So LA's not all bad.

We had a bit of time to kill before we had to return Maggie to her overlords, so we went to our favourite LA cafe for some breakfast.  With a midday cutoff, we figured we had enough time to make it to one great thing before the airport.  The best recommendation was for the Huntington Library.  I mostly wanted to see the gardens, but there's no part of the Huntington you're allowed to see before midday; the same time we were due to drop Maggie at LAX.

Looked nice.

Naturally, the one highway we needed to get out of Pasadena and to LAX was closed; we spent a very interesting hour with google trying to find a route which didn't take the 110.  We made it an hour late, paid our fees, reported the crack in the windshield and said goodbye to Maggie.  God bless her, she had taken us a long way.

Our bags were checked, our boarding passes collected, and we had 10 hours to wait until our flight boarded.  Continuing our tradition of being the softest backpackers known to man, we spent our last $150 on day passes to the Admiral's Lounge.  Several beers and snacks later, we were called for our flight back to Brisbane.

We left the United States of America as the date ticked over from the 18th to the 19th of November.  It had been an incredible trip.

Just a couple of lists

I will miss:
All the great people we've met, and meeting new great people all the time
American micro-brews
American football
College towns
Driving to a totally new place every couple of days
Every part of the west coast except LA
Northern accents
Having an accent
Finding location-appropriate driving tunes
The hamburger a day diet

I will not miss:
The smell of hostels
Weird hostel residents
American national beers
Los Angeles traffic
Intersections with four stop signs; one in every direction
Kids with American accents
The hamburger a day diet

San Diego is a really nice town.

The Liar wanted to check out some modern art in LA and, I later found out, get on a bus to Compton.  The Skeptic and I were done with LA and looking for an excuse to get out.  That excuse came in the form of a day-trip to San Diego.

Two-ish hours drive south of Los Angeles, San Diego is probably home to lots of cultural stuff (like a Zoo, some university campuses and the Chargers football team) but we didn't have time for that.  We just hammered Maggie down the 101 and eventually the 5, all the way to the coast so we could sit outside a bar at Pacific Beach, eat our last real hamburger of the trip and drink a locally brewed beer which tasted almost exactly like Carlton Draft.

Nice beach, despite the smog.  Just have a look the other way.

See?

The drive back took six-ish hours; our first real experience of LA traffic.  With two of us in the car, we were able to use the carpool lane most of the way back, so it was only the last 20 miles or so that we really slowed down, averaging three mile an hour.  We took so long, the Liar called to find out where we are which, if you know the guy, is pretty hilarious.

But we did make it back, headed to the pub and raised a whiskey to our last night in America. It had been a hell of a trip.