New Orleans, LA

05)25(05, its 745pm

New Orleans combines all its energy into everyday, and works the senses till you think it would implode, but it is a hardy, reckless city, old and vibrant and inexhaustible.

Yesterday we crossed over the Mississippi River south of New Orleans, and yes it is a big river. I have had this vision of myself seeing the Mississippi for some time now, a romantic vision of the huge body of water singing its way down to the Gulf Of Mexico with tugboats and steamships pushing by, the wild call of the Deep south all around me. I wasn't let down in any way really, the vastness of the moment, of my life coming around to being somewhere so exotic and American was heavy on me. The only thing I needed was more of a knowledge of what went on on this river, what battles had been fought on it, what lives spent working in some way or another this magnificent stream of deep currents and history.

Little towns stand in the shadow of the giant levee along its banks, heavily weathered and barely standing in the humid heat, signs from the 1930's through the 1980's advertising long forgotten brands of beer and ice, restaurants promising pool tables and live entertainment all wrapped in vines and forgotten by the roadside. It doesn't take long to realize when you are there that there is no economic influx to be found, nor will there be for some time, but it seems strange to not have pictured that poverty stricken reality until driving through, only allowed to be a tourist, too wealthy and full of opportunity to really stop and take part in a life, a Black American life, that is not your own.

The Mississippi winds its way down through New Orleans methodically and slowly, and when it hits the city it seems to overflow the essence of all its miles and time and silt into the bloodstream of the life here. I had expected New Orleans to be comprised of the cute little French Quarter and old mansions of the Garden District, but its a true Metropolis, with skyscrapers jutting out between the two touristed parts of town, and sprawling suburbs reaching out all around it. In fact, the parts of town where people live outside of the famous districts are somewhat ragged, old buildings everywhere there too, but no such preservation and influx of old money. These neighborhoods are at a glance rough, and probably through and through rough... I wouldn't know. They are basically neighborhoods where two white kids in their twenties have no place to go without being sore thumbs sticking out all over the place.

The crux of New Orleans tourist and history life lies in the French Quarter, a narrow streets and cast iron balcony section of town that is for the overwhelming part preserved in its brilliant original state. Gas lanterns hang over cobbled sidewalks, and bar after bar after antique shop after gallery after apartment after bed and breakfast cram the streets in that oh so European way. The atmosphere is lively and unique, to say the very least. The ornamentation and exotic feeling of a 19th century neighborhood, French and Spanish and Black and White and old is enough to send the mind drifting into different periods of time and history. At night last night I got the feeling that there were indeed ghosts and spirits roaming around the street, if not with us, then perfectly encapsulated in the past we were walking through.

I find myself frustrated even because New Orleans, like Venice, or Prague, or even the Old Growth Redwood forests of California, is a place that defies a suitable description with words. Its fantastic.

And it has a darker side too that is obvious to the corners of the eye. As we were walking down into the French Quarter last night we were passed by four different police cars within five minutes, followed by a team of four policemen on horses patrolling. As we wandered the night away I probably spotted at least 15 more cop cars on patrol. Its not that I've never seen excessive cops before, but this was in a way unprecedented for me, and it made me wonder what would pull a necessary police presence down into the streets. The answers come when you mix the elements of New Orleans all together. Poverty, availability of drugs, excess of alcohol (you can drink liquor on the street as long as its not in a glass container), combined with the swarms of tourists and their pocketbooks all make for a charged atmosphere. And so you feel safe, but you are weary, and you are not sure why so many cops but you are kind of glad to see them rolling around so regularly. I realize too that New Orleans and its Mardi Gras are synonymous with over the top rowdiness and antics, and that the city must employ a huge police squad just for the week long festival every year. Like New York and San Francisco, and every other major American city, there are places that you shouldn't really venture alone, but the warnings of avoiding the public cemeteries especially gives New Orleans this gothic threat. There is a vampire like quality to the underbelly of the city, and a feeling that all the voodoo mixes into the modern translation of junkies and drunken tourists walking all over the footsteps of the past.

New Pics

Newest pics are here!

