Monterey Bay Aquarium – All Day!

We missed the exact moment of sunrise because old, as in “the old people” we’ve become. That’s not altogether true, and if anyone is familiar with every word I’ve written here (which even I am not), you’d know that we do not sleep well on our first night out so we had some catching up to do. We still woke at 6:00, but silly me rolled out of bed and started prepping yesterday’s photos instead of taking myself to the shower right away. So Caroline ventured out our front door here at Borg’s Motel, hunting for an image that would open today’s post; this is that photo.

Why we haven’t stayed at the Borg before is a mystery. Maybe we just assumed it would be too pricey due to its oceanfront location? It looks like we’ll be here again before the year’s out, as I have my sights set on Monterey for a return visit, possibly around Christmas time, in order to maximize our aquarium membership.

Now, on to the exciting stuff, such as our walk to the Red House Cafe, as previous experience had us wanting to return. It doesn’t open till 8:00, but we remembered the long wait times of those who don’t arrive early. Twenty minutes before the hour, we are the first in line, but within a few minutes, there are more than a dozen of us waiting at the corner.

I’m carrying a new paper notebook this morning, and after nabbing a pen from a server before the cafe opened, I was able to start taking notes, a luxury I shouldn’t forget. Regarding the origins of my newest writing tool, we picked it up yesterday after Caroline was drawn to it, likely because of that big old snail on it. We were at the Phoenix Gift Shop below Nepenthe Restaurant in Big Sur, looking for eucalyptus soap and whatever else might catch our eye. A pen is what should have caught mine, but I honestly thought this notebook would go home with us without me ever placing a single mark in it. I was wrong.

Our orders were put in, with both of us opting for the Red House frittata. While we wait, we sip our coffees and enjoy the lemon water while Caroline is working on my next pair of socks with yarn from our trip to Rügen, Germany, and, obviously, I’m writing. All this while listening to nearby shorebirds and the clank of pots, pans, and dishes in the busy kitchen. The sun streams in on us here on the patio as Sinatra’s crooning voice wafts in over the speakers.

This was our after-breakfast morning dessert for the eyes, found while walking next to the Monterey Bay to the aquarium. While the views found here are familiar to us, they are not so familiar that we’ve grown weary of them and can easily pass without being distracted. For that reason, Caroline had suggested we walk through the neighborhood up from the shore so we’re not inclined to ogle things and arrive late for our early entry, a benefit for members.

We were about 15 minutes early for the 9:30 early opening and were not the first in line. I should have heeded that note on the aquarium’s website that said that this holiday weekend is one of the busiest for this seaside treasure. The line across from us over in the sun is general admission that doesn’t get started for another 45 minutes. When the doors open, we move quickly with proof of membership and identification through the entry, and before even reaching the Kelp Forest, always our first stop, the massive volume of water all around us is already tugging at Caroline’s tear ducts, pulling at the tenderest of her romantic emotions.

The big draw of this particular pilgrimage to the Holy Aquarium of St. Monterey is their new exhibit titled Into The Deep which just opened earlier this year. I want to admit some disappointment as the newest exhibit relies heavily on displays that depict the environment instead of offering the actual sea life, or so I thought. I understand the inherent expense associated with getting and maintaining living specimens out of the deep, but it was what I was expecting. The reliance on video makes sense when you consider that most people acquire the majority of their information from such sources and so I have to understand that this is what must resonate with them.

Once past that mixed media onslaught, we move into the living displays that have me thinking that I might have been too quick to judge.

There is little in the way of knowledge that might help me appreciate what is nearly incomprehensible for my senses to come to terms with when witnessing psychedelic lifeforms. After the fact, I might enjoy learning about their biology, habitat, and history as we know it, but initially, I just want to take them in, seeing them for the first time in much the same way as the person exploring the ocean’s depths encountered them.

Wonder easily springs from being on hand to see the unknown becoming seen and imagining what its form or purpose might mean. Then again, how could we ever really understand any of that when we cannot fathom what our own place here on a planet means? I’m not talking of those afraid of the unknown, uncertainty, and being alone; they must gravitate towards hard answers typically found in religion. I’m speaking of those who are interested in reality and their place in it, where their own freakish appearance is as peculiar as this comb jelly and possibly just as meaningful or meaningless.

On its way to hunting for food, the salmon snailfish looks like a candle flame as it presses its face into the sea floor, feeling for crustaceans using its fins on its chin. At times, I feel the arrogance of our human species as we see these creatures as lesser things, but what if we were to learn that in each of the lesser creatures, we find the embodiment of our gods? Would we be so cavalier about polluting their environment, allowing them to spoil once we’ve sacrificed their lives because we didn’t consume them in time, or treating them in some undignified way? By placing our idea of god in a distant invisible being, we are free to act irresponsibly as long as we walk a fine line determined by some doctrine or other, ask for forgiveness, or pray. In this way, everything, including people, are not much more than things that can be used as a means to an end as long as we accept that salvation is a part of this existence. In a sense, we have a license to be despicable while through our supposed intelligence, we do not have the means to reconcile this ugly contradiction of our somewhat grotesque existence.

Sealife does not practice religion, philosophy, law, or financial segregation, but what does that have to do with visiting an aquarium? While you might think I come to the aquarium with a mind primed to celebrate the experience, I cannot help but imagine that in their natural habitats, without the influence of man, most other life moves towards a kind of equilibrium regarding resources. Darwinism is certainly at work among all species, but it is the false constructs of a controlling and manipulating culture failing to use its supposed vast knowledge to build a more balanced use and distribution of resources not based on total annihilation that floats into my mind. This spiny crab, on the other hand, portends no hint that it is coming to take something from us; it does not flaunt violence, stupidity, or superiority. We, though, are able to bring an abundance of just that to almost every corner of our planet and each other.

The number of people here loudly exhibiting their television knowledge is a horror show in its own right. So many things are being compared to what they’ve seen on TV at some point or other. It is astonishing that so little is appreciated for its beauty, complexity, or how it inspires their curiosity, but how much it all relates to memories taken from what we used to call the Idiot Box. I’ve never watched Stranger Things, but I now know that some plurality of those here today is very familiar with something they are referring to called a Demogorgon, fuck my life.

Passing around a corner from the Into The Deep exhibit to the Tentacles exhibit (that is going away, according to some chatter I pick up here), we become better aware of just how uncomfortably packed the aquarium is. The first half hour of members, followed by the relatively slow trickling in of the unwashed horde, has to be cherished as in just a few more minutes of this, I’ll be looking to lunchtime when we take some time away.

Now, onto my bigger grump, the “urban trash” look paired with the abysmal ability to communicate with a vocabulary beyond that of a fifth grader. This is a cheese grater to my eyes and ears. What shithole of a pseudo-pretentious style emerging from a landfill did this zombie culture crawl out of, and how have they found the economic ability to be here putting their abhorrent natures on display? Did I get something wrong, and this aquarium is a cruel joke of nature that draws in the worst examples of humanity for the amusement of sealife allowing them to witness with their own eyes the dangers of evolution?

