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.

The warm winds of Santa Anna feel alright.

The drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles was very pretty, along the Californian coast.  We spent one night in Pismo Beach, and one in Santa Barbara.  Of the two, I preferred Pismo beach where we found a bar I've been completely unable to locate through any source (google).

The bar in question served Californian beer (better than you expect) and had a live band performing Scottish and Irish traditional music.

When we got to Los Angeles we met up with the The Almostdoctor and her crew from the Gold Coast.  They suggested walking up the Hills, so the next morning the Skeptic and I ran up behind the Hollywood Bowl.

From left to right; Ali and a milkshake.

It was interesting to meet up with people who were exhausted from real life and jetlag, and mix it in with our exhaustion from driving and being the coolest people on an entire continent.

Everyone got their stuff together to head to the beach.  We wandered for a long time to look for a bus on Hollywood Boulevard, then found out we had walked past a dozen.  And about eight Scientology centers.

 Hollywood is a place of terror.

After a stop at Rodeo Drive (some people enjoyed it, ask them about it) and a gander at Beverley Hills we caught a bus to Santa Monica.  The beach front there was my favourite part of the city.  After a bite of lunch we stood on the beach and watched the sun set.  Then went to a pub and drank, watched football and ate hamburgers.  For the sake of tradition.

California sun has sunk...

It was nice to hang out with a bigger group, and to talk to people from home.  Helped us start getting ready for our return.

A day in The Rock.

The bright California sun held no heat.  We huddled on the bow of the ferry, watching the island grow on the horizon.  Through the haze of not quite fog, not quite smog the Golden Gate bridge hung like a beacon.

Where we were going, a lot of people never came back.

It needs theme music.

"There's a real history here," the ranger told us.  "You can see it in the layers of the rock, painted on the walls."

He was right, it was everywhere; the litter of the soldiers, the scratchings of prisoners, the paint of protests.

"They made a lot of good movies here," the Skeptic said afterwards.

He was right, too.

The many stages of Alcatraz history are obvious as you disembark.

Audio tours walked us through the prison.  Voices from the past told stories which brought life to the stones, made sense of an environment we couldn't otherwise understand.  Stories of what men had done outside this place, ending up here.  Stories of what they had done while they wilted in these walls.

The recreation yard.

In the dank corners, behind heavy bars are the stories which never escaped the dark.  The places where men had nothing left but their sanity and held that tight.

The Skeptic shows off the size of the hole.

The whole the marines used to bomb inmates during the Battle of Alcatraz.

And on the horizon, the unreachable city, deceptively close.  The bright sun made a lie of the autumn chill.  How far could a man swim, we wondered, before the water froze his bones, and the cold sucked the air from his lungs? How far would he make it across the bay he could never escape?

There's quite a good view of the San Francisco skyline from the officer's quarters.

Yet there was colour here too, colour brought by the men who escaped this place.  Some escaped through paint and canvas, words and paper.  Some escaped by steel and broken stone, determination.  Both had their place in the history of these rocks.

One of the cells made famous by the film Escape from Alcatraz.

And we left.  These days people do.

Of ducks and fog and forest

The next few days all ran together on my camera, so I'm just going to cover them all in one post.  We went to the Oregon Ducks v Washington Huskies game in Eugene and had a great day.  The people we'd met in Portland were able to send us along to a McMenamins around the corner from the stadium, so we were well fed.

Every now and then the road just disappears into cloud.

A great day was had, watching the Ducks build momentum and eventually demolish the Huskies.  We spent the afternoon 'tailgating' with the people of Oregon.

The next morning we headed for Eureka, taking an amazing drive to the Californian coast.  Redwood forests are spectacular.  We drove in and out of cloud all day and eventually descended to the Pacific Ocean.

"Is there a corner coming up?" "Probably."

And then, one Monday morning, we came down a stretch of highway and saw the Golden Gate Bridge around the corner.

Oh hey, I know that bridge.

The Talk had recommended a great hostel in the middle of downtown San Francisco.  The Skeptic and I took off for a run to the top of Lombard Street, hoping to get some photos of the sunset.  We were too late.