The Best and Worst of Southern California

I have to state right up front that I entered the Santa Monica area with a chip on my shoulder. You would think that coming off the winding, often badly paved and treacherous 71 mile stretch of Highway 1 through Big Sur, I would be overjoyed to be back on a freeway, the type of road I am familiar with. You would be wrong. Perhaps it was because we entered the freeway later in the day, but it was a Saturday, so no rush hour traffic. Perhaps people in southern California are crazier than people in the east, but I doubt it. Certainly, there were many, many very high-end automobiles around us, more Teslas than I have ever seen. And many drivers seemed very entitled to be in front, even if they put yours, theirs, and everyone else’s lives at risk in the process. And it was getting on towards dusk as we approached Santa Monica, and neither of us are at our best driving at night. We found the hotel without too much trouble, but the parking situation was valet only, and after circling the hotel once, we couldn’t find valet parking. So Bob pulled over, I went into the hotel and asked, and finally we found the valet. But no one seemed very customer friendly, or even interested in helping. I guess the good news was that since we parked Penny ourselves in the valet space, and carried in our own luggage, we saved the tip.

We were starving, and the hotel had no food offerings, so they pointed us to a mall a few blocks away. Again, I have to note that I have walked for miles in New York City on many occasions and at night and have enjoyed every minute of it, but I felt strangely unsettled in Santa Monica. It wasn’t the homeless, although there were several people sleeping in corners. It wasn’t the other people on the streets, although there were a few raucous people wandering around. The mall was no different than any other mall. Well, that isn’t entirely true. The mall near the hotel on Colorado street had posters of Kardashians as big as King Kong. The mall was open air, and it would have been nice to look up and see the stars, but the stars you see are from movies and TV, and are plastered all over the place in large, colorful posters, looking like no real human has ever looked. The few open restaurants had a wait of at least 90 minutes, so we went to the food court. The choices there were pizza/Italian, hamburgers, or a smoothie/salad restaurant. While we were ordering, around 8 pm, they closed the food court, and shut the doors, so by the time my salad arrived, I had to fight to get out. Luckily the food was pretty good. We finished our food, went back to the hotel, and straight to bed. Our thought was the sooner we slept, the sooner we could get out of there. I was not a Santa Monica fan at all.

The reason we went there was because Santa Monica is the end (or in our case, the beginning) of Route 66. We wanted a picture of Penny with the Route 66 sign. However, we learned that some brilliant politician (I assume) decided to move the Route 66 End of the Trail sign onto the Santa Monica pier. Where no car was allowed to go. When I think of Route 66, I think of the TV show, Easy Rider, even the Grapes of Wrath. But all of those include cars. So, to put the sign in a place where no car can go seemed, well, stupid. With a little research, we learned that the original actual starting place was at the intersection of Olympic and Lincoln which was not far from our hotel. So we decided to drive over there, early in the morning and see if we could get a picture of Penny at that intersection—the real ending of Route 66. We found the spot, the traffic was low and we managed to get several pictures of Penny at the original site. The corner now has a gas station on it so it was pretty easy to get that done. And then suddenly. A car pulled in to the gas station right next to us. A Zeus Bronze Metallic Corvette. Penny’s younger sister. And the guy Bob had been following on social media for the past several weeks. Carlton Phillips and Bob had a great half hour or so sharing all their car stories while those two beautiful cars gleamed in the sun. I felt my southern California animosity begin to recede.

Our next stop was to be San Diego. I had been to San Diego several times for business and had been able to spend some time wandering through Balboa Park and the San Diego Zoo, but Bob had never been and I thought he would love it. The weather had been cooler than Bob had expected, and I knew San Diego would be warm. I had reserved a hotel there, but while we were visiting my brother, he talked us into switching our reservation to the hotel Del Coronado. Ron was stationed in Coronado while he was in the Navy serving on the DSRV-1 Mystic. The Mystic was a deep-submergence rescue vehicle designed to carry out rescue operations and could dive to 5,000 feet. Ron fell in love with Coronado and the Hotel Del, and over the years, he and his family, my parents and my sister and her family have all vacationed at the Del and loved it. As the only family member who never stayed there, I decided it was my time. The drive down was great. We hugged Route 1 as long as possible, so kept that beautiful ocean on our right, and pulled into the Hotel Del in the early afternoon. Our room overlooked the Pacific, and we ran down to get our toes in the other ocean. It was cold! I was surprised to see two Celebrity cruise ships sitting off the shore during our time at the Del. I learned from the hotel folks that they had been there for some time with a small crew, taking no passengers and not allowing their crew members to come on shore due to Covid.

As a Disney lover, the first thing I loved about the Del is the recognition that Walt Disney used it as the template for the design of the Grand Floridian, the flagship hotel in Walt Disney World. The Del was built in 1888 and was really the basis for the growth of the Coronado island (really a peninsula). The Del has welcomed celebrities and presidents, and has a history of ghostly presences, beginning with a mysterious guest named Kate Morgan and growing to include a number of guests and employees. Bob and I attended the ghost story tour and the tour guide was a delight who was totally in character, and pretty spooky herself.

We had one quiet beach day, and one day in which we scheduled a trip to the zoo and to the Safari Park. The San Diego Zoo is very well done, and certainly worth a visit. It is less zoo-like than most, and doesn’t have the sense of having the animals so caged up. We wanted to do Balboa Park and some of the museums as well, but we ran out of time and had a tour at the Safari Park which was about 40 minutes away. But before that, we wanted to grab a lunch at Las Cuatro Milpas, a local Mexican restaurant Ron had told us about. This restaurant closed at 3 pm, and we arrived around 2:30 so we thought we were in time, but the place was packed and when we went up to the counter to order food, we were told we had to order to-go only. I have a hard rule of no eating in Penny, so we started to leave. But then we put on our sad faces, and pleaded that my brother, who was in the Navy, had told us how good the food was, and told us we had to eat there, and it was our last day…and the lady in charge took pity on us and told us we could stay to eat. We ordered four tacos, an order of Spanish rice and some drinks. They gave us 4 small cups of a very hot-looking sauce to add to our food. This was all for under $10. I said “Really?” to the lady at the register. She laughed and said, “Yes, and we raised the charge! Maybe someday we break even!” We took all our food to a table and were in heaven. Although a pretty hot heaven. Ron told us that it was a go-to place for the Navy guys for lunch and I can sure see why!

Then we headed off to the Safari, and if you get a chance to go to the San Diego Safari Park, that is something you should definitely do. We had scheduled an evening tour of the park for 90 minutes, and we could easily have spent the day there. The Safari has the most successful captive breeding program for rhinos anywhere in the world, and on our tour we got to meet it’s newest baby. Kamaria means beautiful like the moonlight in Swahili, and is the name of the newest white rhino. Kamaria is very brave and thinks the other animals on the savanna are afraid of her, but it is really her nearby and very watchful mom they fear. Once we were on the savanna, we were able to move about the truck pretty freely and took lots of pictures while the guides shared information with us. One thing I was surprised by was that Wildebeest females can grow fake male parts to frighten off prey and protect their young! Now that’s dedication! It was a great experience, and now I want to go to Africa!

We returned to the Hotel Del for our final night. Tomorrow, we begin what we think of as the third leg of our journey; heading east on Route 66.