Travelogue IV: LA Living

Yesterday was my dad's 82nd birthday, so we drove from his place in the Coachella Valley to my sister's place in Los Angeles (well, Van Nuys; she lives in the Soup Nazi's neighborhood, I'm told, which is cool and all, but not nearly as cool as when my eight-year-old self learned that my grandpa lived a couple blocks away from Batman). So Dad got to hang out with everyone for his birthday—his hubby, his sister-in-law, his kids, his son-in-law, and his grandson. (And a friend of my sister's that was visiting, but I don't think he'd met her before.)

Pretty low-key, my brother-in-law made a kind of Mexican buffet and we had cake and I quizzed my nephew on what episodes might have been shot at Vazquez Rocks (he failed the quiz and agreed to study up). Dad had a good time, which was the most important part of the day. I hadn't seen my nephew in a while and as per usual he failed to match his prior physique by becoming something like two feet taller in the interim. Plus he's growing his hair out like Shaun Cassidy for some reason. I dig it, it's retro.

Around the corner from their house is a home that traditionally does a huge Halloween production with their front yard, so we went and had a look at this year's edition. Pretty impressive, though I think I would have preferred last year's, which my sister described as having a kind of "Area 51" theme. Still, a lot of work going into this one, which apparently is still being added to judging from the tools and materials seen on site here and there.

My brother-in-law does a smaller-scale Halloween yard every year, which is also in progress. Sadly, my photo is poor, but anyway:

 

Of course, we also had to get the marking-of-time family photo, and whenever we do these I am struck by the fact that I actually do look my age, which kinda bums me out. I mean, for the longest time I was the skinniest of skinny dudes, the beanpole, the stickman, and now I have a gut and my face is considerably pudgier. At 150 lbs, I don't think anyone would judge me overweight except me, and that only because I didn't crack 115 until my thirties and thus my baseline self-image norm is, well, less than 150 and without a belly and flabby pecs that can be discerned through my T-shirt.

I cropped the lower part of the pic a bit to eliminate the worst of it. Everyone else looks good, though. :)

On the return drive, which is considerably more than 100 miles, we encountered the only truly bad traffic of my trip thus far. Much as had happened that same day (or the day before? I read about it the same day, anyway) on I-5 back home, someone was on foot in the Interstate and was fatally struck by a car at freeway speed. We didn't know that in the moment, though, all we knew was that five lanes of traffic had come to a standstill, with sporadic movement of a few feet at a time. It took about an hour to cover six miles, then we arrived at the accident site, which by then had been largely cleared except for some late examinations to make sure nothing potentially important to investigators was left behind.

When in Los Angeles, do as the Angelinos do and spend an hour in your car to travel six miles.

 

Back here on Dad's street there aren't many kids for whom to decorate yards in Halloween regalia, but there is one house across the street that has some pretty frightening stuff displayed for the season:

 

That's a damn sight scarier that any goblin or ghost you could conjure.

Tagged Traveling   |   Posted on October 28, 2024 at 11:59pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Travelogue III: Lost on Capella IV

Day 3

(Or, "Which way to Raffi's camper?" Or, "There's never a Metron around when you need one.")

Thursday's leg of the trip involved boring scenery but high-speed traffic concentration on possibly the least pleasant stretch of Interstate 5 that there is, though there's competition for that. But I turned away from the Interstate to make a bit of a detour to a particular nerd attraction: Vazquez Rocks.

A favorite location for Hollywood studios to venture to, the state park has featured in roughly a bazillion TV and film productions—Westerns, mostly, but plenty of other things where a desert environment with some visual interest is called for—including, of course, Star Trek, where it has doubled for several alien planets as well as for itself in an episode of Picard. I can hardly believe I'd never been there before this.

 

 

I arrived at the little visitor's center a bit after noon and procured a map of the park, which noted the relatively small area containing the "famous rocks" and a short 3/4 mile trail leading to it. (You can drive to that spot, there's a large dirt parking area suitable for a big studio trailer and a production base to set up, but I preferred to hike it.) Soon I found myself wandering in the imagined steps of Bill Shatner as he tried to evade a Gorn and De Kelley as he tried to lead a pregnant wife of the Te'er to the safety of secluded caves.

