Lights, Camera, Action!! Hollywood...yessa

Another day over 100 degrees. We have been here in Redlands for 6 days now and every day has been over the century mark. It has cooled off at night and sleeping has not been a problem. That is a real upside. Sleep would not be as comfortable if we had to run the A/C all night. They say it should be cooler in San Diego. We are looking forward to heading down there.

I just looked back at my last session and realize that I didn’t write anything yesterday. There really wasn’t much going on. We took an in-camp day. We still haven’t found a place for everything. We have gone on 2 big trips. When we went to Alaska, we took too much stuff and we swore we wouldn’t do that again. This time we worked right up to the last minute we could on the house and then packed in a panic. The mantra was “Don’t Take Too Much! Don’t take too much!” Well the mantra didn’t work. We worked off some hastily prepared lists and were so afraid of forgetting something important that as we hurried out to the camper, we grabbed stuff along the way. Well, we still missed some important stuff and took way too much of everything else. Maybe someday we can prepare for a trip over a longer period of time and really think about what we need.

Of course, when you are in 110 degree weather, you wonder why you ever packed some of the clothes you did. Then you think, November can be cool even down here and we will most likely be nearer home the end of October and the first few days of November. Ok, I have beat that horse to death. NEXT!

Yesterday we toyed with the idea of staying in camp and catching up on some work. I have been studying the maps and listings of campgrounds and came up with a possible scenario for the month of July. There were some things I definitely want to do. The Grand Canyon is the biggest of them with Mesa Verde a close second. We want to stay in the government campgrounds there but with our change in plans that is difficult. There are some campgrounds that are not reservable but I do not like to head into very popular areas with no assurances. That is just the opposite of Alaska. We moved around on that trip with no reservations at all. This is a much busier area. I will be heading into the Grand Canyon with no reservations. The reservable areas are full and there are no guarantees for the rest. I did find a small private campground just outside the park but when I called they told me that had just taken over the park and had no reservation system. (Warning bell # 1). They said they did not expect any problems with taking us in but couldn’t give us a guarantee. “No Problem!” (warning bell # 2). Phil was the gentleman I talked to on the phone and I asked him if he had room in his driveway for us if his “guarantee” proved unworthy. He laughed and said he didn’t have a driveway but we would be allright. I guess I can check in with the National Park for the “first come” sites and then head over to see Phil.

He said they have a big turnover and that most people only stay for a day or two. They told me that when I made 8 days of reservations in Denali. People only stay for 2 days. The people around me were there when I got there and were still there when I left. Maybe they stay there one night so they can get into a line early in the morning at the National Park Campground. Time will tell.

I then looked over the 2 areas of Utah that we want to visit and decided that there wasn’t 2 weeks worth of things to do there. I checked the 2 parks I was interested in and found there was room in both so I called Mesa Verde. Availability there was the critical path for everything else. They had a stretch of 4 nights with serviced campsites so we had our time there nailed down. That gave about 9 nights in Utah. I reserved a campground near Zion, Bryce and Canyonlands for 5 nights and then reserved a place within striking distance of Salt Lake City.

I wandered into Salt Lake City several years ago on Government Travel. We ended up with a 5 ½ hour layover so we rented a car and toured the city. It was really a beautiful city. We managed to get a tour of the Mormon Tabernacle. That was really impressive expecially since the choir was practicing. I think Cheryl will really enjoy that. I want to see more of the city especially the Great Salt Lake. After making my Coast to Coast reservations, I logged into my account to make sure they were ok. Imagine my surprise when my reservation for next week in San Diego was not there. I called them up to see what happened and discovered that when I changed some dates, I cancelled that one. That would have been interesting to get there and have no reservation and possibly no room. We straightened that out. There was plenty of room.

We decided on the way out that we would take a minimum of 2 days off in each place we visited. This is our second day. We have been on the road almost 2 weeks and need to do laundry. That takes a large part of an afternoon. (exciting stuff isn’t it??) The lunch bar opened today. We went over for lunch (OK) and did our laundry. The laundry isn’t air conditioned so it was a pretty miserable afternoon. We tried to relax and read but there were a lot of these little flies. They didn’t bite, they were just annoying.

In the evening, they had a game called Bunko in the rec hall. They also had DJ and Karoake scheduled so we went over. We played Bunko. Cheryl won back our entry fee and would have won more but someone tied her. The DJ was from Maine. He was from Bangor and has been out here for several years. Everyone made sure he knew we were from Maine. We told him we were from South Berwick and he thought we were from Brewer. I couldn’t get that out of his head.

Since it was so hot, he set up his equipment on the lawn across from the rec hall. Some of the natives brought out their electric guitars and sang. A few brave souls sang karaoke but mostly we just listened to the music.

Before we left, we had our phone call forwarded to our cell phone. We have found a drawback to that. Some of these dumb phone calls you get in the morning when you are home, we now get at 6 am. I will have to shut off the cell phone when we go to bed. We were awakened this morning. It set off the day all wrong.

We eventually got up and headed into LA. This was our day in Hollywood. We were told the traffic into the city would be lighter on the weekend. I suppose I can’t argue with that since we didn’t go in during the week to compare it.

Armed with a big cup of Starbucks, we headed into the mouth of the beast. We drove around Hollywood Blvd and Sunset Blvd for a while and then decided the best thing would be to take a tour. We paid our money and climbed up onto the top of a double decker English bus. We could get off and on but did only have a short time. The sun was really bright and hot. It was 103 when we got out of the car. Armed with water, we set out to tour Hollywood. We parked near Grauman’s Chinese Theater and borded our bus there. They took us all over Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive. We saw the city hall building that played the police station in the Beverly Hills Cop movies, we saw the hotel that was in Pretty Woman, We saw the Viper Club where River Phoenix died. We saw the Beverly Hills Shields (honest that’s what they call them). It looks the shape of a badge and says Beverly Hills (what else). The city owns the rights to those signs. They show up in many movies and everywhere they show up, the movie makers have to pay the city of Beverly Hills.

We hit the Farmer’s Market and spent a couple of hours there. We found a Bryan’s Open Pit BBQ and split a half chicken. The sauce was good but the white meat portion of the chicken was dry. The dark meat was good. This is the first of what should be several BBQ reports along the way.

We were going to stop at Pinks for a hot dog but the line at 3:30 was out the door and around the building. We had seen Bobby Flay challenge the Pinks to a throwdown so we figured we had to try the place out ourselves. Unfortunately, the line was waaaaay toooo long for us to try them. Too Bad.

We walked along the walk of stars and looked at the names. Then we wandered over
To Grauman’s and looked at all of the footprints, handprints and writings in the plaza in front of the theater. That is always pretty neat. We have a few pictures.

On the way back, we took some back roads and found a large orange orchard where they sold some of the fruit in their yard. We bought a bag of naval oranges, 2 grapefruit and a couple of lemons. We each ate an orange when we got back to camp. It was so juicy and sweet it was sinful. They weren’t the prettiest things but the flavor and juiciness was great. This is pretty much the way oranges were in Florida. If you buy them sweetened on the tree and don’t make them travel too far, they are far superior to those in the stores at home. We had bought some things at the store the other day so we made a fruit salad with watermelon, grapes, mango and oranges.

Well, that brings us up to Saturday night. I am sitting in the dark outside writing and cooking a rubbed roast of pork. We will serve it on a green salad. It’s almost 9 pm so we won’t be up too long after we eat. Catch ya all later.

Clayton & Cheryl

Comments to : estabrke@gmail.com

We’ll think of y’all at the time of church tomorrow. Have a great annual meeting. Take care of each other.