Louisiana

05)22(05 its 735pm

Kate's watercolor in varying greens and golden brown is beginning to take shape. We're sitting on the dock at our campsite, on top of the waters that are mainly still save for the frequent jumping of catfish, slow quiet swimming of alligators, and skimming of huge dragonflies. The air is warm and sweaty, my shirt that was clean and fresh as of noon today is gross and limp, and the skin on my face feels like a light layer of butter was smeared evenly over it.

The light is beautiful end of the day light, cranes cross the pale blue and orange sky above us, and birds sing exotic calls to eachother out over the bayou.

This is one of the more interesting places I've ever been, and its a good thing I'm more or less tolerant of the natural world and all of its strange almost threatening existence, otherwise I would be scared immobile by the immensity and abundance of life of all forms flying and slithering and swimming and buzzing and moaning.

Two nights ago was our first experience of the dense bayou environment. We pulled into camp at Sam Houston Jones State Park, 15 minutes north of Lake Charles, LA. It still hasn't quite settled in how thick and pervading the ambience is here, and it is difficult for me to get used to how much wildlife there is, how much humidity there is, how much water there is. Right now I'm particularly affected, as we just abandoned our perch on our little dock because these enormous wasps were hovering around and walking into the wood bannisters, as if it were home to them, and definitely not to us. Lots of things I can deal with in a sane way, wasps, however, are another story. I just don't react in a rational manner, I freeze up, and if anything even remotely seems to come near me I writhe in a manic way and close my eyes. Wasps are not really my friends. And man are they big here. Really really big wasps.

But this is not to say that I am not thoroughly enjoying the scenery and experience... I like it. I love that we are sitting on a bayou right now, and that we are in the heart of cajun country. It was Sunday today, and all day long we passed fisherman after fisherman and encountered the friendliest people everywhere. I mean genuinely friendly, friendly like our neighbors at the campsite, whom we had not spoken to yet, offering to get us anything we needed from town because they were making a run for supplies. And further proceeding to walk over to our site and chat with us about life, travel, family and Louisiana. This same neighbor, who truly just genuinely was being friendly, insisted that we take an oscillating fan, brand new, so that we could have some relief from the humid Louisiana nights while camping. It was amazing, and based on our experience thus far, not uncommon at all.

We found ourselves in a fantastic vacant museum yesterday in Lake Charles. Its few rooms were filled with civil war artifacts and recreations of early to mid century pharmacies and stores. The gallery adjacent to it was filled with remarkable 5' by 5' charcoal drawings of people, insects and dogs done with intricate detail. And out back this magnificent 300 year old white oak sprawled wider than I've seen a tree reach before, with limbs over 100 feet long with the bottom of the limbs sometimes resting on the ground because of the enormous weight.

Now the light has faded a bit, and it is still warm, and suddenly very peaceful. An ideal time for sitting and sipping the ice tea we made. We've seen scores of immaculate southern mansions standing guard over well huge and well kept front yards, and I can just imagine the feeling of this country, sitting on a screened porch and watching the night finally settle in. Its nearly impossible to sleep in the heat that lingers in the jungle like night, and so we've been crawling out of bed in the middle of the night to just sit and talk until a cool breeze settled in. It becomes a pace of life, this blanket of heat and languidness. Its as slow as possible.

We left Austin with our head replaced on our shoulders, refreshed and ready for the traveler's life again. East Texas was a long easy drive, save for Houston, whose massive oil company skyscrapers reach out of the hazy polluted sky. From roadside appearances it is a huge city, that kind of reaches for miles in every direction. East of there, there are a few spotted tiny towns, mostly based around the traffic of Interstate 10. As soon as we crossed into Louisiana it felt like a whole different world, the thick swamp atmosphere taking over everything. The highway becomes a blanket of 20 to 30 foot high trees and dense undergrowth, and the bridges over fingers of water begin to mark the path regularly.