It's impressive how little actual area can be manipulated by the camera to appear vast. The park itself is plenty big, but there's only so much of it one could get to with 1960s-era TV cameras and recording equipment. The same formations used in the "Arena" episode for the Metron planet appear in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, shot from slightly different angles, to form Vulcan cliffsides. The canyons of Capella IV from "Friday's Child" are a few yards from the ones in "Who Watches the Watchers."

And not for nothing, but props to young Bill Shatner—these things are not easy climbs. I went up to what I think is the spot he hurled the styrofoam boulder down on the poor guy in the Gorn suit from and it took some doing. Getting down was even more challenging. (Of course, if I were still 35, as I continue to be in my mind and am repeatedly frustrated to discover I am not, it probably would have been a breeze.)

[EDIT: In observing a still from "Arena," I now see that I was fooled by good camerawork and stagecraft; Shatner actually, it seems, pushed the boulder off from a relatively low point near the parking area, they merely made it look like it was up where I climbed to. Still, props to Shatner anyway, more to director Joseph Pevney and DP Jerry Finnerman.]

The real challenge, though, came a little later.

After satisfying my nerd pilgrimage, I headed back along the trail to the visitor's center. At least, I thought I had. At some point I inadvertently strayed from the trail proper, thinking I was on track but in fact was probably following the paths made by fellow wandering space tourists and soon realized I was not where I thought I should be. On the one hand, this was fine, I got to see more of the big park. On the other hand, I had only planned on a 3/4 mile hike back and I'd not brought any water with me.

This became a problem. I'd relied on my sense of direction to go at least toward the visitor's center, but my internal compass failed me and it was high one-p.m. PDT, with the sun directly overhead and offering no navigational help. Away from the "famous rocks" there weren't many opportunities for shade and I was getting dehydrated. At one point I neared some barbed-wire fencing, which I knew from the map was the border of the wildlife preserve and nowhere close to the visitor center. Shit.

Trail

 

Not a trail

 

Not from an episode. Probably built for some western film back in the day. It served well as a rest point while I tried to reorient myself.

 

I was completely turned around and had added a mile or more to my return hike if I could find my way. When I started to shiver a bit—bad news when it's approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit—I had a brief fear of collapsing and becoming meat for a le-matya. But I pressed on and eventually came to a trail marker. Not the trail that would get me where I needed to go, but still a marker to refer to and a trail to follow. It led to a trail junction and I got to an auxiliary parking area, from which I just followed the dirt road back to the visitor's center, a little shaky but no longer in danger of being a meal for Vulcan predators. I downed half a dozen cups of water from the center's water cooler, used the facilities, and returned to my car only mildly worse for wear. Despite re-hydrating and eating half a sandwich from my cooler the dehydration headache persisted for the rest of the day and overnight, but a giant soda from AM/PM and a generous use of my car's A/C as I continued along my way served me well.

The remaining journey was through the high desert, near Mojave and Edwards Air Force Base and through some desolate blah California landscape between a few small towns. I chose to avoid Interstates again, adding maybe half an hour to the drive, but I wasn't in any hurry and arrived at my dad's place before dark, having survived the dangers of Capella and the hunting grounds of the ten tribes of the Te'er.

But what of Lazarus?

Tagged Star Trek, Traveling   |   Posted on October 25, 2024 at 1:46pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Travelogue II: Rocks and Shoals and Redwoods

Day 2

I started my Wednesday in a Travelodge in Newport, OR, where they apparently rig the shower faucets to give juuuust enough hot water to make it tolerable. During the night a pickup truck parked directly outside my room had its car alarm go off repeatedly. Not a great night's sleep.

Anyway, first world problem.

The Oregon coast in the daytime is really something, and though I missed some of the best parts in the dark the night before, I made several stops off the 101 highway to Oregon state beaches and little towns. (A couple of fun notes from the road: An access street off the highway to a beach residential area was called "Lois Ln"; a coffee shop in Coos Bay is called "The Human Bean." Whatever, I was amused.)

Beaches in Oregon tend to be small but pretty, with giant boulder formations just offshore and varying scales of cliff formations not far up/down from whatever sandy area you may find yourself at:

The 101 highway here is a far cry more interesting than an Interstate, mostly a two-lane affair through little burghs all the way down to the California border, which gives way to a noticeable transition in scenery. From Crescent City, one enters the Redwoods State and National Park area.

