We may have forgotten to mention that the dog loved the previous day's visit to De Oro beach park. She especially enjoyed digging at the high water mark and unearthing matter that had previously been alive, or at least smelled that way. It was actually the first time we had seen the dog roll into a pile of offal. Hmmm - part of our previous evening's festivities involved a deep sink, a dog reveling in added attention, a bunch of rags and a delightful ginger conditioning shampoo that had been liberated from some hotel in days gone by.
The morning found us much fonder of Bandit - as you can well imagine.
And so, preparations for departure continued until about 10:45 when we tearfully said "'till again" to Ralph and Jacquie.
We headed down the highway constantly checking the outside temperature as we sallied slowly south simply seeking sunlight to warm our thick blooded bods. The temperature rose to a balmy 72 degrees before we finally pulled over east of LA.
Beautiful wispy clouds and an oceanscape.....until you see the oil rigs out in the middle of the sea.
Not sure what the name of this one is......but you can see a bridge going out to a little island.
Oh yeah - the title of the page is "Escape from LA"... well, as the faithful reader knows, we landed in LA on November 22 and proceeded to collect the jeep, meander around, buy a trailer and visit friends. Well it was now over a week later and we were north of LA by 200 miles and headed south to the warmer route east.
I'll tell you about the escape, but meanwhile...
One of Sharon's favorite towns north of LA was Thousand Oaks. The trees were turning colors, the valley was spectacular with soft rolling hills that looked like casually dropped velveteen blankets, the houses were hacienda style, the traffic was moderate and it appeared to be a really, really, nice place to live. Sharon was ready to move, again.
Then we got closer to LA.
Years ago I (Doug) had heard that LA had 14 major highways and you couldn't get anywhere. Believe me, that's still true. After a few hours of battling traffic on four and five lane highways, cutting our way through the brown haze that LAians call air and following route 210 (to 10) east through LA, Burbank, Pasadena, Montecito, Santa Barbara and all the other towns you've heard about on TV and the movies (Oh, oh - we went through San Dimas - made famous in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure - which we all know is a MUST SEE movie) and finally landed in Beaumont at the local Elk's hooked to their electric and water - pheeeewwww.
Sharon, on the other hand, was educated by an upper cabinet door in these tight spaces. Seems you can't leave a door open, stoop down and then try and stand up quickly. We took turns rubbing her noggin.
Tomorrow should have us at the HOT SPRINGS in Palm Springs followed by a visit to the Joshua Tree National Park.
We plan on continuing East to Phoenix-ish and then a straight shot North to Denver. Let's see how that works out - stay tuned!
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