California thus far

It all began on June 18th at 1:35 pm when I arrived in Ontario, CA and Miss Rosalie Staley picked me up at the airport. She decided that we should head off on an adventure before we went back to her house... it turned out to be longer and more complicated than I thought it would. At first we went to El Pollo Loco for lunch (most tasty, I would recommend it) and then headed towards and past Los Angeles. Soooo many nice cars: Lexus, BMW, Jaguars, Mercedes, Bentley, and a Ferrari (but that Ferrari is a whole 'nother story). We ended up at the beach in Santa Monica, where it was almost 90 degrees, way too many pretty buildings and insane gas prices (4.83 a gallon for regular). After walking down to the beach and passing a few good looking surfer dudes we traversed the hot sand and were swamped by a few too many waves. The sea foam was amazing, I've never seen it so white before. And although the ocean was beautiful, the smog in the sky made the whole picture a little less surreal.


Oh yes, and there were seagulls, and I got to see a Heermann's gull, which was a life lister for me :)

And then we got back on the road, intending to go up the coast, but then appeared the sign Right Turn Only, so... we went south and headed for Beverly Hills. I experienced LA traffic at it's finest, as it took us 7 minutes to go a 1/2 mile on the 405 (yes, and I discovered Californians say 'the' before the street number!) So Rosalie and I then became tourists and explored Beverly Hills and Hollywood using the method of:
"Right or left?"
"Um, left!"
"Dang, there's a car behind us!"
"Go right, go right!"
To sum it up we saw gorgeous multi-million dollar cars and homes, lots of famous streets and buildings, and after an hour of very narrow winding streets and many false or inconvenient sitings we found the Hollywood sign! It said don't park, but ya know... it was dark and we had to be perfectly still to take a good picture...


Amongst all those winding roads I found my Ferrari! I promise, it has the logo on the back of the cover.

And then we drove to Llano, CA and I finally met the Staley family. I like them :)