help. sometimes i get very irritated at my need to keep everyone calm in a crisis (no matter how small).