Tuesday, March 19th 2013
Los Angeles – Santa Maria
We left the motel relatively early.
Even the motel looked like the prison, the room was fine and the
night there was good. And we enjoyed the same weather again, foggy,
cloudy and gray, so gray. We had to drive through the airport
(traffic, but livable). Nothing special. We drove for a moment and
turned on the side streets to see canals in Venice Beach town. We
found it, parked and looked around a bit. Interesting place (next to
the crazy beach), quiet and peaceful. We booked the motel (after some
what unpleasant experience around the airport) in Santa Maria, so we
had longer drive this day. In no time, we were in Santa Monica. It
did not looked too glamorous or extra pretty. There was a pier with
an amusement part on it. It was quite early, but people were already
there (I guess thanks god for tourists and image of LA). We walked on
the pier, read some facts about it (it was almost gone, they
collected money and restored it – how familiar story). The town
(with high end shopping) did not really appeal to us, so we left and
were driving away from greater LA.
I guess we were done with “the big
city”. We were more less following the shoreline heading to Malibu.
Again, I think we were picturing something served by media image and
we were not finding it. Main road and quite often the shore blocked
by row of houses sitting next to each other just on the beach. Weird.
Time to time there were some “castles” on the hills just right to
the road. There was very limited space to live on. We discovered that
Malibu was long stretch of the road. We stopped several times, tried
to enjoy the scenery and ocean, but were some what unhappy with the
weather. As well obviously kind of underwhelmed by Malibu. We stopped
by the municipal pier that had a building at the end. Closed
restaurant and shop with trinkets. Apparently that restaurant
appeared in movie Taken 2. Who knew? We drove and drove, found some
nice houses and did not really understand the living on the top of
the hill in the “castle”, but … Hard to say … it was pretty.
A bit more coastline driving and then
we hit naval base that was covering big piece of land. It got really
strange, a bit trashy maybe. We were closed to Oxnard and Ventura. We
detoured and drove to see Port Huenene and the lighthouse. Pretty
suddenly, between the road and naval base, we were in the middle of
the farm fields. Lettuce and strawberries and probably bunch of other
products. Many fields had a sign of Dole company. And there were some
people working. We got some strawberries again. We got to the port
area, where we found a park and beach. The lighthouse was far away
enclosed by the port. It looked like there was a walk way along the
shore to the lighthouse, but it was way too far. The weather was
getting better. We drove on neighborhood streets to the town of
Oxnard. Many empty store fronts, nothing special, looked pretty poor.
I think we did not even stop there. We continued to Ventura (more
less connected with Oxnard). It looked like Ventura was richer
neighbor. We parked, walked to the visitor's center, got some maps
and talked for a moment with the lady. She apparently spent a year at
Lake Tahoe but could not stay there because of the cold of winters.
We walked a sliver around and got lost trying to get to the beach. We
thought about that and figured out that our timing and already 9 seen
piers is good enough and got back on main road and left.
We got back on our road number 1 and
continued driving. The landscape did not change much, we saw some sun
and it was really nice. J. was getting less cranky as she did not
like and enjoy LA or its greater area. She preferred the more quiet
shoreline. We stopped along the way (not many times, as we were on
highway). We drove towards the downtown, the town was nice and green.
We got lost a bit, turned around and got to the downtown. There was a
street closed for a farmer's market. We parked near by and walked
through it. Shortly before and during our walk we enjoy sun and nice
spanish style architecture, well preserved too. What was sad and less
enjoyable was the commercial aspect of the town. One the nice old
buildings was hosting Macy's. The heart of the town was one big
shopping mall, anything you can think of was there. Very mixed
feelings about that. We left that behind and drove to the shoreline.
Another pier, beaches and parks and boats boats boats. We stopped on
the top of the Shoreline park and looked down on the area of the
pier. It was actually sunny and warm, really pleasant and we enjoyed
our time just looking down and listening to the ocean. Within
probably less than five miles, we stopped at another beach (on the
hill we saw people with gliders). Much smaller parking, small
restaurant and nice beach, actually much nicer, less crowded and
surrounded by some hills and cliffs and rocks (not just huge flat
sandy beach).
When you think you are not in Kansas
anymore … We left Santa Barbara and left as well our route number 1
to cross the hills on different way. We climbed up the hills (views
of the bay and the city). All the human creations were pretty much
gone. We were in the nature. The rolling hills, green and lush, some
farm land, some burgers (I called cows that way) and a vista point.
It was (still) incredible. Almost no human activity, just hills, lake
and so much green. J. was pretty happy by now. There was a lake, but
we did not stop. It was pretty drive in the nature, I guess more to
our taste. J. was looking through some of the brochures and there was
something about Solvang, the danish town in Central California. It
was not on our way, but it was not too far, so we figured out why
not. More farming on those pretty rolling hills. A lot of wines. We
were not expecting much. Entering the town, there was a traffic jam
(after we saw almost no cars for a long while). The town looked
normal. After one of the turns, we “found it”. It was actually
pretty big “shopping mall” in “danish style”. It was the
beginning of the evening, the shops were closed or closing. We parked
and walked around a bit. It was much bigger than we thought. It
somewhat looked “danish” but you would never found anything like
this in Denmark. But … There was a mission next to the downtown
(closed), several wind mills and all the buildings in the same style.
Now apparently only about 10 percent of people of Solvang claims
danish ancestry. Funny. Really nice stop
We drove through and gave Solvang last
look. The landscape did not change. We got on the freeway and were
heading to Santa Maria for a night. We found a motel (just off the
freeway and main street) and checked in. We had to go to grocery
store to get some food. After that, we just looked over the maps and
talked a bit about next day and finished our day. Lazy.