This hostility to my senses is likely unintentional on the part of those walking through here compared to my adolescent years when I put my belligerence on center stage because I hated others’ conformity. But this audible/visual hostility is an affront for no reason other than stupidity and its appearance as the fashion of the masses intended to squash my happiness. Fortunately, there are squid, octopus, jellyfish, my wife, and other life here at the aquarium that earn my appreciation for their ability to appear respectful and content to take in the better side of the spectacle all around them.

We’re about to get out of here but will need to return by 2:30 for our 3:00 date with a Behind The Scenes tour where, once again, the aquarium will be experienced at our speed. Not only will we have that, but tomorrow will also see our return early for the member entry and the calm of the first half hour as everyone else begins filtering in.

Tranquility returns as we bail out of the fish penitentiary and take a stroll over Lighthouse Avenue to Monarch Knits. While not one to mention every street nor really enjoy shopping, Lighthouse as a street name just sounds nice, and the yarn store we are going to means another new pair of socks for me.

Today’s choice of fingering weight yarn is from Hedgehog Fibres out of Iceland. It’s 90% Merino wool and 10% nylon, important for durability. The colorway is called Dragonfly, and as I’m noting these details, I’m left thinking I should have always been writing about these yarn details. We had to tend to this chore today as the yarn store is closed on Sunday.

Following a quick lunch at Peppers Mexicali Cafe, we were in need of a coffee, and PG Juice & Java, just around the corner, fit the bill and the caffeine fix. With coffee and a bag of yarn in hand, we aimed to reconnect with the Borg to leave an offering of yarn in the chamber we’d been assigned. Hopefully, someone calls me out for the hypocrisy of my lamenting of media references earlier while I’m doing exactly that with my nod to Star Trek.

With those necessities out of the way, we are afforded another walk along the ocean for our return to the aquarium. Still not tired of these spectacular views, but then how could one ever grow weary of gazing upon something or someone loved?

We arrived with plenty of time to spare before we headed to…Behind The Scenes. Yes, masks were mandatory as it appears that COVID-19 is transmissible to otters, so they are trying to keep any risk of infection from contaminating the areas where the general public is not allowed unaccompanied.

Unfortunately, our volunteer guide took ill, feeling faint early in our tour, and while staff tended to her needs, someone else picked up tour duties, and once again, we were off and exploring.

Sadly, this tour is turning out to be less than what we’d expected. Some 18 years ago in 2004, Caroline and I first experienced the tour we thought we were joining today; well, that one is long gone. Back then, we donned aprons and enjoyed a hands-on interaction where we participated and performed tasks that had us feeling like more than simple observers. Come on, guys, we can look at fish in tanks from the other side, too.

We explained to our guide how a volunteer from our group in 2004 was able to feed one of the sharks in this tank and that the group prepared food for the penguins. She had no interest in acknowledging that experience; she instead voiced her disbelief that such a thing was ever allowed here, implying our memories were unbelievable.

The guide did allow everyone to line up to feel the top of a jellyfish but, at the same time, was suggesting she was taking some small amount of risk on our behalf due to the slight bit of toxicity she might have to endure while holding the specimen. I’m feeling a bit defrauded.

True, the group walked through employee-only areas; we passed into a hallway of offices that were explained as being the fish and otter clinic, and the flow of seawater in and out of the tanks was explained to us. The tour ended here, and so did some small part of my respect for those who administer the operation; just kill this part of your offering that is half-hearted at best. Please remember, this is my perspective and not my wife’s; she’s pretty forgiving and likely fully enjoyed our time here. [Yes, I’m more forgiving, but I also couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed. For example, I’m not sure if looking at the place where shipments are received was a worthwhile part of the tour. But there were interesting spots as well. All I can say is that we were incredibly fortunate to have been able to take the tour eons ago. – Caroline]

Shortly after 4:00, we were back on the main floor and lucky us, people had already started funneling out of the aquarium for their dinner plans.

Standing here next to my best friend, I’m the one who sees Caroline looking on with a magical delight in her gaze at every fish and animal. Often, she’s wearing a smile that expresses the same enthusiasm that exists in the innocence of a child. At other times, it’s a studied seriousness that has her following a detail that obviously captured her imagination. Still, it remains in the private domain of her experience unless she calls me to her side to share in viewing the pageantry.

Flashy, dull, colorful, active, or at the edge of perception regarding any movement at all, Caroline will take the time to allow her eyes to dance over the scene, waiting patiently to maybe understand a thing, or is she somehow recording the patterns for future reference? Oh, lucky day that we were here and found this scale-sided boring piddock clam out and awake. So what did it do to elicit this exclamation of good fortune? It was in full presentation, and while not visible to our eyes, it was likely filtering water and enjoying its dinner before the lights went out for the night. This clam has something in common with the plain old sand dollar as far as Caroline is concerned, as there is nothing too languid to not interest her. I’ve watched this 54-year-old woman sit down on the floor before a tank of sand dollars and nearly worship their majesty as they do their sand dollary thing while failing to attract a following like the mighty octopus that always draws a crowd.

I’d like to share with you that there’s one thing here above all others that enchants my sweet wife, who spends the entire day here in absolute glee, but I don’t believe that’s possible as after visiting the squid and marveling at their entrancing pigment parade of shifting colors and patterns, she’s just as joyous when watching the shimmering light reflecting off of sardines.

And if someone thought that something like a blobby sea cucumber that barely moves might be the thing she could just pass by taking on a kind of blasé attitude about it, they’d be wrong. Maybe they failed to consider its color, its surface texture, its shape, or the way shifting light glides over this creature.

When I first laid eyes on Caroline, I didn’t find her attractive or interesting, not to say she was like a cross between a sand dollar and a sea cucumber, but clearly, my opinion changed. Six months later, I fell in love with her following the most delicate of kisses she immediately transformed into an ultra-beauty that captured my heart and soul. Over the course of more than 30 years that we’ve been a pair, her romantic quotient (RQ) has only grown with her keen appreciation for aesthetic sensuality to become one of the greatest attractions she employs to increase the bond that pulls me closer to her. I think that this black oystercatcher is looking at me with that knowing smile of, “You got that right.”

As from the emerald waters, so from the Emerald Tablet, we learn the quote, “As above, so below.” Maybe the lowly fish understood its mirror image or, as Jacques Lacan wrote, its Mirror Stage and recognized it was also from a world above, propelling it to walk out upon the land. That fish is surmised to be the Tiktaalik. I try to imagine this fish, some 375 million years pulling itself out of its universe using its fins in order to meet its god in a world beyond its normal existence. It was then this kernel of primitive thought encoded in the DNA of creatures that told them to look up into the heavens in order to find their maker in the ethereal light that falls down upon this great mystery.

While this sheepshead fish is far from ugly, my last paragraph has me thinking about the differences between those creatures that try to ascend and those that take refuge in the deep below. Consider that many would consider deep sea fish ugly, even going so far as calling some the ugliest monsters imaginable. Our ideas of Satan and hell are from a nether world, and the zombies that terrorize popular dystopian nightmares crawl from out of the earth below. There’s an important bit of insight we can take from this analogy: life does not improve or find beauty when it is busy descending; it must leave the darkness, the depths, and its terrestrial existence to seek higher planes of self-realization or risk becoming a monster.

