Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled thread...
smackaholic wrote:The other left coast thing I gotta see before I die is a TJ donkey show, but, that ain't happenin' with the family in tow.
Pussy.
They're
your kids. They're the spilt seed of smackaholic. Let 'em know who their dad really is.
J/k, of course...unless wifey's cool with it too, then by all means, you and the family go and have yourselves a proper
From Dusk Till Dawn family vacay in TJ.
Okay, fine, you've got oak trees. I used to live on Oak Dr. It had old oaks too, including one old fucker that was protected by the city 'cause it was so big and old. Didn't matter that it sat right smack dab in the middle of the street. We had to drive around it.
Oaks don't even count as trees, not by California tourism standards anyway.
Cacti, now they count, sorta. Cacti and big ass trees, they count. Doesn't count though as a big ass tree unless it's a sequoia or a redwood.
Them you don't gots back east.
Okay, anyway, let's examine this whole trip more closely here. I didn't pay attention at first. I thought you were headed out here immediately, as in during the dead of winter.
Nope, you're making it a summer trip. Okay, that changes things. Immensely.
For starters, you won't
need to do the TJ donkey trip, not if you're heading out here in the summer. See, if the goal is to simply ruin yourself and your kids
and you want to show them something they'll never get to see unless they come out west then I rescind my earlier advice.
Now I say you GOTTA include Death Valley on the itinerary.
Make this fucker totally memorable. One way to make sure the entire family never forgets this trip would be to have them play frisbee football in the parking lot of Scotty's Castle, in the middle of July.
Better yet, see if you can locate a '77 Fiat X1/9. You could play a sort of automotive version of Russian Roulette.
Big fun. Here's how it works...
You say you have four of you, right? I'm going to assume this includes you, wifey and two chilluns.
What you're gonna do is park your Family Vehicle at a gas station in Furnace Creek, say, around 3:00pm. Two at a time you're then going to take high speed runs back and forth in the X1/9 from Hell's Gate to Dante's Peak, passing through Furnace Creek on each sortie. The targa top is off and it's up to you as to whether you'll risk running the A/C, assuming it's even working. Each lap you take is with a different partner.
The object is to see who's in the car when it finally grenades, which is why you're going to keep passing through Furnace Creek. That's where you'll set up your Pit Lane, with gas and a rescue truck handy.
Hopefully you'll be able to get cell reception out there, especially as you climb up to Dante's Peak and your cranky little Italian hamsters finally say fuck it and expire, leaving you with a blown head gasket and a 120 degree afternoon to enjoy while you wait either for help or sweet, sweet death.
Yeah, do Death Valley. Absolutely. You gotta be able to go back home and tell people what real heat is all about. None of this, "Oh, it's 90 degrees and humid as hell. I was sweating again as soon as I got dressed," east coast bullshit description of heat.
No, you'll be able to talk about pushing an X1/9 down the road in Kill You Dead Heat.
On some rainy night in a Hartford tavern it'll make for a very cool Dins type of one upsmanship story.
It'll be a summer trip though so you can still skip Mammoth and Big Bear. They're just low grade dog food as mountains go, in summer.
Since you will have visited and hopefully survived the lowest place on earth with the second highest temperature ever recorded (behind only some shithole in Libya, which beat it out by a couple degrees in 1927, or some such bullshit) and since you'll be in the neighborhood anyway then yeah, you will have to go ahead and visit General Sherman (that's the biggest fucking tree in the world) and Mt Whitney, the tallest peak in the Lower 48. Might as well get all the Biggest/Tallest/Lowest/Hottest places in the world/contiguous U.S. out of the way in one fell swoop.
This would be an excellent detour loop on your return trip back up towards Tahoe.
So, okay, if you're starting in Portland, here's your itinerary...
-Heading south from Portland, go ahead and hop on over to Crater Lake, after first making fun of all the rednecks Dins talks about in central and eastern Oregon. Crater Lake really is otherworldy bitchin' and I know how much fun you'll have making fun of Asians and their cameras. Besides, you'll have it over and done with in under an hour and it's surrounded by some of the most scenic forest landscape stuff you'll ever shake a stick at.
(So as to not get in the middle of the Goobs/Dins grammar wars let's make that, "...some of the most scenic forest landscape at which you may ever shake a stick.")
-Swing back over to I-5, to Ashland. This is where you'll score points with wifey, which will come in handy later when you attempt to go caveman on her in Big Sur. See, Ashland is a quaint and quite beautiful little town in southern central Oregon, near the California border. For
you the point of Ashland may be Oregon college hotties dressed in summer tank tops and cuntlip shorts but your significant other will award you major points for pointing out to her that Ashland is home to one of the biggest Shakespeare Festivals on the planet. It goes on all summer long and she'll just think you're too fucking suave for going out of your way to take her to see a charming outdoor rendition of
The Taming Of The Shrew.
