Saturday, July 13
We woke up and went to the farmer's market.
I got a pastry and a smoothie.
There were many stalls selling different kinds of food. Korean, American, Mexican, French, Caijan, and lots of sweets places with huge candy apples.
Dad and Dave Rennie got gumbo (for breakfast) and then we headed to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to see the James Turell show there which we had tickets for.
There was a three-story escalator and perhaps the largest elevator that I have ever seen in my life. It was ridiculously huge.
We went upstairs and saw the other exhibits as well...
... and wandered through the giant Richard Serra sculpture on the first floor.
There was also this cool contraption (the noise gave you a headache) which had seemingly millions of cars racing down the tracks, with little toy trains weaving in and out of them. It looked like it belonged in a children's museum somewhere.
There was a line of food trucks across the street from the museum which we looked into, but since we had eaten breakfast at eleven o'clock, none of us were hungry.
And Coke / Sangria doesn't count as hungry.
There is this amazing outdoor exhibit that's been outside of the LACMA for years which is a series of lampposts (like from Narnia but lots bigger) in a square... it's hard to describe. When my dad and I came down the the museum before, it was nighttime, and the lights were on.
We drove through Hollywood on our way back. Above is the walk of stars.
There was something huge going on, and all these people were walking around with Star Wars costumes on and wandering through the middle of the street outside of that Chinese Theatre place.
We set out for Santa Barbara and beyond.
The coast was foggy but beautiful. There were lots of surfers in the water.
There would be these dry-looking hills....
..interspersed with orange orchards. It made me want to eat oranges even though it isn't Christmastime.
There were all these oil rigs off of the coast, in the shadows they only look like faint shadows, maybe some kind of transformer monster lurking in the fog, but in real life they were much more starkly visible.
Okay. Lame thing of the trip. Psych is NOT actually filmed in Santa Barbara. It's filmed in Vancouver, Canada. So, for all of you Psych-freaks, here's the real SBPD.
The upside of this stop was that the city of Santa Barbara is amazingly beautiful. I think that I might want to move there.
We kept driving, out of Santa Barbara and north again.
There's this tourist-destination place Solvang which is supposed to be like a whole town built in traditional Danish style.
It was kind of lame. Dad thought it was fascinating; but we both agreed that it was like a full-scale and completely operating Fantasyland (like from Disneyland), even if it did have good Danishes.
We kept driving again.
Norther and norther until we saw the turning for the Madonna Inn.
If you haven't heard of it, it's pretty cool actually. A huge, kitchy, unique hotel just to the south of San Luis Obispo. Every room is different, over-the-top, and very cool. Dad described it as "Elvis". There are photos of every single room online, if you are interested. It was surprisingly an interesting stop. I wish that we could have stayed there, but I'm not sure that I ever would have been able to fall asleep in one of the extreme rooms with their one-of-a-kind electric pink rose-patterned carpet. And matching bedspread and chairs. We got postcards from the gift shop.
I would tell you about the hotel that we are staying at, but it's a Motel 6, and no where near as fascinating as the Madonna Inn. The pool closed too early, though.
Definitely a good day.