Next to the otter tank here at the aquarium, I’d say watching the octopuses [yes, that is the correct plural of octopus – Caroline] when they are active might be the next most popular activity, but why? While they are from the world below, they exhibit curiosity, they are mischievous and even exhibit a kind of craftiness. They are better examples of human qualities than many of the wanna-be monsters walking these corridors. Yes, my rhetoric verges on the harsh as I seemingly want to dismiss the masses as closer to troglodytes than real humans, but this is what haunts my nightmares and version of hell. It appears to me that humanity is accepting the descent into mediocrity, ignoring that only when reaching out do we discover exquisite new heights we once thought were beyond our grasp.

Jellyfish existed in our oceans more than 500 million years ago, sharks were swimming among them 450 million years ago, trees appeared about 370 million years ago, and then frogs started croaking 263 million years before the first humans stepped upon the land. Is our supposed free will to do as we please really the pinnacle of life? Somewhere else on this blog I’ve written that I want to believe that birds have a more significant existence than most any human aside from the wealthiest of us. Birds fly, walk, swim, sing, eat for free, sing some more, procreate, parent, and soar in the clouds and just above the waves before taking refuge in their simple but free homes they typically build themselves. We, on the other hand, have all the freedom we can afford, have no idea how to build a home, hope to practice procreation, eat according to how much we earn, and are allowed to walk, swim, or fly where others permit us to.

Maybe birds are not the only masters of a domain. Jellies float effortlessly in a perfect environment well suited to the area of the sea where their individual species thrive. Obviously, they are adept at accommodating change as they have been doing their thing free of bondage and ego for 500 million years. The dinosaurs weren’t so skilled in their flexibility to survive extinction, and I’m increasingly inclined to think we are collectively too stupid to survive our own successes. Yet, I’d bet a crypto coin that many people would think of the jellyfish as one of the lowliest of creatures on our planet.

Majestic with frills and lace fringe, the jelly tumbles through their universe with nary a care as it knows better than to concern itself with the problems of man. In a sense, the jelly is a god having lent us humans part of its extraordinary DNA so that we might take form some 498 million years after having learned what it would take for its species to survive almost everything else that at one time was alive and possibly thriving on our earth. And most would react with fear at the jelly approaching them in the ocean, afraid they’ll be stung and die, and so, in turn, would rather kill this elegant lifeform just as we try doing with sharks and wolves.

It seems that we are the most barbaric of species; we are the dangerous pandemic of death, we bring the pestilence of our very being to the world around us, and then we celebrate the idea that our mythical gods will save our souls. Our souls are monsters from the depths of an evolutionary experiment that might have only been allowed in order to witness the dumbest creatures ever rise out of the primordial ooze.

Don’t get me wrong, while I may decry the handling of our current place in the order of life at this time; I’m grateful for this opportunity to have been here and been able to consider the bizarre rarity that we even came into existence. Maybe the greatest gift of aquariums, coastal roads, forest trails, riverways, and flower gardens is that we might pause and consider the hows and whys we have been offered such experiences and then act as the rational, sentient beings we claim to be. So, big thanks to the life on display here this day that played a part in making me think about how I relate to them.

There’s this moment when we’re somewhere like Disneyland, and the park is going to close in an hour, where we want to rush over to our favorite rides for one more perfect moment. Should we ride Pirates of the Caribbean, It’s a Small World, or, had it not already closed, we’d sit in for yet one more rendition put on by the birds of the Tiki Room. Well, here at Monterey Bay Aquarium, it is the exact same thing when we want to go watch the octopus or jellyfish just one more time. We want to linger at the Kelp Forest watching the sway of sealife to an old familiar piece of music that’s been playing there for decades or come stand in front of the aquarium’s biggest window and wish all the inhabitants a good night.

The sardine. They made Cannery Row here in Monterey famous, in part due to John Steinbeck’s writing of this old town on the bay that was a key supplier of the canned fish. By the 1950s, the canneries had to shut down as the fishermen were no longer able to catch enough fish for processing. Then, in 2010 the largest cannery still in operation over in Prospect Harbor, Maine, had to shut down after 135 years of operation for the same reason. From the 1950s through the early 2000s, sardines started to recover, but then overfishing reared its ugly head again, and since 2006, the Pacific population of sardines has declined by an estimated 95%. While humans might complain about lost fishing jobs and consumers might be willing to pay higher prices for sardines, the sea lions, salmon, pelicans, dolphins, and whales that depend on healthy stocks don’t care about jobs or what wealthy people might pay for a food item they depend on. If we humans don’t wake up and start acting together, first admitting to our own shortsightedness and then our petulant greed, we might ultimately be responsible for destroying what was once abundant and incredibly beautiful.

If you are wondering what single-word superlatives might describe this day, there are none that could adequately convey the breadth of our experience. The photos and my musings will have to do the majority of the heavy lifting.

The California Coast – All Day!

Ventura Harbor at sunrise in Ventura, California

Sunrise over Ventura Harbor and fond memories of a previous visit here that took us out to the Channel Islands with Caroline’s mother, Jutta. Somewhere nearby, we could hear the barking of seals, but we couldn’t find them before turning around for our first walk today by the surf. The light on the shore wasn’t ideal for photos, and we had plenty of other opportunities before the sun sets so we decided to go eat. Breakfast was up the street at a Black Bear Diner, just our speed with all the oldies, meaning the other gray-haired people and the soundtrack playing the hits from the late 50s through the mid-70s. As we were walking out the door, Perry Como started singing It’s Impossible, that’s how old all of us were at this joint. It’s kind of sad that I knew this song until I looked it up and saw that it came out in 1970.

Goleta San Marcos Rd Vista Point on Route 154 in Santa Barbara, California

Highway 154 out of Santa Barbara brings us into the Santa Ynez mountain range that we’ve visited many a time by now. On more than one occasion, we found ourselves up here at the historic Cold Springs Tavern for breakfast with different family members, including aunts and uncles, my daughter, and my mother-in-law. I took this photo at the Goleta San Marcos Road Vista Point.

We keep the windows open driving north, and the cool ocean air drifts in as the temperature fluctuates from the low 60s and, from time to time, hits nearly 80. Here on the inland segment of today’s drive, we are listening to Royksopp (Norwegian thing), Luna (Ukrainian thing), Mine (German thing), and a bit of Ethel Cain (Floridian thing) as vineyards dot a landscape between golden brown rolling hills. The smell of a skunk or two deeply penetrates the car, requiring windows to be opened wider. On the sad news front, the first potential yarn store in San Luis Obispo doesn’t open until 11:00, so we’ll have to skip that stop.

Robin's Restaurant in Cambria, California

On the approach to Cambria, where we’ll be staying in a couple of days, Caroline suggests we stop for an early lunch. I considered Lucia’s just 48 miles up the road, but if we drive slow, and we will, it could be nearly dinner time by the time we reach that spot on the coast, so Cambria it is. We’ve been here before, which can almost be said about everything we’ll be visiting today; here is Robin’s Restaurant. It was just last year, on May 1st, that we first sat down on their lovely garden patio to have lunch on our way to Pacific Grove, making today look like a replay of last year’s coastal adventure.