As we explored the sprawled city of Lake Charles the population became different as well, a heavily mixed community with black and white folks generally being very friendly, polite and helpful. Crawfish and seafood shacks lined the roads, pointed at often by rusted and hastily arranged lettered signs, the most common and charming being the big red arrow with yellow lightbulbs pointing off the road with the plastic letters often falling and misplaced. The accents begin to change as well, with a sort of heavy drawl gracefully finishing words in interesting ways, usually with a casual sort of tone. I feel very obvious in my ignorance of what Louisiana is all about, but it is beginning to set in and rest over me like the humid, almost edible air.

Austin, Part II

The humidity doesn't let up for today, but that's ok, we've had a great time anyway. Tess and Arnold (and Gabriel too) have done such a magnificent job of hosting us that I'm truly sad to go... we feel so at home here it will be tough. But tomorrow morning we head out for Louisianna. We've decided to bypass East Texas entirely as it seems to be riddled with meth addicts and satan worshippers and corporations such as Enron and Halliburton. Which is worse is questionable. We want to hang out in swamps and eat cajun food so we're heading farther east.

South Congress is the district that Tess and Arnold live in. The atmosphere is lively and upbeat, even in the sweltering heat, and the coffee shops are cool and plenty. We've been treated to great food and good hang out time and gosh just overwhelming generosity and kindness. We did a last stock up stop at the giant Austin Whole Foods, where we got soy milk, granola, black beans, road food in short.

Below is the next installment of Luke and Kate's fascinating trip adventures and fantastic accounts thereof:

Tucson, Arizona

The red mud splattered Toyota cruisd out from Beaver Creek into the Spring dryness of central arizona. The plan of action was to avoid too much desert, and or too much Phoenix, which by all accounts had been described as treacherous, bad and foreboding, to say the least. So we decided that Tucson was the place to be.

But its interesting to note here that even the idea of going to Tucson was not in our original plan... its just that as we arrived in Flagstaff just a few nights before, it was snowing heavily and it was cold. So the next day or two I kind of gazed obsessively at weather predictions for the Taos Santa Fe area, where by all accounts there would be thunderstorms and highs in the 40s. It was hard for us to let go of the idea of going to and through Santa Fe, but at the same time we felt that happiness and sunny weather go hand in hand, especially when camping and traveling. So we headed south intentionally, and somewhat reluctantly.

But as it turns out of course it was the 'right' decision.

Phoenix was avoidable, even from the safe distance of the Freeway around the edge of it. We stopped a couple of times at various spots, once at this supposedly interesting artists commune type place in the middle of the desert called Arcosanti. The idea of the place is to, was to create 'an ideal urban living space', where art and architecture intermingled with people living harmoniously and using less natural resources. The only problem was that people weren't nice. Or happy apparently, and I know that we got a superficial glimpse of the whole deal, but wow, just unfriendly kind of aging hippies, surrounded by this cracking concrete style architecture that was quite faded and funky. I was disappointed because I thought the idea was fantastic, that architecture should lend heavily to a more utopian method of living, wherein community and creativity and resourcefulness are much more strongly encouraged than in the typical worldwide city. But it wasn't to be for us that day at least. Arcosanti was lame.

So we got into Tucson in the very warm afternoon. Though the weather reports said 80, the real temperatures were in the high nineties, warm even for Tucson in early May. We checked into the Flamingo Hotel, a faded budget locale that glorified the glamorous years of Tucson's movie boom, apparently the area outside of Tucson was where Westerns were filmed in their early conception. John Wayne, Paul Newman "Hombre", and many forgotten others are displayed on movie posters outside of each of the rooms. Palm trees surround a modest swimming pool, and aside from the obvious faded glory it was an interesting place to stay.

We were surprised as we wandered around downtown Tucson that NO ONE was out and about, it was a perfect evening, it was tuesday but still, it was quiet, more quiet than most small towns. We ambled over to the Congress Cafe, which I had heard of through searching for places to play around the country, and had a sidewalk Boca Burger in the perfect warm spring air. The colors of a desert sunset linger for a really long time and it was nice to see them fade over the quiet city.