-From there head south and east, over to California's Mt Shasta and Mt Lassen. Not much to do there, especially in summer, not unless you're going to take the family out boating. It's just an amazing area and it provides a good jumping off point for the rest of your southerly journey.
-Okay, head west now to Redding. Redding serves two purposes here for you. First, it'll give you a taste of some some severe buttsweatin' oppressive heat, in preparation for what will come later in Death Valley. More importantly, it's the gateway to Hwy 299, which is just one of the most badass roads in America. It crosses California's most isolated and least populated county, Trinity County, and hopefully you'll arrive right during another major forest fire that'll be in the process of blowing down Trinity County's only town, the county seat, Weaverville. (Yes, Weaverville. In California, as in most places, if the name ends in "-ville" it's a podunk hick town peopled by castoffs from
Deliverance. Weaverville's cool though because it's always in the process of recovering from having again recently burnt to the ground.) After stopping to tend to all the familial bodily functions in Weaverville continue west through full on paradise until you hit Eureka, on the Pacific coast.
Let your kids glory in the splendor of a
real ocean.
Stop and refuel everybody and everything in Eureka. Hopefully you'll hit the two days in summer there when it isn't gray and foggy.
-From Eureka you now officially head south into California. I'd suggest doing a loop here, to a rarely visited part of California. The Wild Coast is a loop that begins off of 101 below Eureka, heading west to follow the coastline along the "upper bump" of northern California. You'll be heading into old oil boomtowns like Ferndale and Petrolia but the real reason for taking this loop is to simply get out of the car and see and
feel the land here.
This is the type of place where Sudden Sam would nut himself with his PETs. It's just wild, windy, rocky coastline; completely unspoiled.
The loop terminates back again at 101, right in the heart of Redwood Grove and The Avenue Of the Giants, above Myers Flat.
-The Avenue Of The Giants is simply a must see for anyone who's never been to California. This is one of the places that make California unique in the world. This is one of the places which make Californians so smug about their state. This is one of the places where you're likely to have your rental car backed into by keening, empty handed Asian tourists blindly backing out from one of the ubiquitous roadside shops hawking carved wooden grizzly bear statues and loads of Sasquatch porn.
-Heading just a few minutes south down 101 you'll hang a right at Leggett, where you'll then head back to the coast. You'll wish you were on a motorcycle (or at least in a sports car) for this next hour of badass mountain twisties. This run has its terminus when sunlight and ocean vistas explode your retinas, following an hour's worth of darkness from mountain tree cover.
-For the next six to eight hours it's pure picture postcard northern California coastline as you head south to San Francisco, passing through Fort Bragg, Mendocino, Pt Arena and Gualala along the way.
Gas in Gualala is, at last check, oh, $37 per gallon. Delightful.
As you approach San Francisco you'll be on Hwy 1 north of Stinson Beach. This is noteworthy only if you arrive on a Sunday. Make sure to do so, and try to do so in the AM. Reason being, this stretch of highway is home to one of the two or three most infamous motorcycle racing roads in all of America.
This is America's Isle Of Man.
Every Sunday morning motorcyclists from all over northern California congregate in Stinson Beach for what is known as "The Sunday Morning Ride." I know you're a closet redneck motorsports/gearhead type, smackie, so you'll definitely appreciate this run. You'll see every rare bike known to man that's still being ridden on public roads, plus you'll likely see a fatality or two when some squid inevitably launches his GSX-R1000 over a blind crest headlong into the grill of the Nissan Altima two cars ahead of you.
The little breakfast cafes dotting this stretch of California coastline are simply phenomenal. Here you will encounter true cliched California grub and most of it is simply spectacular, served in Flintstones sized portions.
-A few minutes later you're in San Francisco. You could be there for six years and not see everything so I won't even bother to tell you what to go see there. You could check out the wharf at Pier 39 and you could take the kiddies out to a tour of Alcatraz but probably the main thing you'll want to do is to at least go to Golden Gate Park. Great museums and scenery there.
Of course you could also bail on over to the Castro District, to further enhance your Fun With Gay Smack for when you get back home and you log in here.
-Now, south of San Francisco, bam, this is really some of the good stuff. Heading down Hwy 1 you'll first hit Halfmoon Bay, where Maverick's Beach and some of the biggest waves in the world are located. From there you could take a quick detour up Hwy 84 to Alice's Restaurant, which, again, you want to do on a Sunday. It's the single biggest gathering of classic motor vehicles and motorcycles in all of California, besides maybe the Sunday morning gathering at The Rock Store, in Malibu, north of L.A.