Caroline Wise at Ball & Skein Yarn Store in Cambria, California

Not wanting to risk that the Ball & Skein Yarn Store would be closed on Sunday or Labor Day Monday, we were going to have to yarn shop our guts out right here, right now. Caroline is only allowed to buy what she can carry, and while she could have easily carried more, her knowledge that she has precious little space at home to store more had her considering just how much she should walk out with. Hmm, thinking about this last bit I just wrote, I can’t risk my wife outing me, so the truth is that the two colorful skeins are destined to become socks for me and were of my choosing.

Shore Birds off Highway 1, California

I’ve been mentioning Highway 1 and should point out that it’s also referred to as the Cabrillo Highway; maybe this will help the search engine algorithms note this post. We are just 5 miles up the road from our lunch and shopping stops and are already pulling over across from the San Simeon Creek Campground at the sight of Birdapalooza happening right there on the beach. All the shore birds were here, species from near and far just co-mingling like this festival was some kind of hippy hangout of a bunch of naked birds from Big Sur. (The people of Big Sur will know just what this references.)

It was at this point that the photographer on this expedition realized the extent of his own stupidity when, KNOWING we’d be having wildlife experiences, he left his 70-200mm lens in Phoenix, Arizona, where it wouldn’t be zooming in on pelicans, seals, or, potentially, whales. Why was it with us? That’s already been answered; I’m an idiot, that’s why.

Highway 1, California

There’s a funny thought in my head when we aim for any coastal region, and that is we’ll be taking our time not to focus on photos, writing, or knitting but simply getting out in these gorgeous places to meander a bit. We’ll stroll the trail, walk the beach, hold hands, smile at one another, and gaze at all there is to take in on the preciously rare visits. Reality plays out differently from those naive expectations where idealized leisure should rule our day; we become anxious to see all and to see more. We want to discover that one corner, configuration of elements, or contrast of hues we’d never before witnessed. As though the sun bearing down was building an angle of repose using beauty in this construct created just for Caroline and me that would start cascading into an incomprehensible wash of such tremendous exquisiteness that our minds would be torn out of reality and cast into nirvana.

Caroline Wise and John Wise near San Simeon on Highway 1, California

And this would be the appearance of my hair after returning from nirvana.

San Simeon on Highway 1, California

There are seven little dots left-of-center in the sky; they are pelicans. Has it been that we have rarely traveled the coast during late summer that we’ve not been so aware of their presence as we will be during this 5-day jaunt, or are they always here, and we are distracted by the other trillion details that clamor for our attention?

Empty Elephant Seal beach in San Simeon on Highway 1, California

And then this! Now we know with certitude that this is the first time we’ve ever traveled this road in September. Why does an empty beach signify this? We are at the Elephant Seal Vista Point looking south; never before have we seen this sight without the presence of a colony spread far and wide across this protected stretch of beach.

San Simeon on Highway 1, California

We are still at the Elephant Seal Vista Point now heeding the advice of a sign near the entry of the parking area that pointed to a northerly section of the beach and said, “Best Viewing.” This affords us the opportunity to share this seldom photographed section of the space between the two beaches the colony occupies.

Elephant Seals in San Simeon on Highway 1, California

Sure enough, a small gathering of mostly adolescent seals was to be found over here. Thinking about it, I feel like I could have used any of the 100s of other images I’ve shot over the years to share here that would show a beach stuffed with these fat sea sausages lounging in the sun, tossing sand onto their baking sides, and grunting into position between other seals, vying for that perfect cozy spot that only an elephant seal can appreciate.

Highway 1, California

I just looked over to last year’s photo of the same location and saw that the sea was silver and that I was standing on the other side of the street. Part of me thinks that I should limit my efforts in writing this narrative by eliminating photos that are so similar to others I’ve posted, but then I might just remove every image included in this post and simply summarize our five days as “We visited the Big Sur coast again and went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.”

Highway 1, California

We are witnessing the hand of time representing the universe that has crafted this one moment where sea, sky, and earth painted in blues, greens, silvers, tans, and browns (and uncountable colors in between) come together to shape a view that only eternities are able to create. We might capture the scene and even attempt to put words to the pictures, but we stand before nature, stupid and illiterate in comparison, while the unseen fish to the left, the birds above, and the plants that cling to life live in harmony with their environment. It’s sad that we humans, with our ability to understand what we do wrong, seem incapable of correcting our mistakes.

Highway 1, California

There is so much to smell, hear, and wonder about while standing at the edge of land. Everything else that isn’t here loses any importance. You are at a place that invites contemplation or nothing more than quiet appreciation. For a second, you are allowed to be a plant standing under the sun, oblivious to the trials and tribulations of a society that thrives on chaos, scarcity, fear, and uncertainty. If you are strong of character, you too might be able to find these places of turning away from the worst aspects of our inhumanity. Or maybe this type of solitude is too abrasive to the intensity you require to maintain the turmoil that propels you to keep racing down the highway of anger.

Highway 1, California

This pampas grass does not belong here; it is invasive. But it is beautiful as it captures the wind and offers a golden-red contrast to the blue sky and sea. Behind us are the mountains that make this coast so relatively difficult to visit, though we benefit from those who carved such a treacherous route here long before our arrival. Including the many pullouts along the road, we are allowed to crawl as slowly as we wish along this narrow trail hugging the coast, and from there, we step out of a car to stand before some of the greatest art nature has to offer, even if it’s out of place.

Highway 1, California

The color of the shallow waters begs us to know why we’ve ignored its glory for more than a year. How could we not return sooner to pay homage to such grandeur? Are the memories we carry with us over the past decades and many visits to this 100-mile stretch of America along the Pacific Ocean really so indelible that we can afford such distances between our returns? Absolutely not; we are failures for ignoring what burns so deeply in our imaginations, but time and money dictate that we are only allowed the share of life we can best afford; such is the equation of the present day.

Gorda on the Big Sur Coast of Highway 1 in California

Wouldn’t you think that where there’s a kelp forest, it would stretch for miles? It seemingly does not, at least from the appearance of this one whose canopy reaches the surface of the glistening ocean. If I was a fish deep below, maybe I’d wonder what it was like to be those plants that touch the edge of space and almost intrude upon another dimension.

Gorda on the Big Sur Coast of Highway 1 in California

It’s taken us more than 3 hours to drive the 35 miles (56km) from Cambria to Gorda; I believe we might be driving too fast. Then again, here at 3:30 in the afternoon, we only have about 4 hours before the sun sets and then maybe 30 minutes of civil twilight before the night sky descends upon us. Of the night sky, we have had more than a few opportunities to enjoy the sight of it right here in this area as the Treebones Resort is just up the road a tiny bit, where from a Bird’s Nest high above the ocean we looked out in astonishment that we were the only two humans on the entirety of the earth who were doing just that.