The next day we realized that we had kind of missed the exciting part of town by only a few blocks. Tucson has this mysteriously large collection of young people, college age and up, who have opened coffee shops and art galleries and thrift stores and places like that and have done it with a lot of color and flair. It was great to be among so many creative types and in the bright colors of the desert city streets, wandering through endless vintage clothes and muraled walls of health food co-ops. It was hot though, really truly hot, in a dry way, and I wondered how I or anyone could make it through the summers there. They have got to be absolutely brutal, and nothing subtle about it.

Austin, TX

05)17(05 its 310pm

This is a long one, not the full update, but getting there. I'm busily writing away still in a backyard in Austin. Pictures to come soon! Thanks for checking in.... Luke

A hazy humidity sits over the lush South Congress St. district of Austin. The bamboo sways in the backyard I'm sitting in, and the birds sing constantly. I can hear the sounds of traffic and city life, cars shifting gears, sirens in the distance, and that constant mid range hum that a city carries with it in warm weather.

I'm sitting in a reclined green lawnchair in Kate's sisters apartment complex. It feels like home though we've been here only about 24 hours. Tess and Arnold and Gabriel have been warmly hosting us, showing us around their favorite spots in Austin, making sure we have everthing we need, and providing a comfy safe spot to rest up for a little while.

It has been over a month now that we've been on the road, and far too long since I've had time to sit down and sum it up. I started with the money, since that is a big thought on our mind, and a decent enough way to keep track of how its all going. We've been pretty good, frugal enough, three hundred dollars a month or so on food, about twice that on lodging, too much, two hundred plus on eating out, mostly burritos that we split, no big meals, and again too much on coffee, fifty bucks in a month getting coffee in coffee shops. But that's how it goes. Money goes, and you know, I can justify the coffee, all the coffee shops we've been in are probably the most accurate portrayers of a particular slice of culture in a place, and if there is no coffee shop, well, that says a lot too.

For instance Austin. Yesterday we sat at a nifty hip place called Bouldin Creek Coffeehouse, 'coffee dealers' they advertise. We needed a place in the shade to sit while after sifting along the Congress street treasures and finding what was what in the 90 degree heat. All around us tables of young and fashionable sat, unshaven no doubt band mates, college kids leaned over big books, and thirty something liberal type families whose kids swung restlessly from the trees. And that kind of provides a good glimpse of Austin in a way: a plethora of college age kids, kind of wandering the tree lined streets, somewhat affluent and politically minded families, buying up the cute real estate and planting attractive gardens, bumper sticker buyers asserting their tendencies, and all in all, a healthy mix of easy going people.

The fact that it has been a whole crazy short and long month is hard to believe. Where we started in Yosemite feels as fresh in my mind as yesterday, on the shores of Inks Lake State Park, in the Hill Country of Central Texas. But I can feel myself changing in positive ways, I can gauge my travel smarts beginning to come naturally, and I can see Kate and I getting to be pros at the packing and unpacking game, the starting of campfires, and the cooking of healthy meals on a two burner propane stove. We've found ways to save money, seen more interesting sites, had a lot of fun, written a lot, taken a lot of pictures, generally loving it all.

The only thing I'm not loving is my sorry state of writing affairs, and today I want to begin catching up. Its hard not to procrastinate, as procrastination seems to be inherent with HUGE projects, and as such, I have found that even my past updates have been grossly understated.

But I'll start from The Southwest, because that is where I still am, and hopefully I can make a little story out of it.

Ahem:

THE SOUTHWEST

Seeing the Grand Canyon is one of those things you hear about from childood when you grow up in the west. There is such a huge feeling about the whole geographic location that inevitably the mind fills itself with mythical images of it. In my mind i had pictured sort of a gian notch in the earth, a giant parenthesis filled with emptiness and bottomed out by a magnificent river. Always it seems the topic of the grand canyon ends with: ...but I can't explain it, its too big for that'. And so I pictured in my mind a really big parenthesis, so instead of this:

(____)

more like this

(____________________________________________________)

Its just how my mind explained it.