Redwoods is beautiful, and to really experience it you'd need to stop and camp and spend a few days. I was just passing through in a matter of several hours, stopping a couple of times for short hikes on trails near the 101 that looped back around. The really good stuff would be away from the highway, but that'll have to keep for another time. I hiked, drove leisurely through scenic bypasses, hiked again, then it got dark and I made may way south to Eureka and beyond.

 

There will be a brief delay whilst we wait for a herd of deer to clear the roadway. Well, "brief"; maybe 20 minutes.

 

By the time I got to the Bay Area it was midnight or so, and I decided to just push on and make up some time by cutting over to Interstates. Boring stretches of road, but not a lot of traffic at that hour and it's dark, you can't see anything anyway beyond the semi trucks you whiz by at 75 miles an hour. I got too tired and stopped at Avenal for a few hours' nap.

Audio entertainment consisted of podcasts—Pod Save America, Poscast World Series preview edition (in which Mike Schur lays out the ideal life of Aaron Judge with blissful family fulfillment and old age and exactly zero World Series rings, plus plots how the Mets will wrest Juan Soto away from the Yankees over the offseason with several Brinks trucks worth of cash; and Jason Benetti waxes poetic about keeping an audience interested while calling games for the second-worst season of White Sox baseball in recent memory), Bob Cesca, Delta Flyers—and various mix CDs of 1970s pop/rock. Mileage report: Still frustrated by the whole gas-tank-not-really-full thing, but I think I'm doing about 50 MPG, slightly better than what the onboard computer readout says. (BTW, gasoline gets more expensive as you go south: $3.45 in Olympia, $3.69 outside Crescent City, $3.89 near Oakland, $4.09 in Victorville, CA (next day). Cheapest in Oregon, where one place had it under $3.00, but I didn't need to buy any there.)

 

OK, who names these things? How about "Giant coniferous wood-bearing plant, evergreen"? Or "Old Hoss Redwood?" But sure, fine, "Big Tree."

Tagged Traveling   |   Posted on October 25, 2024 at 2:46am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Travelogue I

Day 1

Giving my new-to-me car "a proper shakedown," as Mr. Scott might say, I am driving my way down to southern California in my annual visit to see Dad and Marty over Dad's birthday. It can be done in a day and a half, and I have done, but I opted to take an extra day and take the coastal route, at least for the northern half of the trip.

Southwest Washington state is nice enough (though I could have done without the several TRUMP and REICHERT signs plastered near the roadways), but the Oregon coast is the reason for coming this way, along with the general appeal of passing through a bunch of small towns. Astoria was a nice stop, though I didn't see much of it. Driving along the north Oregon coast at night was nice, though a drawback that I hadn't thought of in advance made me question my decision: fog. Fog makes it pretty tough to appreciate the surroundings while passing through, plus it slows things down quite a bit.

Oh well, tomorrow will be Oregon in daylight, followed by a stop at Redwoods National Park for a hike, then a nighttime drive to the Bay Area and a start on the next leg of the drive.

The shakedown on the Prius is positive so far, having done some maintenance ahead of time including replacing the cabin fan, which wasn't hard and yet somehow still resulted in my bruising a rib. Not sure how that happened. But the car handles well, the cruise control got its first use since I've owned it (sweet!), the sound system is a big improvement over the old Subaru's.

I wanted to get a sense of the real mileage on the thing, but that's proving to be tricky. This generation of Prius has a kind of expandable bladder gas tank that when completely full is almost 12 gallons, but only fills to about 2/3 or 3/4 before a gas pump will stop because it's "full." So, based on info I gleaned form Prius folk on the Internet, I let the gauge get down to one pip, estimating that meant about 1 to 1.5 gallons remaining, then pumped past the "full" stop, forcing in 10 gallons plus a bit. It spit a little back out when I removed the pump thanks to the compression of the bladder, but I think I got it to actual full rather than nominally full so we'll see how far I get before the gauge goes down to one pip again.

Tagged Traveling   |   Posted on October 23, 2024 at 12:49am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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