View from Seven Stairs along the Big Sur Coast on Highway 1, California

Once again, we stopped at the Seven Stairs pull-out. Last year there still was water flowing from a spring somewhere up the ravine. Today, it was dry as a bone, so instead, I present the view south from across the highway.

Highway 1, California

While I know this is not the view north from Seven Stairs, I’m not sure exactly where it is on the drive, and it really should stay that way because if we knew the exact layout of the coast, would it be so surprisingly new every time we are here?

Rain Rocks Rock Shed & Pitkins Curve Bridge near Lucia, California on Highway 1

Rain Rocks Rock Shed & Pitkins Curve Bridge south of Lucia is relatively new to our visits. It was already built when we visited last year in 2021, but in the 6-year gap where we didn’t drive Highway 1, this was one of the sites prone to frequent rock falls.

Highway 1, California

Writing of our 6-year gap in visits, we first visited the Pacific Coast together back in January 1991, and then after moving to the United States in 1995. It wasn’t until September 1996 and my mother-in-law Jutta’s first visit to the United States that we took her and ourselves up the coast. Old camera film without proper records betrays any idea of knowing much about dates or if even those old cameras were ever developed, so some trips out this way might be lost in the fog of time, but after a quick scouring of the blog posts, I have made I can share the following.

Highway 1, California

We visited all or some significant part of this section of the coast on these dates: October 2001, November 2001, January 2002, April 2002, May 2002, January 2004, October 2004, February 2005, May 2005, November 2005, December 2005, November 2006, January 2011, November 2011, December 2017, May 2021, and now again in September 2022. I linked those previous trips to the months they occurred.

Up until this moment of writing this post, I had no real idea of how many times Caroline and I have been so fortunate to visit the central California coast, but our photos say it’s no less than 19 times. Sure, if you live in the San Francisco area or Santa Barbara to San Luis Obispo, or even to the east over the coastal range, visiting the Cabrillo Highway (a.k.a. Highway 1, a.k.a. PCH) along the Pacific Ocean might be the most natural thing to do regularly, but we are just two normal schmoes living in a desert 650 miles (1,000km) away.

Highway 1, California

Good thing we didn’t wait for Lucia as the restaurant and gift store were mostly destroyed in a fire that shut it down last year; it’s in the process of being rebuilt, we hope.

Eucalyptus trees lining Highway 1, California

The dominant smell on the coast might be sea air, but it’s the eucalyptus that excites squeals of delight from us when we catch its fragrance as we continually pass through. Every visit to the central coast we’ve ever made it is the eucalyptus we dream of and will forever associate with this part of California. Jumping ahead in the afternoon, Caroline and I couldn’t find a sign of our favorite eucalyptus bar soap we first bought out here, nor did we have luck last year, so we started thinking that Big Sur Country Soap company might have ceased operations because last year we were unable to locate any either. Well, looking at this photo of the eucalyptus trees, I checked to see if there was still a web presence, and while the site was down, Bing search supplied me with a phone number to the company. Sheila, the founder of Big Sur Country Soap answered and assured me things are still going forward and will be sending out an order for me shortly.

Sun and silvery sea on Highway 1, California

At least on this day and countless others, actually, we have experienced untold perfection, and through my feeble attempts at conveying a hint of this with my writing and photographs, I can’t imagine anyone could gather a hint of just how exceptional our shared time has been. The little things like the scent of eucalyptus, a cloudless sky or one dotted with puffballs, the reflection of the sun in a blindingly bright strip of silver, a random butterfly, a barking seal, or a slight breeze that weaves all of these things together to bring them to us personally as we arrive at the right moment to experience it all in a way that no one has ever shared with someone else before. This is all ours because we bring ourselves into these places full of love and little expectation other than we’re certain that no matter the conditions, it will all be perfect for us.

Highway 1, California

If you look back on our many excursions up and down this wild coast, you’ll notice two things: rarely will you ever see others, and you might note that we’ve never visited Hearst Castle. You could have the impression that we are alone out here; well, that’s intentional for our memories as I make an effort to snap an image when no one else is in the frame. This way, I’ve captured how we see ourselves out in this landscape, just us and all the things that are most important. Regarding Hearst Castle, both of us have been to European castles and not even Versailles outside of Paris ($22) or Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna ($26), charge anywhere close to the almost $100 per person it costs to visit Hearst Castle.

View from Phoenix Gift Store at Nepenthe in Big Sur, California on Highway 1

We are at the only slightly lesser great view from below the famous Nepenthe Restaurant here in Big Sur, at the Phoenix Gift Store. After trying the restaurant one time many years ago and receiving rushed service for the food we found mediocre, we’ve never given it a second nod, not that we haven’t considered it if only for the view but the outpouring of elitism from the customers and some of the staff left a permanently poor impression. In my view, a picnic along the coast anywhere else, lunch in Cambria, or waiting until you reach Carmel or Monterey would be the better choice unless you need bragging rights and self-congratulatory selfies that show you’ve been to Nepenthe, the Icon.

Garrapata Beach in Big Sur, California

Garrapata Beach cannot be passed by, however. We must stop, although I was a bit worried due to Caroline’s healing foot that was just operated on 29 days earlier. But here we are, about to finish the last dozen or so steps before reaching the beach.

Caroline Wise and John Wise at Garrapata Beach in Big Sur, California

Considering that I pointed out our previous 18 visits to the coast, one could figure that I’ve shared this at least half a dozen times before, but I’ll state it again: this is one of our all-time favorite beaches. In the early years of our visits, there were never any other cars at the unmarked pull-out, and you could barely see the trail, but in the distance, you could just make out the partly broken stairs leading to the beach. We’d walk out to the loudest waves we’d ever heard as the sound bounced off the cliffs you see behind us in this photo. Not only that, they approach the shore out of the depths and quickly crash and retract with a respectable amount of obvious violence that warns you to be aware of these waters. Never have we seen someone in the surf here; nobody surfs Garrapata.

But here, on a late summer day, things seem pretty calm, relatively.

Garrapata Beach in Big Sur, California

This is something new to us that we’ve never seen before, and maybe for good reason. It’s a kind of cave, or maybe it’s more appropriately called a blowhole, created where the surf rushes in to carve out the underlying rock, leaving this opening in its ceiling. Looking for a better description, I came across only one mention of this “blowhole” at Garrapata in a news story that showed helicopter footage of deadly surf rushing into this space from “14-foot waves spaced 9 seconds apart” while they were trying to rescue an 18-year-old who fell in from above and disappeared into the whitewater. Yikes.

Garrapata Beach in Big Sur, California

I said there was a good reason we’ve not been in here: the shoreline at Garrapata is always being reshaped by the surf, and on this day, just as we were turning around from the south end of the beach I noticed this small opening that looked at first glance like a ledge, but it was the appearance of light beyond the opening that looked inexplicable. At first, I thought to just let it go, and we walked on but then considered that the next time we were here, that opening might be hidden by the shifting sands. So, we did what all knuckleheads would do: we crawled in and hoped there wouldn’t be some rogue wave crashing in through that narrow slot. It’s a good thing we knew nothing about the kid who died here back in 2019, as we would have never entered this place. All the same, it appears that we might now have posted the first photos from within the Garrapata blowhole.