But its much more than this. The Grand Canyon is of such vastness that it is in fact many canyons with in one canyon. The bottoming out of flat land from out of Northern Arizona truly comes as a surprise, and the Canyon falls gracefully and with many hues of pink, blue, red and green down thousands of jutting points of rock. Waaaaaay down at the bottom the river moves along, from the general tourist vista nothing more than a pencil line silently there. The shapes are mystical and strange, and the vastness, no matter ow long you stare out at it, never really makes sense. I know that had Kate and I gone for a big hike to the floor and mule ride back up we would have had a much better perspective, but we had only a short afternoon.

We had only a short afternoon because we decided to miss the touristed campground. Our experience in Yosemite was fantastic save for the parking lot circus atmoshpere of the campground. We were pulling in sadly on a Saturday early afternoon, and so of course there were hoardes of people. In fact, the only disappointment in the whole of the Grand Canyon has got to be the noise. We quite word for word heard one person say "did you get the picture? good, lets go shopping!" (I promise I am not kidding or exaggerating).

The attitude of the general public at the easy to reach points of view is that they should yell at each other instead of talk, let kids run wild and scream if they get "too close" to the edge, and generally be thoroughly disrespectful to the grandeur, excitement and I would guess, though I didn't experience, peace of the place. Tess (Kate's sister) was telling me that the early explorers noted a sense of sadness dormant in the Canyon. I felt sad that there wasn't at least a quiet area to sit and reflect, but was otherwise thrilled. I must admit too that I was thrilled to be able to say I saw it. Yes its superficial, but it is one of those places on earth that merit a certain "I joined the club" feeling, like Las Vegas, for instance.

Since we had resolved to avoid the tourist throngs at the Grand Canyon, we headed down through Flagstaff (again) to join the tourist throngs in Sedona. OF course, we didn't expect this, but there is just cause to the number of people that vacation to the cool creeks and red rocks of this amazingly picturesque town. As you approach Sedona from Flagstaff you head down a winding canyon into a creek bed lined with trees, oak and pine and you get your first glimpse of the soaring spires of red rock. We had our maps pinpointed with the three National Park campgrounds along the way toward Sedona, and, since we are picky with our campsites, we took a while to choose a spot among the very crowded very busy sites. But we had to settle, we were tired, and there wasn't a whole lot we could do that evening, aside from driving ourselves mad with stress and ignorance of options. So we settled down, and then drove into Sedona. Over coffee and bread at a ritzy balcony having coffee shop we determined that:

Sedona has easily one of the best natural backdrops of any city anywhere.



People with minidogs in their arms wear gucci sunglasses drive Lexus SUV's and vacation or live in Sedona.

It would be neat to check out the several "energy vortexes" that surround Sedona.

As the sun set, we drove up a dirt road just outside of the town close to the most easily accessible Energy Vortex. I had determined this location by stopping in one of the many new age shops and perusing one of the many books about energy vortex. The place I found my information was called "The Center For The New Age" and was looked over by a bored looking woman and sat nicely over a rushing creek. Up at the energy vortex I must admit that the sunset was amazing in the way that light refracted among the spires of red rock. There was a creek running 200 feet below us and birds chirped serenely.

I felt a sense of meditative peace, and it may or may not have been a vortex, but it was a nice scene. Also, I had a kind of misunderstanding with Kate about an hour before and we talked it over nicely, me feeling humbled and dumb for the insensitivity I had displayed. I always consider a good look at myself and my actions a good example of meditation resolving stupidity. The tiff had occured when we were in a New Age-y gallery on the main tourist strip of Sedona. I had thought it would be interesting to purport myself as not only an art collector but as a working artist who may or may not be famous. I did this because 90% of the galleries I had been to, especially on this trip, had treated me somewhat disgustedly if I walked in in my usual trip attire with obviously no intention of buying something. And so I faked it, and sure enough, the gallery owner or worker was enthralled to know what I made, how I sold it, whether I would like to show them any works et cetera. All this when I didn't have a "work" to show. And Kate, well, this is her world, or her deserved world. Kate is such a talented and original painter that she deserves to be selling pieces for ridiculous amounts of money in the most glitzy of yuppie galleries. But you see, that is the problem... the art world can be so pretentious that it is hard to imagine actually being excited to immerse oneself in that sort of vacant and superficial culture. And you have to immerse yourself in it to sell paintings, and Kate is young, so its this exclusive world that is intimidating, promising, and revoting all at once. My feeling is that I shouldn't fake being an artist, and shouldn't care about what gallery owners think of me, and that Kate will whatever course she chooses, find her way without bullshitting and pretensing her way along. So thank you energy vortex for that resolution.