I t-boned a deer not too far from there, on Mulholland Dr, totaling my buddy's brand new Yamaha Seca II and my clavicle in the process. Sweet.
Anyway, whatever's hot and new in the world of motor vehicles, you're sure to see it first at Alice's Restaurant. It may be Neil Young pulling up on an old Triumph or it may be James Hetfield in the latest model Ferrari but if you're at Alice's Restaurant on a Sunday you're sure to see something bizarre.
Great food too. That'll be a common theme all along the coast.
-Back on Hwy 1 you'll next hit Santa Cruz, home to U.C. Santa Cruz. Yes,
that U.C. Santa Cruz, home of the Banana Slugs, which was made famous by the t-shirt John Travolta borrowed from Quinten Tarantino in
Pulp Fiction.
This university remains Hippy Haven and the boardwalk in Santa Cruz is where
The Lost Boys was filmed.
So, yeah, if you hate Jack Bauer and
24 and you think it's utterly dispicable that Gibson has actually seen fit to create a full production Kiefer Sutherland signature ES336 guitar (I'm not even kidding) then you can go ahead and blame Santa Cruz.
-Next up and back on Hwy 1 will be the Monterey Peninsula, home to Pebble Beach, 17 Mile Drive, Carmel, John Steinbeck's Monterey, Laguna Seca Raceway and in Carmel Highlands some of the consistently priciest real estate in the world.
You can almost
feel Jack and Tiger 'round these parts and if you hang around Carmel long enough you're likely to piss off Clint Eastwood.
-Finally you leave civilization and you head back in time as you journey south into Big Sur. Big Sur is simply fucking awesome. You're still in a heavily forested redwood grove but now it's right on the ocean, sometimes a thousand feet above the Pacific. This is home to Henry Miller's library and it's a throwback in time to the hippy era.
Here is where you will want to ditch the kids and go hiking with your wife. I don't care what her previous reservations and/or inclinations were. I don't care what she's always told you is and isn't allowed. I don't care if she was brought up a minister's daughter in Ohio Amish Country. In Big Sur she
will give up her ass, and she'll do it with all the joy and fervor of a proper pagan bitch.
She'll swallow and she'll squirt and she'll scream out, shamelessly naked, with people watching her. She'll fucking giggle at 'em and wave back when they rightfully applaud her performance.
Nepenthe's is a stop in Big Sur you have to make, along with Big Sur State Park and Julia Pfeiffer State Beach, which you'll likely never find without getting directions from the locals. Ironic, that, since it's a world famous beach, due to its insane moonscape rock formations and the prisms of light that are created as the ocean crashes through all the crazy stone archways.
Photographers from around the globe flock there.
I've never done drugs but if I was ever going to this would be the place to do it. Camp here at night and besides the orgy you're likely to witness or engage in you're also likely to be included in any number of free drug hand outs and deep thought conversations about mankind's place in the cosmos and George Seifert's good fortune in inheriting Bill Walsh's 'Niners.
It's a different, funky/spooky place after the sun goes down.
The moonlight there, along with the wind? It's intense. It really does feel like you're on another planet, which is a large part of why your woman will behave as if she's on another planet.
Good stuff. Unusual stuff, too, which is even better. It's not just another generic Disneyland tourist experience.
You'll definitely know you're no longer in Connecticut when your wife is moaning in Portuguese from the reaming you're giving her amidst a crashing ocean moonscape.
-Heading south again, if you feel like continuing the sexual freak show (with wifey, one would presume) you might want to park it for the night in The Madonna Inn. This is a theme based hotel near Morro Bay. Maybe you want a dungeon room, or a cave, or maybe, being from Connecticut, you want a nice DMV Waiting Line themed bacchanal.
-Continuing south out of Big Sur you will next encounter Morro Bay, which is famous primarily for the big ass Rock Of Gibraltar like birdshit stained encrusted rock parked in the bay.
That, and their omelettes.
A few miles futher south and you're in San Luis Obispo...the home of TVO.
It's a great college town and it's home to TVO.
-Now, like earlier in your trip with Ashland, if you really wanna score some more points with wifey, which you'll likely need to do in order to make up for what you did to her in Big Sur, your next stop ought to be in Solvang, near Vandenberg Air Force Base. (Loads of scary things happen at V.A.F.B. You won't get to see shit. Be thankful.)
Solvang is a kitschy Copenhagen (that'd be in Denmark, for our friends from K.C.) themed tourist town, smack dab in the middle of nowhere. It's all Danish things everywhere and the kids will gorge themselves on chocolate crack and pastries.
Your wife will later gorge herself on you, since you had the imagination to treat her to a uniquely ordinary German dinner.