Caroline Wise at Garrapata Beach in Big Sur, California

There are songs that tell the story about these being the days of our lives, and they don’t lie; these are those days.

Garrapata Beach in Big Sur, California

This drive has been one of the most stress-free journeys up or down the coast we’ve yet experienced. I attribute this to the fact that I’d decided to go as slow as I pleased, to not curse those crawling up our backside, and to pull over as soon as I saw anyone far behind that was likely going to rapidly close the gap. I don’t know if this strategy impacted the amount of time we spent on the coast, but I can share that we averaged just under 14mph for the 104 miles between Cambria and Pacific Grove. Of course, there were probably between 30 and 40 stops along the way that contributed to our speed of slow.

It was after sunset when we checked into Borg’s Motel at Lover’s Point in Pacific Grove, and we missed the moment the sun sunk below the horizon while driving through the forested area east of Carmel, but who cares, considering all that we’ve seen and experienced on this glorious day.

For dinner, we headed up the road into Monterey for a visit to the Wonju Korean restaurant, where we ate a couple of times last year. It was the same lady working everything by herself as during our previous visits and again, for being in a tourist town, it’s a good meal.

But now it’s 9:00, and we have to drag ourselves back to the Borg as we have to rise with tomorrow’s sunrise to keep the magic of vacation vibrating at the right frequency, that being perfection.

Not Your Average Thursday – Trip 15

Caroline Wise and John Wise on Interstate 10 east of Quartzsite, Arizona

Nope, this is not your average Thursday, as everything is working differently. We woke earlier than we had for a while. Caroline had a 6:00 online workshop to attend, and I needed to get out early to wash the car before the heat of the day set in. Though Caroline is “in class,” she’s still working, but as it’s from home, she’s better positioned for our early afternoon departure. From the title of today’s post, you can see that we are embarking on trip 15. When we leave is in question as that depends on the needs coming from her office, and consequently, that dictates where we’ll be staying this evening.

The further we get down the Western road today, the greater the indulgence of incredible tomorrow. Over my iced soy latte, and obviously, at the last minute, I’m working out the details of exactly what we are aiming for and what we’ll avoid. The avoidance is considered as I find no joy in driving through the middle of Los Angeles in the evening, so I’d rather have us track north. If we didn’t want to drive Highway 1 up the Big Sur coast tomorrow, it would make more sense to drive to Tehachapi or Bakersfield and then hit the 101, but we need to spend as much time as possible crawling along that splendid ocean we are oh-so in love with.

Typically, there would be some emphasis on a nice spot to drop in on dinner but on these coastal long weekends that see us going so far north hugging the sea, food doesn’t play such an important role. With the prices of hotels scoped out from Simi Valley over to Ventura, I have an idea of where we might stay tonight but again, this depends on when we leave in some hours. And seeing we are getting ever closer to that time with the need to pack, clean a few things, make an extravagant lunch of sundubu-jjigae, and stop on our way out for an obligatory large iced coffee, I should give this preliminary travel blogging a rest and get back home to deal with those last-minute details.

It’s almost 2:00 p.m., and we are popping out and heading down the road, yippy.

Interstate 10 approaching Los Angeles, California

Dinner was at In N Out as we were passing through Indio, California. The photo of Caroline and me in the car was taken on Interstate 10 traveling west after getting gas east of Quartzsite almost 3 hours before this sunset photo, which was also shot from the moving car. Encountering the typical stressors found while driving through the Los Angeles area, we made our way over to Ventura to take a room at the Motel 6 South and fell immediately to sleep.

L.A. to Phoenix

Last night, somewhere about an hour after we went to sleep, the sound of a racing car engine woke me first. The squealing tires demanded I jump out of bed, quickly followed by Caroline. Our room on the third floor of the Garden Suite Hotel facing Western Avenue offered us the perfect view of the intersection at 7th Street and Western. What was going on down there took some time to decipher. The smell of burning rubber, a ton of smoke, roaring engines, and the sound of the crowd spilling into our room, but tired brains took a moment to compute that we were witnessing our first-ever sideshow, also known as a takeover.

Then it all starts to come together: someone disabled the street lights, there was a coordinated effort to shut down the streets in such a way that law enforcement wouldn’t easily reach the intersection, enough people showed up to make a sizable audience, and then the mayhem ensues. Get your tires smoking, turn into the circle, and hammer the gas. Passengers were hanging out of windows, and kids were darting into the middle of the street where cars encircled them, pouring smoke over everything. On the edges, other kids were trying to touch the cars when they weren’t jumping out of the way. This lasted nearly 15 minutes before a police helicopter showed up, and maybe 5 minutes after that, we could hear sirens from the approaching police. With the explosion of a large firework right in the intersection, things broke up, the crowd scattered, and cars pulled away in all directions, leaving us astonished at what we’d just seen.

Seven hours later, as we crossed the intersection, the smell of burned rubber was still present, and the idea that we heard, saw, and experienced what we did in the wee hours of last night felt like a dream.

Here we are across the street at Sun Nong Dan Korean restaurant that we visited last night. This is what $30 bought for breakfast compared to yesterday. First up was hot barley tea, followed by the banchan: kimchi (spicy), pickled radish (yummy), pickled onion with jalapeno (okay), garlic chive in sesame oil (oh my god, my mind is blown in amazement), and a side of brown rice (dyed purple with black rice!). Caroline ordered the Tta Roh Guk Bap (beef brisket with dried cabbage Soup), and I went for the Yuk Gae Jang (spicy beef & leek soup). Both had a good amount of spiciness to them; this wasn’t just some mild gochugaru added for coloring.

We were promised a partly sunny day, but all we see is gray, occasionally dark gray hinting at a chance for rain, but that won’t ruin our day as our dispositions are sunny enough. Hmm, I read those last six words and think I need to mash the backspace key and delete that cheese, but there’s a hint of truth there. You see, we always know we might be hit with unfavorable weather when we travel, but what exactly is unfavorable? Is cold, wet, windy, or too hot a negative for successful travel? Maybe this is why so many people think they need to go to Cancun, Hawaii, Ibiza, Tenerife, Miami, or other places at only particular times of the year. Well, that would be a setup for disappointment. All of today’s photos were shot under gray skies, that is, until we reached the Palm Springs area of the Californian desert on our way home when the sun finally emerged.

So now that you know the weather and our attitude towards it, I can share that we are at the Huntington Library and Garden in San Marino, California. In yesterday’s post, I wrote how we got our dates backward for when we were supposed to be here and at LACMA; well, the staff here at the Huntington had no problem exchanging the tickets and letting us enter right away, which was a big relief. Our first stop is at the library and this statue of Commodus (son of Marcus Aurelius and movie villain in the film “Gladiator”) as Hercules holding his son Telephus; I guess it’s kind of like the image of Trump as Rambo but also holding a baby Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Close-up detail of one of the original Gutenberg bibles that still exists. This volume printed on vellum is incomplete just as the majority of the 48 remaining bibles are, but lucky Caroline and I have also seen a complete copy at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. and the one at the Austrian National Library in Vienna. Next time we are in Germany, I want to make a point of seeing the Frankfurt University Library copy that is also complete, and since I’ve also seen the one in Mainz, Germany, it’ll take me to have been in the presence of 10% of these old bibles from 1455.

