Solvang (99) to Los Angeles & LA (100-105)

Due to a number of horrible stories I’d been told of tangling with overpasses, underpasses and LA traffic with a large rig, the thought of driving through Los Angeles had caused me some apprehension. Nevertheless, our day had finally come to tackle this hurdle, so we left Solvang with a little nervousness of what’s to come. We chose a campground to the south east of LA in the hope we could stay quite clear of traffic, in and around the CBD and our route, if we could follow it correctly shouldn’t be too bad.



Highway 1 to the right

The drive from Solvang to our campground was only about 280kms so slow traffic wouldn’t cause us to arrive late at the campground. We followed the 101 south along the coast and noticed for quite some distance, we were parallel to Highway 1 that was literally beside the water. Someone had very kindly made Highway 1 wide enough to allow many, many RVs to camp alongside the road and enjoy a beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean. The only drawback would be if the prevailing westerly winds became too strong.

I can’t remember if I mentioned the occasional eucalyptus trees we saw between San Francisco and here. Quite an unexpected site and we were almost tempted to stop and take some photos....of gum trees? Oh dear, perhaps we’re more homesick than I thought!

Picking strawberries

The highway also took us through the city of San Buenaventura, commonly called Ventura that brought memories back of the song sung in the ‘70s (that’s 1970s thanks girls, not the 19th century!) by the group America, Ventura Highway; here’s a link if you’d like to reminisce: Ventura Highway

It’s great how music from MY ancient era can help pass away hours of driving. Unfortunately for the girls, the Chev radio is almost always tuned to XM 5, a 24/7 radio station playing music from the 50s, the early years of rock and roll and latter years of the crooners and groups that sang in “harmony”, something that seems to be missing today with rap, hip-hop, funk and ooncy-ooncy stuff – guess I’m showing my age again. How I wish we could get XM radio in Australia, but alas, it’s not broadcast there.

Now where was I?....oh yes, heading for LA. We passed quite a number of fruit orchards, but as we approached to about 80 kms north of LA, the roads started to widen, the traffic became heavier and all signs of the countryside vanished. “Homer” was doing a good job but was being very carefully watched by Grace who was studying our atlas with an intense gaze. The roads widened to 6, then 7, then 8 lanes each way and we really needed to make sure we planned ahead in the selection of lanes to prevent us shooting off one of the many overpasses.

The traffic wasn’t too heavy and was moving at a fast pace requiring us to drive at about 55mph, just so we wouldn’t become a mobile chicane. The courteous nature of other drivers we had experienced in the rest of the US seemed to have evaporated, and with a few exceptions it was self-interest first. Through very skilful navigation (thanks Grace and Homer) we made it, unscathed but a little mentally weary, to our campsite in San Dimas, a suburb about 45 minutes drive (in light traffic) to Hollywood and LA’s CBD.



Rowena with Grace & Rochelle

Our intention while we were in LA was to omit seeing places such as Disneyland until we arrived in Florida where we will see Disneyworld. If we saw everything exciting here and left a limited selection of exciting places to visit while we were on the eastern side of the USA, the girls would have nothing to look forward to. We also became aware of upcoming bad weather that was expected mid-way through our 10-night stay.

Before we had completed setting up the Sierra we had our first visitor, Charlie, who was staying alone in a caravan nearby our site. Charlie, who has a Filipina fiancé, came over to say hello and see if he could help. He befriended us immediately and offered to organise firewood for the open fireplace beside our site.

Our view of the LA skyscrapers in
the distance - to the left of centre

Grace had organised us all to have dinner with Rowena & her husband Tommy – Rowena is a former high school friend whom I’ve met but haven’t seen for a number of years. Rowena and Tommy were married 18 months ago and as we’d never met Tommy, the dinner was a good opportunity to chat. Accordingly, we all (Charlie included) headed down to a lovely restaurant for dinner. It was a great night and as we still had much to chat about, we suggested having a BBQ at our place the following Monday.

Schoolwork was again to take preference as it was now Dec 10th and the school year in Australia was almost at an end. We still had time to complete what we could and post it back to their teachers, hopefully in time to be marked and assessed. Charlie came over a couple of times through the day and kindly lit the fire outside that evening – one of his children, Erika came over and we all sat around toasting marshmallows. He also took the opportunity to call his fiancé and let Grace and her talk.

With Jessica at her place

Saturday was also set aside to catch up with Jessica, someone we’d never met but had spoken to by phone a few times. Jessica’s sister Dinia lives in Sydney and Dinia, her husband John and kids are friends of ours. Jessica lives in Hollywood and we organised to meet at her place late morning, have lunch and a local look about. Thanks again to Homer, we arrived without a problem and parked in their driveway beside Jessica’s house. There wasn’t a lot of room to spare and seemed to exacerbate the size of the Chev.

