We're starting to put together a big blowout vacation next year, renting a car for two weeks and driving from Seattle to LA, stopping off in Portland and SF for a few days on the way.
Any tips for the best places to include, things to do and what to avoid would be gratefully received.
The year before last, I was invited on a road trip, we did San Francisco to LA and back again. It's extraordinary, to say the least. Bearing in mind that SF serves the finest and most potent weed on this earth, the following is recalled in a sweet haze (Indica I think... smiles to self for a few minutes)
If you can, in San Fran go and see the redwoods. That changed my life. OK.
We went down Highway 101 from SF, which is the windy, coastal cliff-top route. I was trepidatious about it, but being gently stoned out of my tiny mind helped, and I wasn't driving anyway, all I really had to do was fall to a fiery death off a cliff should the need arise.
We stayed a night at Morro Bay (big volcanic rock about half way down to LA) and then we cheekily diverted inland to drive for one very long day, to the Nevada Desert, where we stayed a few nights in a silver Slipstream on an artists campsite, camp fire, guitar, stars forever, did I mention they do weed in California? They do weed in California.
After a few days in that weird environment, we went to the next, and stayed four nights in Beverly Hills, at an Airbnb I didn't ask the price of, we had to do the Chinese Theatre (tick) and the balcony where Richard Gere pulled down the stairs to reach Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman (yeah, I'm gay) and we went to the old, ruined LA zoo, it's only the cages left now the animals are gone, but it's a creepy/beautiful relic of another time, with cool graff. I would recommend that, as nobody else seemed to know it was there, and I like quiet places.
And we did a load of streets and locations from Grand Theft Auto near Santa Monica pier, that was fucking awesome, the beach and the hat shop which is actually there. Loads of good street art in that beach area, and fit people roller-blading. Did we stand out?? Like two punks in a nunnery.
I didn't see the Manson Murder House, but I did see the very pavement outside the Viper Rooms where River Pheonix stiffed out, blue in the face from too much fun, so that was nice.
Hollywood is much like the rest of America, in that you can imagine it being absolutely, heavenly beautiful when it was just Native Americans there. I thought that a lot about America.
And then we did a long drive up the interior of the state back to SF, through the hundreds of miles of industrial wasteland, cattle farms, the reek of shit, the theft of water and the rape of the soil, for thousands and thousands of square miles of row after row of identical produce created by water they can't afford. It's a scary fucking mess.
But by this point, officer, I had become over-tired through excitement, and slept all the way to San Francisco. And if that isn't a song it fucking should be.
Oooh, just remembered we also stopped on the way down to see a famous seal colony. They smell atrocious, they don't like us, I didn't like them. And they don't even clap on command. 1/5, wouldn't bother.
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