An example of cross-writing where back in the days of expensive writing paper, the author would write their letter in the traditional top to bottom fashion and then turn the page 90 degrees to continue writing. This page at the Huntington Library wouldn’t be here if it didn’t hold significant historical importance; it is from Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein and wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, written to her friend Marianne Hunt in 1819.

The stacking of coincidence to make for synchronicities isn’t lost on us. First, we go to Mexico City, and Caroline learns that it used to be a city surrounded by a lake. Then, yesterday at LACMA, we visited the Mixpantli exhibit that has a floor map interpreting the phase between Tenochtitlán becoming Mexico City. Now, here at the Huntington, Caroline spotted this map printed in 1524 of Tenochtitlán created as conquistador Hernán Cortés was causing the fall of the Aztec empire.

The various gardens here are part of the attraction for visitors who get to explore 130 of the 207 acres that comprise the grounds.

Couldn’t help but think of Kehinde Wiley’s presidential portrait of Barack Obama with this shot.

Inside the 55,000 square-foot Beaux-Arts mansion that Henry Huntington and his wife Arabella called their winter home. At other times of the year, you might have found them somewhere between mansions in New York or their home in Paris, France. Huntington made his fortune as a railroad magnate.

This is such a big, beautiful room, and normally down there at the end is the famous Blue Boy, a full-length portrait by Thomas Gainsborough painted in 1770, but it’s over in England on display until May 15 at the National Gallery in London. This is the first time the Blue Boy has been back in England in 100 years, and is likely the last time. In its stead is a modern interpretation commissioned by the Huntington of the Blue Boy by artist Kehinde Wiley. Interested in seeing what it looks like? Visit the Huntington; it’s worth your effort.

While there are more than a few paintings from Edward Bird here, it doesn’t seem like the artist ever gained the kind of reputation that would make his work extremely valuable.

This is a small overview of the very crowded Japanese garden. I know it doesn’t look that crowded, but I waited to get this photo with so few people in it, and like I said, it’s a small corner of it.

Next we headed to the new Chinese garden that was still under construction when we visited last. This place is perfect.

I might now be wishing for blue skies and sun, but I’d like to think that we’ll return here again and maybe on that day I can get a shot of this view in full glorious sunlight or maybe we’ll really get lucky and come back for a summer twilight visit

Part of the transition zone between the Chinese and Japanese gardens, I believe.

For Caroline.

Back at the Japanese garden, though, we are just skirting it on the way to the Australian corner of the Huntington.

Last time we were here, the bonsais were chained down as something pricey had been stolen; looking around now there are enough surveillance cameras to dissuade potential thieves, I hope. This bonsai is an elm tree.

Almost missed this plant and flower as it’s kind of away from the trail. Caroline first noticed the peculiar gray metallic leaves, and then, on our approach, there were maybe half a dozen blooms distributed between two of these giant Australian plants.

The squirrels seen across the grounds are fluffy, fat, and cute, but they are not the only wildlife.

Initially, I wanted to avoid the desert plants as I feel we see enough of them where we live, but obviously, we don’t live in all desert areas and my memory didn’t remind me of the opulent beauty on display here.

Are these edible?

There are thousands of impressions, if not millions more, here at the Huntington, but I can’t share them all. It was a toss-up if we’d even visit this garden as there’s also the nearby Descanso Gardens just 10 miles away in La Cañada Flintridge that we would like to return to. We are scheduled to return to Los Angeles in July, but it’s awfully hot here, so maybe we’ll swap an October trip to Chinle, Arizona, with that one?

Okay, time to go; we are both getting hungry here shortly before 2:00 p.m.

Yes, we bought fresh strawberry donuts from the world-famous Donut Man in Glendora, but we didn’t tuck into those right way; we are way more reasonable than that. After collecting dessert, we headed over to El Gallo Giro in Fontana, where we thought of stopping on Friday night before visiting the Northwoods Inn. In this case, our memories were far greater than the food we found today at this popular Mexican fast-food restaurant. On the other hand, the donuts were everything we’d hoped for and more.

We pulled off the freeway at Desert Center to find a brass plaque that noted the role of the town in the founding of Kaiser Permanente, but couldn’t find it. Now, at home writing this, I found an article from 2014 that already spoke of the theft of that sign. While we couldn’t find what we were looking for, we had this opportunity to look back west at a terrific sunset before continuing our way east to Phoenix as we continued to nibble on donuts and finish our coffees.

Day in Los Angeles

Breakfast at Republique in Los Angeles, California

You thought gas was expensive in L.A.? You should try breakfast. We are at La Republique on La Brea in a historic building erected by Charlie Chaplin back in 1929, seriously nice digs. Our first stroke of luck was finding parking; next, we were early enough on this Saturday not to get stuck in a long line. Caroline opted for nostalgia, ordering the shakshouka, which is what we had on our first visit here back in August 2019 with the Braverman’s. That was a special moment as it was our first meeting with their new son, Liam. Lucky for Republique, we won’t be camping out here for 3 hours today as we did then as we have an appointment coming up at 10:00 a.m. As for my meal on this visit, a lobster and gruyere omelet with arugula. So what took the bill to $100, well we also had coffee. Just kidding, though we did have coffee, we also ordered three pastries to go; yep, that’ll do it.

Walking in Los Angeles, California

Well, how’d we mess this up? It’s Saturday, we thought we were supposed to be at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), but it turns out our reservations are for Sunday, and we planned on being at the Huntington Library and Gardens over in San Marino today. Not sure the garden is going to honor today’s tickets tomorrow but we were not going to race an hour across the L.A. basin to try to get there when both entries were scheduled for the same time. The worst outcome will be that we have to pay for our entries tomorrow without credit for today, but I suppose it supports a good cause.

So far, so good, as the person at the ticket office for LACMA simply refunded our tickets for tomorrow and then charged us for entry this morning.

Otto Dix at LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

Started up on the third floor by taking the outside escalator up into the void. There’s a moment on the ride up, where high over the ground below, it appears the escalator doesn’t connect to the open walkway. With that bit of nerve-wracking out of the way, we started our truncated tour of the museum. Truncated because a large part of LACMA is gone as they are building a massive new structure spanning Wilshire Boulevard that won’t open until 2024.