Outside Grauman's Theatre

It was a delight to finally meet Jessica face-to-face and chat about things in common. We also met Kevin, a very good friend of Jessica’s and after chatting, found out we’d both experienced a “life-changing” moment when Kevin’s heart stopped beating (not conducive to great health) and was hospitalised for quite some time. Just as my stroke 5 years ago had caused me to reflect on what’s important in life, Kevin had done the same and had placed all his expensive business suits to the back of the wardrobe, as if putting the material things of life into perspective.

We walked to a local Thai restaurant and I’m sure Jessica ordered so much food it would have severely impinged upon the available food for the rest of the patrons! From there we followed their car to Hollywood Boulevard, parked and sauntered up the Walk of Fame looking at names of many well-known and some totally unfamiliar names along the way. We stopped to watch many of the street performers and locals dressed in movie character costumes of all sorts, noting there was more than one Michael Jackson impersonator....they didn’t appear to be pleased about that and I wondered if there was a roster or schedule of who does what?



We weren't alone!

The large number of tourists was all bundled onto one side of the road as the other was closed and being prepared for the premiere showing of Tron that night. We had fun trying to see how hand and foot prints fitted into the actor’s impressions made outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and then realised time was getting away from us.

Jessica and Kevin had been invited to a friend’s birthday celebration that was to commence at 3 and they’d requested we come along as well. Ping was turning 29 (ahem, not what the candle on the cake said) and as it was almost 4 o’clock it was way past time to leave - still, on the way to Ping’s they led us to a street for a photo opportunity to see the Hollywood sign on the hill. There’s something called “Filipino time” that allows you to arrive well after the scheduled start time without noting your tardiness; however, we were even late for Filipino time! As Ping is also a Filipina, perhaps......oh shute, we were to be very late indeed!

We were made feel very welcome at Ping’s party and the Filipino family who owned the house had planted many fruit trees native to the Philippines; calamansi (small lemon/limes) and guava as well as grapefruit etc. Rochelle made a new friend there, MJ was a bit younger than her and they had a great time together running around playing all types of games. MJ has an older sister Rio who is a little younger than Meryla and as all the children “hit it off” that night, the parents, Sally and Mario agreed to join us with Jessica and Kevin for a BBQ tomorrow (Sunday) at our site.

The weather stayed fine for both our planned BBQs and the girls also enjoyed playing with MJ’s younger brother, Coco. During our BBQ with Rowena and Tommy the following day, Sally picked up Chantelle and Meryla and took them out with Rio to watch a movie.

Each night prior to the rain, we sat outside at the campfire and watched a number of skunks wandering about the campground. They seemed quite friendly although I wasn’t going to get anywhere as near to them as Charlie tried. He’d place small pieces of bread on the ground enticing them closer and closer. The nearest any one of the got would have been about 3~4 metres, however, when they turned to walk away, I noted Charlie was also keen to put distance between himself and the skunk as well.

Charlie with one of our visitors

One night he apparently saw a racoon under the Chev and waited till after midnight to see whether one of our internal lights came on prior to knocking. As we didn’t waken, he told us the following day. I also met another Lowther at the registration office. Eula Lowther’s family are all from Ohio and I was the first Lowther that Eula had met at the campground.

The rain arrived half way through our stay and continued till we left. There was to be a little break on Wednesday 15th so we headed off for the day to see Universal studios which was an interesting, but expensive exercise. Meryla decided not to come which reduced the cost from enormously expensive to very expensive – our entrance fees and selected food for the 4 of us was over $585!

Tommy listening to me waffling

Rain then precluded any further trips out and I needed to break out the gumboots as the grass around the Sierra was sodden. The nearby lake seemed to have risen in level by more than 1 metre and although schoolwork was still required, after days of rain the gloomy weather started to grate on everyone’s nerves. There was no wifi in the campground and anyone who needed internet connection was required to do so at the reception area. Rowena had a day off on Thursday and picked up Grace for the two of them to spend some valuable “girl” time together. Jessica and Kevin came over for dinner on Saturday; we had another lovely evening and bade our farewells at the end of the night.

The houses behind the campground
amongst the mist and rain

It was good to meet everyone while we were in LA, but touristy things we’d like to have seen such as Venice Beach and the pier at Santa Monica, to name just a couple would have to wait for another day. It was also interesting to note that we were warned by quite a few people not to go to downtown LA as the gangs in that area made it far too dangerous. As that’s only a stone’s throw from Hollywood, we took heed of their warnings and will remember that for our next trip to LA.

We decided to spend Christmas in San Diego in the hope of finding better weather and left on Mon 20th in.....constant rain.