Still in California---for Now

So now it's 2013 and the sweet holidays have come and gone. My Long Trip to California, record-breaking in length for me, is still in progress. Here's what has happened since I last posted from L.A.:

• My stay in L.A (somehow this post never made it online) went better than I thought. I spent the entire three days within the confines of the San Fernando Valley, on purpose I managed to explore its many communities---including Van Nuys, Northridge, Encino, Sherman Oaks, and Tarzana---and spent a very productive afternoon working in downtown Burbank. Back when I was kid, Johnny Carson used to say "beautiful downtown Burbank" in a way that made me think it was an awful place. Turns out it's quite nice.
• The highlight of my Valley stay was getting to spend a very nice afternoon (on the Mayan Apocalypse) having tea in Studio City with an old friend, Lisa C., whom I hadn't seen in almost thirty years. She went to a rival high school of mine and is an actually an old theater colleague, being that she played the lead in the only stage theater production yours truly ever directed (this, improbably). She's now a history professor at a local liberal arts college.
• For Christmas I decamped to nearby Thousand Oaks, where I stayed at the very nice Best Western there. I spent the holidays as the repeated dinner guest at the in-laws of another old friend whom I hadn't seen almost thirty years, Randy J., who was one of my best friends at Willamette U. in Salem.  He lives in Nevada but was in the L.A. area with his family for Christmas. It was an awesome reunion and a nice way to have pleasant company over Christmas.
• After Christmas, I headed down to the coast Malibu as I planned and along the coast on a very sunny day. I decided to visit as many places as possible that are mentioned in the Beach Boys' classic hit Surfin' U.S.A,, starting with "Ventura County Line." Inspired by a friend who is a Beach Boys musicologist, I then doubled down on the theme by detouring into the L.A. community of Hawthorne to visit the site of the house where the famous Wilson brothers of that band grew up, and had lunch at the nearby Foster Freeze that was the inspiration for the "hamburger stand" in Fun, Fun. Fun. A magazine article at the stand directed me to further local Beach Boys sites, which I tracked down, all the while texting updates and photos to my friend.
• Over New Years, I spent a relaxing week in downtown San Diego at the Motel 6, which is an actually a refurbished older hotel with the same kind of "all new rooms" that the one in Santa Barbara had (alas no Turner Classic Movies). It was close to the major attractions of downtown which allowed me lots of nice walking trips, including a pleasant afternoon in Balboa Park highlighted by the Model Train museum there. I also decided finally to renew my passport at the local Passport office, and got my picture taken in a funky ancient little studio in downtown. The woman at the passport office did not at all like my attitude.  I was applying for five-day expedited service, yet had no pending travel plans, as most people do who apply in person. "I might go to Mexico, or Southeast Asia," I told her, whimsically. She didn't seem to want to understand the kind of freedom of movement I have. I was sure I'd gotten on some kind of blacklist.
• After a week in downtown San Diego, I wasn't quite ready to leave the area, so I drove down the beach through Coronado Island and checked into the Days Inn in Chula Vista, which is just a few miles north of the Mexican border. The place had very good reviews online, and it turned out to have TCM, so I wound up spending ten days there working from Starbucks and waiting for my passport to arrive via general delivery (I was relieved when it finally did). The highlight of the stay was a Saturday trip down to Border Fields State Park, which is on the ocean right on the border. One can walk down to the foaming ocean and then along the beach right to the fence, where the Mexican citizens of Tijuana are looking back at you. I'd finally reached the southernmost point of California itself, and of the west coast of the United States. The only downside of the whole time I spent there was that it was abnormally chilly, with a few frost warnings. I'd come to Southern California in search of "endless summer" and found something almost resembling winter instead.
• Finally it was time to leave the ocean for now and head inland. I headed into the mountains along the highway that skirts to the border and dropped down into the Imperial Valley, where I spent a nice in El Centro at the nice Vacation Inn. The next morning I headed up towards the Salton Sea, which I'd always wanted to visit, and spent a couple hours walking around Slab City, "the last free place on Earth," which felt like a permanent sparsely settled version of Burning Man in a few ways.
• The rest of that afternoon I drove up to Palm Springs which I had reserved five nights at the Days Inn on E. Palm Canyon Boulevard. It was a very nice stay (TCM!). Palm Springs was beautiful but was COLD. In the first morning there, going to work at Starbucks across from the giant statue of Marilyn Monroe, I actually slipped on ice on the sidewalk.
• At the tail end of my Palm Springs stay, I had a pleasant meet-up with yet another old friend whom I hadn't seen in nearly thirty years, Stacy J., a former high school pal who now holds the prestigious title of CEO and President of the Living Desert Museum in Palm Desert. He treated me to a private tour of his zoo in a golf cart. I spent the whole time asking him questions about what being a zookeeper is like.
• After the zoo, I immediately drove up into the mountains and spent a very chilly weekend camping at Joshua Tree National Park, my first ever visit there. The abnormally cold winter of Southern California had thwarted my attempts to try out the new REI tent I'd bought in Fresno, but I decided I simply had to spend a couple nights under the stars in the high desert. As it turns out, it was the high season and the campgrounds were packed.  During the day I managed to get some good hiking in---a long venture into the area known as the "Wonderland of Rocks," and another hike up Mount Ryan. Ironically it was a resolution, almost exactly a year ago, to visit Joshua Tree sometime in the coming year that was partly the inspiration for the entire California trip. It was worth the effort and the wait.
• After two days in Joshua Tree, I left the park and spent a night in the Marine base town of Twentynine Palms. The next morning I headed up across the Mojave Desert, through tiny hamlets on the backroads, doing some day hiking along the way. I spent a night in the only motel in Shoshone, then the next morning I headed down into Death Valley for the first time.
• Death Valley was marvelous. I'm still sort of reeling from it, even though I only spent one night camping there, at Furnace Creek. I spent the first afternoon hiking a couple miles up a deserted canyon near Mormon Point. The solitude and silence was overwhelming. Thankfully it was warmer than Joshua Tree. The barrenness was stunning. 
• Now here I am in the town of Bishop, on the east side of the Sierra, a place where I spent five days last September. I returned to the Mountain View Motel which is a nice place that I know has TCM. The mountains that loom above the valley are now strewn with beautiful sinews of snow, yet the temperature here in town are mild. I have absolutely nothing to complain about.

So there it is---my wrap up of California. 143 Days and counting here. Tomorrow morning I'm checking out of the Mountain View Motel and heading north on 395. Sometime in mid afternoon, if things go according to plan, I'll cross the Nevada border, only a few miles where I entered Cali on the north side of Lake Tahoe in early September.  The "Long Trip to California" will be over, even as my wacky journeys go on.