March 31, 2011

Today is Thursday!
So far I've had a pretty exciting week! But before I tell you about that let me share a little bit about the weekend that came before it. You see, last week I was stuck in a cubicle working on reporting. So Chris (my roomate) and I busted out on Friday afternoon and headed south on 15. Our first stop was a really good Mexican restaurant in Barstow, CA called Rosita's. The decorations on the wall were kinda weird, like a Mexican version of Disney animation but with potato characters. The food on the other hand was quite good. They served a super hot sauce along side their salsa and chips in case you needed to make your appetizer a bit more exciting. Two Tecates and bean salad later we were on the road again. By the time we got to Victorville, CA it was already dark. There wasn't anything noteworthy there anyway. On to Los Angeles! I was kind of excited about seeing this famous city and all the streets that I had grown up being exposed to in movies and television. Hollywood Blvd: check. Sunset Blvd: Check. Santa Monica Blvd: Check. We didn't linger long and headed northwest of the city to Topanga State Park (yes, like the girld from Boy Meets World!). However, upon our arrival at the park which is tucked away inside of a high class subdivision, we found the gate locked and no way around the tire destroying spikes in the road. So eastbound we went to Angeles National Forest! Seems really cool right? Well, driving around a National Forest in the dark and coming upon a state prison: not so cool. After we drove around the road that meandered through the strange trees and rolling hills we found a great patch of dirt to pitch the tent. It just so happened that this patch of dirt was right next to the Forest Service Fire Station parking lot. Oh well. We were greeted Saturday morning by a raven fervently alerting every other creature in the vicinity that there was red tailed hawk in nearby. The red tailed hawk also greeted the morning with its skreeching call. It was a thrill to pull open the tent and see the forest in morning light. We were in dense forest, surrounded by bird sounds and cloaked in a fine mist. The vale of water droplets in the air briefly covered the hills, and then allowed you to glimpse them as they gently blew around. It was like being in the Smokies again. We spent most of the day wandering around the forest, taking lots of time to study the flora that seemed so foreign and other worldly. All of the time that I spent identifying plants back East was wasted on an entire different ecosystem. I didn't see a single plant that I recognized. Yet, it was intoxicating. I was entranced by the complexity of the flowers and the delicacy of the leaves. I was baffled at the scale of the trees and the rigidity of the thorns. This place was magical.
There was a hill near a stream that had eroded to expose the rock underneath. It crumbled into small pieces, as if it were held together by nothing more than will. Between the cracks succulents grew, and to amazing sizes. High up on the hill, well out of range to safely reach a crew of succulents held fast onto the vertical grade. Some of these unreal plants exceeded two feet in diameter and had multiple flower stalks.

After a full day's hike we decided to head to the ocean and finally get to sink our toes in it. Westward bound again we came to a small state beach. This park area looked as if it had been quite an amazing and popular place thirty years ago. But, today this place was rundown. Everything was locked up, the parking lots were empty, and the hobos had set up camp. There was a running trail that ran between the dunes and the parking lot that seemed to be very popular amongst bikers, runners, and walkers. However, no one seemed to linger in the park. They followed the trail in one end of the park and out the other, as if to bigger and better sights. I moseyed out onto the beach, which was covered in smooth stones that seemed to pulled straight out of a river bed and placed perfectly spaced in the soft sand. As I made my way down to the water I noticed a distinct odor: death. I glanced up and down the beach and noticed flies buzzing about me. I followed their trail and found a carcass well deteriorated right in the middle of the beach. At first glance it took on the shape of a fish, about four feet long and almost leathery with lots of large holes in it. Yet, there were bones. In fact there was a large vertebrae about the size of a dog's. Upon further inspection, sure enough, fur! This must have been a sea lion! Welcome to the Pacific, mind the carcass.

That night we cruised back to downtown LA to find the music scene I've been hearing so much about. I couldn't find the names of anything exciting on my dying Iphone, so we hit up the first bar we could find to maybe ask the local folk: So and so's Tavern or something like that. Turns out this 'tavern' served nothing but bud light and other assorted travesties so we hightailed out to the next bar, which happened to have two hundred some odd awesome handcrafted beers from around the world. Needless to say, we ended up spending too much time there 'world travelling' and found our best option was sleeping in the car.

Sunday morning was filled with hangover hilarity as Chris got to see that burrito he consumed the night before again, only this time spattered across a gas station parking lot. From there we headed back to LV with a newfound sense of accomplishment for surviving our unplanned adventure and excitement for the next one.

I was going to talk about this week though! I guess it will have to wait until tomorrow when it actually ends. Night!