I guess this post is sort of a love letter to California. Sort of. Mostly. Probably mostly. Definitely a love letter. I'm smitten. What can I say?
The first time I set foot in California was 1993. I was 24 years old. My parents had an expiring free flight voucher from Northwest Airlines that they weren't going to use and they handed it to me to see what I could do with it. At that point in my life, I was a graduate architecture student and spring break was coming up. So instead of heading home to my parents' place for spring break like I had done every year since I graduated high school, I looked elsewhere.
I chose Los Angeles. I had an unemployed friend living there at the time and figured I'd have a tour guide with nothing to do other than to show me around La La Land. Sold!
It didn't work out like I had planned. Not remotely. My friend got a job and my tour guide was gone. I pivoted and changed plans. You might say I started improvising, but if you know me, you really wouldn't say that at all. You'd say I re-planned. And you'd be right. I bought a guide book to Frank Lloyd Wright-designed buildings in California. I splurged on a rental car. I called friends (both out of town) in both San Diego and San Francisco and found a way to stay at their places. And I found a cheap flight from L.A. to San Fran on then-regional airline Southwest Airlines.
Spring break in Los Angeles? Not any more. Spring break all up and down the California coast.
That 1993 trip was the first time I'd really traveled anywhere when I was in charge. I had no idea what I was doing, really. I planned. I replanned. I changed plans after I replanned. I don't know how many times I called Northwest Airlines to change that free flight home but it was at least twice. I ended up flying out of Oakland, of all places. And all of it worked great. And Southwest to this day is still my favorite airline. Not because of that trip, necessarily. But it's still my fav. And nothing you can say about the open boarding will ever change my mind. I love it!
And California? I fell in love with the place instantly. It was the lushest, greenest, most gorgeous place I'd ever been. It was like I'd somehow traveled to paradise. It was amazing. It was heaven.
When I relay this story to people I know for the first time who have also been to California, by the way, they are typically dumbstruck. California is green? Who knew?
As it turned out, 1993 was an El Niño year in California and it had brought a wetter than average winter to the Golden State. What I was seeing was a mirage. Green in California in March is not normal. Brown is normal. I had no idea. I fell in love. I found out the reality later on when I went back for my second trip. But by then it was too late. I was hooked.
That first trip to Cali was incredible. I covered so much territory. Sure I made it to Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco but I got to see parts outside of those three cities as well. Beverly Hills. Marin County. Disneyland. A few of the 21 missions that were the original Spanish settlements in the state (the Spanish were concerned about the Russians claiming the territory from the north so they scrambled a few padres with armed guards to set up residence in the place). The Pacific Ocean. Lots of world famous architecture. Two Hard Rock Cafes (don't judge...I'd never been to one before). The Golden Gate Bridge. I packed in a lot of stuff.
I have two very special memories from that trip. One was on the trip home. As we took off from Oakland, I looked out the window of the plane first thing in the morning and saw San Francisco shrouded in fog with just the tips of the Golden Gate Bridge towers visible above the mist. It was a perfect send off.
The other was a trip to Frank Lloyd Wright's Freeman House in Hollywood, one of four concrete block (Wright called them textile blocks) houses Wright designed in the Los Angeles area in the 1920s. It was the first Wright building I'd ever visited (it was owned at that point by the University of Southern California) and I was blown away by the way the house contained and released space. Everything we had been taught in school about how Wright designed in a revolutionary way came through loud and clear in that house. Less than a year later, the house was severely damaged in the January 1994 Northridge earthquake and I'm not sure it's been open for tours since. I feel so lucky that I made it under the wire on this one. It's still one of my most treasured memories of visiting a building.
In my time in California (admittedly one week or one long weekend at a time), I've covered the entire length of the state. I've walked across the southern border into Tijuana, Mexico and I've driven across the northern border into Oregon. I've seen so much in between. The Napa Valley. The Hollywood Sign. Blue whales in the Pacific. A San Francisco Giants doubleheader at Candlestick Park. Lassen Volcanic National Park. An awesome close encounter with Keanu Reeves. 16 of the 21 original mission sites, as well as one satellite mission at Pala. The Eames House. Carmel. Monterey. Fisherman's Wharf. Redwood National Park. Mount Shasta. The oldest surviving McDonald's restaurant. Watts Towers. The Hollywood Bowl. Palm Springs. Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House, the only other textile block house ever routinely opened to the public. In-N-Out Burgers aplenty. A live taping of the Jimmy Kimmel Show. I could go on...
Most people that I know who love something about California usually love San Diego and San Francisco and dislike or severely dislike Los Angeles. Not me. I love Los Angeles. I love it more than maybe any other city in the United States outside of New York. There is so much going on there. There is so much to see. There is so much to eat. There is so much buzz. Yes, it's sprawl central and the traffic sucks but the place is so alive. Give me L.A. over San Fran or San Diego any day. ANY. DAY.
There's still more to see. Although a little bit less after we just got from from a swing through the state last week. Three of the glaring omissions from my California list at the start of this year were Yosemite National Park, Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National Park. That was the point of this year's trip. To finally make it to those three epic wildernesses. Although we clearly sprinkled one or two other things throughout the week. That's not to say that we are done in California after this trip. Just that we've knocked some fairly significant attractions off our to do (not bucket) list.
This trip represented one other thing: it meant that we finally completed of all our cancelled trips in 2020 that were put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That year, we scuttled trips to Costa Rica, New Mexico, the United Kingdom, Uganda / Rwanda / Zanzibar and three national parks in California followed by a couple of days in the Napa Valley. We have now visited all those places. We may not have done all those vacations exactly the way we had originally planned but we made it everywhere we planned, just three years later on this last one.
I hate to write this because it seems like I am tempting fate but it feels like we finally beat COVID. It is perhaps fitting that we ended our makeup trips from that awful year in one of the places I love most on this Earth. I'm not done going back. I know I'll look westward again pretty soon. Until then, I'll add my memories of this trip to all my earlier journeys through the state. California, I love you. I truly do.
