Hello again, reader! It's been a busy summer, and I considered writing about a few different things (conference, trip to DC, visit from Niko, reunion visit from Emily), but I'm just going to skip over those because I really want to write about California. A little backstory, especially for those of you who don't know Teddy (or don't understand our relationship): we have a tendency to get a little bit drunk and then goad each other into making questionably sound decisions -- for example, road tripping across California for a week together. Back in April, I spent an afternoon in Northfield with Teddy, driving around town, drinking at local cideries and breweries. We started talking about wanting to go to wineries, which led naturally to talking about wanting to go to California, and before we knew it the seed of the trip had been planted. A few weeks later we had our tickets, and a week and a half ago we left. I'm going to write this blog post categorically instead of chronologically, mostly because I need some kind of filter, but also because this is my blog and I do what I want.
Things that made me so excited that I made a noise that was notable enough for Teddy to comment on it:
-Seeing the Las Vegas strip for the first time on our way out of Nevada
-Driving through Hinkley ("Teddy, this is where they poisoned the water!")
-Watching the fog start to clear over the mountains surrounding Highway 1 on our way up the California coast
-Every new vista we saw at Yosemite, which is possibly the most unbelievably beautiful place I've ever been to
-Literally every time we saw a sign for a dam
-Driving through the High Sierras
-Pretty much every adorable mountain town (especially Sonora! Go to Sonora it's adorable!)/craft brewery/street fair we stopped at
-Seeing the Milky Way a mile from our hotel outside of Death Valley
-Experiencing all the incredible Bureau of Reclamation propaganda at Hoover Dam
-More or less everything in Las Vegas, which I absolutely loved, to my surprise
Times when I felt like Grace Kelly driving in To Catch a Thief:
-On Highway 1
-In Death Valley, before I almost broke the car (whoops)
Times when I thought Teddy and I were going to die:
-When we slept in a converted school bus on an ashram in Salinas
-While driving through Death Valley and the whole car shook every time I tried to brake
-While we were stopped in Death Valley and Teddy noticed a huge gouge in one of the tires
-While driving up Highway 1 and the tire pressure indicator light went off
-Basically almost always while driving
Things that made me want to re-read or write a revised edition of Cadillac Desert:
-Seeing the Colorado River and Hoover Dam from the plane on our way in
-All the almond trees in Kern County
-All the uprooted almond trees
-Seeing all the dried lakes on the atlas we brought
-So much brown all over the state
-Ads about the importance of water for agriculture
-Notices in hotel rooms about conserving water
-Dams! Especially Hoover Dam, which was obviously stupendously impressive, but the tour of which also, let's say, glossed over some of the more controversial history of the dam and the allotment of water to the Colorado river basin states
Hotel/Airbnb reviews:
-Paso Robles: 5/5 -- very comfortable, the guys who run it provided samples of local wines, they bickered adorably/hilariously, there were goats
-Salinas: 2/5 -- converted school bus on an ashram, more goats, Teddy kept trying to convince me the people running the ashram were going to murder us, felt pressure to participate in 6 AM yoga (but did not)
-Merced: 3/5 -- hotel was cheap and reasonably comfortable, but the A/C didn't work that well (which is tough when it's 105 out), and cops kept driving through the parking lot, which didn't inspire a lot of confidence
-Bishop: 4/5 -- it was close enough to the local brewery to walk, which was pretty much all I cared about at that point
-Death Valley Junction: 3/5 -- terrifyingly isolated and in a state of frankly impressive disrepair -- the room made me feel like we were Bonnie and Clyde, which was honestly sort of a plus for me. It was also an old opera house, apparently, which possibly added to its cache, but probably not enough. The biggest negative was that, by this point in the trip, we were very tired of "Peanut Butter Surprise" (which is what Teddy called peanut butter on a tortilla), and the closest food was in the less than charming town of Pahrump, Nevada. Lotta confederate flags.
-Las Vegas: 5/5 -- we stayed at the MGM Grand, which was hilarious; I was sold from the moment the screens behind the concierge desk started playing a Nicki Minaj video while I was waiting in line to check in.
Things I liked about Las Vegas:
-First of all, everything.
-The hilarious alcoholic slushies in those giant plastic cups
-All the lights and the people and the noise and the spectacle
-The very real possibility (that I only half-jokingly tried to convince Teddy of) that we could get married and divorced by Elvis (and hopefully different Elvises)
-Feeling the desperate urge to be extremely rich, in a different and more intense way than I've ever wanted to be rich before
-Going into all the different hotels and casinos, especially the Bellagio
-Low-key knowing you're being scammed a little bit, and not caring that much because it's part of the charm
-Close to Hoover Dam
All in all, it was a great trip, and I'm ready to move to California if I can swing it. It's good to be home, and to be able to deal with all the real life issues I could only realistically worry about while on our trip, but I'm hoping I'll be able to head back to CA soon (I'm looking out for my subpoena, if you're reading this, DOJ), and I'm already planning a trip back to Las Vegas to see Britney with my sister next year.
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