Day One

Wasn't there a movie entitled "Planes, Trains and Automobiles?" Channeling that title, I'm thinking my little journey might be called, "Planes, Cars, and Feet." Although I skipped six days of bike riding, all the stair climbing and walking I did undoubtedly made up for it!

So, where to start? The beginning might be nice. Tuesday evening I took Baxter over to his "vacation home", otherwise known as Angela's house, because I knew the morning of the departure would be busy. Regina kindly agreed to pick me up at 6AM and she pulled up on the dot. I mention this because, as is so often the case, older folks don't like driving in the dark and it was plenty dark. Thank goodness the airport is close!

After settling into my first class seat, I got comfortable, and waited for take off. My seat mate had been kind enough to let me swap seats for the window, which, as we go along, you'll see I made good use of. Flying first class is nice, very, very nice. That is one perk of having a traveling husband for sure. If he'd been with me, it would have been even better because flying Delta all the time, it's like the show Cheers for him--everyone knows his name. I, unlike Bruce, am not a seasoned traveler, and I'm thinking this is maybe only the second time I've flown without him? Somehow I managed.

I don't know what the weather was like last Wednesday later in the day,  but it looks a bit gloomy in this photo taken as we were backing out of the gate. It was then that I thought I might just take a photograph about every hour or so as we crossed the southern part of the country.

The sun makes its presence known. I busied myself with eating a fantastic breakfast on a real plate!

Watched more clouds...

and finished a fantastic novel by Ron Rash, "One Foot in Eden".  Good grief that man can write! A few hours into the trip the landscape below looked like this:

which is very puzzling indeed. I have no idea what all those circles could be. Any ideas? Eventually the above landscape gave way to this:

Looking out the window on these mountains many of them looked as if someone had sprinkled ground pepper all over them, but we all know it was only an illusion--trees, and lots of them!

Coming from Florida, this landscape is like looking at the moon, it is so foreign! All that brown! Surely there is some green somewhere, but from 30,000 feet above, it looked all brown to me.

All good things must come to an end, and so it finally did, with my plane arriving at LAX about 10 in the morning PST. Bruce was busy so he'd made arrangements for Carol to pick me up. I stood watching all the hub-bub for a bit until she pulled up in her little sports car she's named, "Pearl Girl." Guess where our first stop was? Panera, followed by a quick run through of Trader Joe's by me, while she was paying at Marshalls.

For days Carol searched on Craigslist for tickets to see Neal Young at the Hollywood Bowl Wednesday night, eventually finding some. Here she's texting the directions to her house to the seller who offered to not only sell them, but deliver them as well!

In a city the size of Los Angeles, delivery is practically unheard of! The traffic, the cars, oh my! After a few more errands I finally got to see Carol's beautiful home in Beverly Hills.

We'll do some more exploring there another day, but before we go, I want you to know that all the beautiful art work is hers. After closing her Venice Beach art studio, some of the larger pieces made their way here. A real visual treat everywhere you looked!

After a quick lunch it was time to get back on the road so I could finally see my husband after 10 days! Carol dropped me off at his Century City mall job site:

You see that opening in Autumn 2012? Now you know why he has stayed out there! Problem after problem getting it done. Ha ha--just noticed my suitcase in the picture! You can sure tell LA is amovie town, what with all the huge billboards for upcoming movies.

A little after 3, I was on the move again, this time with Bruce, as we made our way to San Diego on the 405. 12 lanes of traffic going? Not a chance I would ever drive out here! Along the way we reminisced a bit about our year in California 35 years ago. Especially when we came across the exit to our first rented condo on Beach Blvd. in Huntington Beach.

In truth the traffic wasn't too terrible, mostly because we were able to travel a long way in the Car Pool lane. Bruce pulled into a rest stop near Camp Pendleton giving me my first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean:

Now, what really surprised me is that I took this photo around 5:45PM. I bet you're thinking so what? Well, I was expecting sunset to be closer to 7, and if you're smart you've already figured out it won't be too much longer and that sun will have dipped below the horizon. I persuaded Bruce to stop once again at Oceanside where I took this one:

Beautiful, beautiful sky! What I was getting at is that in Florida the sunrise and sunset are about an hour later than in Southern California. Duh! I thought it would be the same!

Eventually we made it to La Jolla, eating at some Mexican restaurant and collapsing in our comfy bed at the Hyatt. Tomorrow I'll show you what I saw in that lovely, albeit wildly expensive town.