The next day we visited a visitor info center to get a feel for some sights we ought to see. I asked the older white haired and healthy woman working there if she could tell us more about the "energy vortexes" and actually made the quotation mark gesture with my hands. She kind of reproached me with a serious look and told me earnestly that the vortexes affect different people in all different ways. She commented on how either way these places would be a good place to meditate and pray. I was glad she had taken a reverent approach to the whole scene. She obviously appreciated the beauty and the potentialities of Sedona and was proud of it. As we set out with our marked map for the vortexes, I earnestly wanted to be there, and to think awhile on the trip, and on our plans for the future. I wanted to pray a little, to whatever, for some guidance and protection. Alas, it was Sunday afternoon, and every spot we made it to was literally run over by people chatting, snapping pictures and generally doing anything but thinking meditatively.

We did make it to the amazing Chapel Of The Holy Cross situated on the way out of Sedona. Its architect originally envisioned it sitting on the banks of the Danube in Budapest, but the World Wars delayed the project indefinitely. It was worked, with the help of Frank Lloyd Wright to be a skyscaper sized tribute to the image of the cross as a modern testament to a living Christ. I liked a thought that the architect Margarite Brunswig Staude had about the one of the ideas, that it could be a testament to a more "modern" God, a testament to God as a contemporary. Whatever thoughts one might have of the idea of God, it was to me a peaceful building, and its reality, from conception to perfect completion, was very inspiring.

We headed out from Sedona and camped that night by a nice little river at Beaver Creek Campsite. Kate started to come down with the cold I had imported from Las Vegas casinos and we spent the evening by a huge campfire contemplating and talking.

Back to Civilization

I'm back in Silver Springs, NM, in many ways a perfect small town in SW New Mexico. The weather is great, the people charming, and the atmosphere very relaxed. There is a fantastic river front city park, and just a lot of interesting ness. It reminds me of the tv show Northern Exposure, the way that things feel here, very innocent.

We spend that past couple of days and nights up in the pristine Gila National Forest, camping in a canopy under willow trees alongside the Gila River. The days were slow and the nights warm, we had everything we needed, right down to my homemade fishing pole that I made from a stick.

We made the very worthwhile trek up to the Gila Cliff Dwellings, and observed in a kind of ecstatic awe the left over civilization markers, far removed by time and history. These homes were built over 800 years ago deep into enormous caves situated 200 feet or so above a year round creek, and a five minute walk from a trout healthy river and plenty of flat fertile land. It must have been paradise then, it still is in many ways.

I'm liking New Mexico, the relaxed atmosphere. In that spirit, I am off and out of this coffeeshop (its so hard to do these updates while travelling, its such a break from the action but well worth it...).

I updated the pictures page, check it out, take care...

L & K

SouthWest

We had such a good time at our last campsite at Rose Canyon Lake that I was actually sad to leave it this morning. It was a nice short temporary home, and the pine trees were soothing with the wind rustling through them. We spent the day at the lake while the fishermen tried their luck at the many many fish that appeared in the shallow clear waters. At night we played uno and had huge bonfires, enjoying the warm evenings and the solitude.

I don't have any pictures to post right now, but Will have some of tucson soon.

We are headed toward Silver City, New Mexico today, to camp out by some Gila Cliff Dwellings. Should be interesting. Very intersting, and then in a couple of days, carlsbad caverns, roswell? and onto Austin.

Tucson, AZ

Hey there. I'm in a cafe called Epic Cafe in Tucson, near the University here. It is eery how similar this town's kids and art scene seems to be to Portland, ambitious, driven, and yet still a small city. But its nice. The weather is nice too... SUN SUN SUN. Today we're heading out to find some neat thrift stores, take pictures of Airplane Graveyards, and find a campsite in the mountains nearby.