Now, if you happen to actually have any K.C. friends with you on the trip you might simply skip Solvang, since there's an Anderson's Split Pea Soup restaurant right there on 101.
They'll be in hog heaven.
-Next up heading south on Hwy 1 and 101 (they often merge) is Santa Barbara.
Santa Barbara is many people's idea of the Best Place To Live On Earth. I'd certainly number it among my Top 5.
Santa Barbara is the quintessential California University Beach Town. It's where our Rosetta Stone of Message Board Smackdom, Jim Rome, got his start. It's all Beautiful People and Insane Money. It's Lamborghinis and trust fund college hotties set against the only east-west mountain range in America. (Or so I'm told. Dins will doubtless confirm or dispel.) The weather is perfect, always. The scenery is perfect, always. The dining is always incredible and your wife will insist that you find a way for the whole family to pack up and move there.
Unless you make it all the way down to Newport Beach, La Jolla and other affluent beach towns south of L.A. down to San Diego then Santa Barbara will likely represent the most awesome little town you'll ever visit.
You'll want to pick up a nice Ducati or a 911 S4 while you're there, just to help you pull some U.C.S.B. tail.
-Okay, since you said you're not going to include L.A. in this trip then it's time to begin heading east.
First thing you'll do out of Santa Barbara is to meander around highways 150 and 33, which will land you in Ojai, which is a great little scenic town that's just perfect for enjoying some after dinner cemetery sex with the wife.
Seriously. Killer refracted moonlight.
Back out on Hwy 150 you'll find the land becoming ever more bleak. You're now heading into the part of California made famous by Daniel Day Lewis's boring ass (but well acted!) epic,
There Will Be Blood.
Great acting, shitty scenery.
Unfortunately however you do have to pass through the armpit of California in order to get to more Good Stuff, which is what we talked about earlier: Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequioa National Park.
You may consider Death Valley the enflamed hemorrhoid of California. Still, since it'll be summer, and you're a bad ass, you gotta go there.
Yosemite is the northernmost spot on this eastern return leg so that'll be your jumping off point to get to Tahoe. Just head north on 395 along the eastern face of the Sierras, through all the sparsely populated injun territories, and before you know it you'll be in Carson City, Nevada.
Ain't nuthin' there but a couple good breakfast spots and one good Italian restaurant.
"How in fuck is this place a state capital?" you'll hear rising up from the backseat.
Just east of Carson City however is a real live (restored) Old Western boom town, based on the silver rush which gave Nevada its state nickname, "The Oriental Bluehairs Playing Nickel Slots State."
Or "The Silver State," maybe. Whatever.
In any case, Virginia City is a nice couple hours. Your kids will thrill to seeing coins squashed into squashed coins and your wife will Rumplewife herself on ice cream from an ersatz whorehouse/ice cream parlor.
-Next up is Tahoe, a half hour north.
With apologies to Goobs, Lake Tahoe could rightfully be called God's Country. (So could Santa Barbara, especially if your idea of heaven includes copious amounts of nubile trust fund slut slit rather than hordes of tipped over cows.)
Lake Tahoe is why picture postcards were invented. The buffets ain't bad either, and neither are the vampire showgirls cloying away to get Sammy Hagar's attention.
-Tahoe, back to Portland? Might as well go through Susanville, since it was named after my wife (or so she swears), and then up to Bend and northwest to Portland.
You gotta go through northeastern California if for no other reason than to see proof that there is no such thing as "California," in terms of being able to characterize it in any single way. Northeast California has about as much to do with the rest of the country's popular perceptions of California as downtown Santa Monica has to do with downtown Ulan Bator.
Bend, Oregon? Umm, it has Rob Muzzy. Rob Muzzy, and lotsa wind, heat and snow. Rob Muzzy, lotsa wind, heat, snow and meth labs.
It's the capital of central Oregon.
Kaboom!
-Portland has a lot of rain, which Dins denies. It also has loads of bridges, which nobody can deny. The Rose Garden arena is right there on the freeway, that much I can also tell you.
Additionally, I can tell you Portland has one of the coolest Jamaican restaurants I've ever sampled, and that even includes Jamaican restuarants in Jamaica. In this Portland restaurant I enjoyed jerk
steak (??!!) while looking right at the shaved snatch of a gorgeous twenty something co-ed sitting up on a high stool at the bar, her short skirt concealing not even a little of her own frequently jerked flank steak.
Portland has the only strip joint I've ever seen where the patrons sit outside at picnic tables and the C+ stripper slunts grind away between your knees beneath collapsed picnic table awnings.
Susan found it highly amusing
and sad.
I liked Portland.
Enjoy.
....no, really.......that hasn't happened since '04