Last night we found ourselves staying at the fabulous ;) Flamingo Hotel on the strip outside of town. NEat sign, nice old movie theme, each room had old movie posters all around it and a theme, a LOT of westerns apparently were filmed here back when Cowboy and Indian flix were the big new thing. My favorite quote from the poster on the way to our room was "Hombre means man, and Paul Newman is Hombre".

So I'm still catching up obviously, but I hope that this brings you closer to us in our travels. We are full of life and having a great time. Our next stop is... uh, Roswell ? New Mexico, and then, uh, Austin? We're not sure right now. The sun is getting to my head, in a good way. Encourages a slow down certainly.

So anyways, I am still writing out the larger panorama of the trip which you can read below, the next part. I hope to repolish all of this writing and pictures and put it into an interesting book. I admit, its rough right now, but with some time I will be able to hopefully make the trip live up to what it feels like... to some extent.

Also, I have more pics HERE, enjoy!



In short San Luis Obispo, while charming, kind of left us with something to be desired. Or probably more precisely, we had some really high expectations for it. It is more or less a peaceful college town, with prevailing frat party atmosphere. The time we spent at our campsite was ideal, long afternoons on the beach, making mobiles and painting, eating grilled salmon off the campfire. We spent two nights at a simple but tantalizingly close to the ocean site called Montana De Oro. And then we headed south again.

Our initial impression of Santa Barbara was fantastic, wide streets with people walking everywhere, our first palm trees, and sun everywhere. It doesn't take long there to realize how well off the general population is. Grandparents dye their hair and wear designer jeans, and the fancy shmancy restaurants line State St, the main strip of the town. There is plenty to check out on foot in the area, my favorite city park so far being the coy ponds there. Its a fantastically landscaped small park with a living pool, surrounded by palm trees, grassy areas and native plants. We sat on the edge of it and watched the turtles bask in the sun and even approach us, hungry for treats from human friends. The coy fish in the pond are huge and peaceful. We could have stayed there for hours.

Our home-base was about 25 minutes northeast of town at a charming 50's style county campground called Lake Cachuma. It sits around a dammed lake, with hundreds of oak tree lined simple campsites. There is a general store there, and a marina, and its the kind of place that feels like it has had its heyday, a kind of destination for RV living, with plenty of family campsites. Our site sat just at a spot where you could watch the sun set over the placid lake, with a tiny little trail winding down to some good sitting rocks. The only hindrance was the wind, in the time we were there it was constant, strong and persistent. We cooked and talked and set up tarps in the wind, anticipating rain at any moment, but it passed us by. We stayed a record three nights there, just kind of taking in the area and slowing down a bit. We didn't want to hit LA during the weekend, when hotel rates were considerably higher. So on Sunday morning we set off, down 101, and the Pacific Coast highway, cruising in California traffic past surfers setting off into the crystal blue waves, and into the jungle that is the outskirts of LA.

Both Kate and I had pretty much negative preconceptions of what LA was all about. We both kind of saw it as a gigantic parking lot, swarming with crime and superficiality. We were wrong, thankfully. LA is not as ugly as Northern Californians would like to think it is, the burghs that we saw, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and Venice are all shaded with trees.

The biggest surprise for me personally was Beverly Hills. I half expected to see bleach blonde plastic surgery victims walking chihuahuas and talking on cell phones, but there was none of that to be seen, though it may go on behind the massive gates of the massive houses in that rightfully famous neighborhood. We drove our ever modest camping mobile around the winding hills looking in awe at not only the ridiculous mansions, but kind of reveling in how actually pretty it was, and how, hey, if we had a spare ten million dollars to spend on a small house, that would be a good place to do it.

In the evening we found ourselves in Santa Monica, and walked the busy pier their, while the ever bustling crowds swarmed everywhere around us. It was sunny and 74 degrees outside, the breeze was light, and it was gorgeous. It was living up to the stereotypes, but in a good way. We spent the late evening in an outdoor seating bar named Bugsy's along the 3rd St. Promenade, a really nice pedestrian walk area where extremely talented street musicians entertain the wildly diverse crowds walking around the warm night air.