Once in the gallery, I’m confronted nearly immediately by one of my favorite artists, Otto Dix. The piece is called Leda, and it depicts a swan raping a woman. It is not the depiction of Zeus’s avatar, the swan, raping Leda that draws me to the piece or to Dix’s work; though most of his work depicts a cruel and violent world, it is his authentic depiction of a people enthralled with the gore they so fondly adore. I fully understand that “most” people will feign disgust at images of violence, but the reality, in my view, is that our population needs blood sacrifice to nourish some primordial love of brutality. I happen to appreciate mine in the unflinching, cold, authentic voice of art.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

I have an unwavering appreciation for the art of the last 19th and early 20th centuries. From Kandinsky, pictured here, to Chagall, Klimt, Delvaux, Miró, Klee, Ernst, Dix (above), and the inheritor of these schools of art, Francis Bacon.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

Growing up, I loved the experimental nature of what I was seeing from David Hockney, but as he took L.A. by storm, I started growing weary of his work. It seemed to me that his movement stopped and that his themes were uncomplicated pieces that would sell to an adoring crowd of aficionados who needed an art celebrity friend in their midst. So, if I don’t really enjoy his work, why am I including one? When I was younger, my fascination with Hockney’s work likely arose from my discovering the world of art around me, and now today, I look at this piece and wonder if I’m simply not able to find appreciation because I lack the sophistication to understand how to see it.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

It is in the arts of writing and painting that I find respect for Marxist ideology. Diego Rivera and his wife, Frida Kahlo, are two of those creators who likely were given more credit due to their thinking I felt stood behind their work compared to how my disdain of the status quo drove my derision of the mainstream.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

Maybe the most famous work on exhibit right now here at LACMA, or at least the most recognizable to many, is The Treachery of Images by René Magritte. A contemporary of Delvaux’s and fellow Belgian certainly places him in the realm of interesting artists, along with being one of the first artists to work in Surrealism. All the same, I never found a spot for him in my aesthetic sense of appreciation.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

Michael C. McMillen’s Central Meridian (The Garage) is one of my favorite installations ever. The Garage took me right out of LACMA and Los Angeles and deposited me somewhere out on the road in the middle of America after being granted access to a long-abandoned garage that hadn’t been ransacked.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

Hailing from Chile, artist Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren, better known as Roberto Matta, created this piece as a reflection of the violence of the Vietnam War and the Watts Riots in Los Angeles. This piece is called Burn, Baby, Burn.

Caroline Wise at LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

It was difficult to truly demonstrate the size of the biggest elevator Caroline or I have ever been in. I’m in the opposing corner, but this shot really would have benefited from using my 10mm lens (left at home) instead of the 17mm I tried squeezing this into.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

We are not typically ones for modern contemporary art, but the work of 77-year-old take-no-prisoners Barbara Kruger kicks modernity square in the crotch of superficiality and lays bare the empty social media-driven society of the pathetic that we are. I’d never heard of this hard-hitting force of truth before, and it wasn’t long until she captured my emotions as she reassured me that people older than myself also see the shit of what we’ve become.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

Adjacent to this was another sign that read, “I Love Myself. And You Hate Me For It.” The dichotomy is poignant as the artist shows us the profoundly ugly state of being that exists in order to make someone feel better at the expense of the other. This resonates with me regarding our relationship between rich and poor, success and simply surviving, winning and losing. When you understand our simplistic positioning of perspective between the two poles of love and hate, maybe you can see what a sad and sorry bunch of idiots we really are.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

The war is about identity and cultural differences. Society, by and large, hates individuality.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

“You. You know that women have served all of these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size,” from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. On the floor, it says, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever!” This last quote is from 1984 by George Orwell.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

Five hundred years ago, Tenochtitlán fell, and the Aztec culture was crushed by the European invaders. Mexico City rose from the ashes of that Aztec capital, and this exhibit at LACMA titled Mixpantli: Space, Time, and the Indigenous Origins of Mexico subverts that narrative and looks at how artists from the merged cultures created the world anew. The Nahua people describe Mixpantli as the “Banner of clouds,” referring to “The first omen of the conquest, depicting this omen as both a Mexica battle standard and a Euro-Christian column enveloped in clouds.”

On the ground in the main part of this exhibit lies a room-sized etching showing the map of Tenochtitlán/Mexico City during the time of colonization that still features human life and the activities that are part of that instead of the sterility of a map that only demonstrates territory. The artist who created this is Mariana Castillo Deball from Mexico City, who studied there and in Maastricht, Netherlands; she now lives in Berlin.

I’m pointing out the Berlin connection because of the fact that currently, many artists live in Germany due to Germans generally supporting the arts. But I have to wonder as the heart of Europe moves to invest more money into the military after years of believing that trade and culture were the most important part of keeping the peace on that continent. Now, with Putin in Ukraine, like Spain in Tenochtitlán, are we witnessing a change in priorities that, for at least some period of time, will disenfranchise so many international artists who count on the power of Germany to help create new ideas?

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

Sandy Rodriquez of Los Angeles created this work that is a lot bigger than this little corner I’m sharing here. The piece is called, “You will not be forgotten, Mapa for the children killed in custody of US Customs and Border Protection.”

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

This scene titled Gare Saint-Lazare by Claude Monet ties into something similar to the works of Paul Delvaux I appreciate and that is depictions of trains and their stations. This station in Paris servicing the Normandy area has been in operation since 1837. This painting is on exhibit as part of City of Cinema: Paris 1850–1907, going on at LACMA through July of this year.

LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California

We ended our time at the museum right here at the Black American Portraits exhibit, which is over in two weeks. The centerpieces in this exhibit are from Kehinde Wiley, who created the piece here in the middle of other worthy artists and one behind me also from Kehinde of artist Mickalene Thomas. Tragically, we missed seeing the Obama portraits that were on display here at the museum back in January when we were in L.A.

Guelaguetza Oaxacan restaurant in Los Angeles, California

After leaving LACMA, we pointed the car in the direction of Olympic Boulevard to revisit Guelaguetza Oaxacan restaurant. We had our first encounter with chapulines back in November 2018 with our daughter Jessica. (I was referencing grasshoppers if you were wondering what chapulines are.) As for the daughter reference for those who know Caroline and me but not Jessica, I was previously married. Today, we are going to try Huitlacoche, or corn fungus, to spell it out simply. Also on the menu was a tlayuda guelaguetza with chorizo, dried beef tasajo, and grilled marinated pork cecina. In case you are not sure what a tlayuda is, it’s a toasted large tortilla something akin to lavash.

Now that we totally have Mal de Puerco (thanks, Gabriela, for this one; it literally means “Disease of the pig,” but could also be considered a food coma), we wandered aimlessly down Pico, just trying to drive slow and straight. Caroline stopped in a small Oaxacan grocery looking for hot chocolate powder because, again, Gabriela, we now need some of that Mayan hot chocolate we fell in love with at Cocao Nativa in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico, a couple of weeks ago. Came up empty-handed there. So we just kept going.

Looking for something to do on this unplanned part of the day, Caroline found a Kinokuniya Japanese bookstore in Santa Monica that should have only required a single left turn, but the Mal de Puerco was working hard on us, so we had some turns and such before we arrived at the Mitsuwa Marketplace on Centinela Avenue where the bookstore is located. The selection of colored pens is extraordinary and it requires some serious willpower to not grab one of each for the drawing I’ll never get to.

Too bad we are stuffed as the ramen here is right on. Again, I can’t help but think, as I did in San Cristóbal, why can’t we have nice things in Phoenix? As a matter of fact, as I write this, I’m at another non-descript strip mall of an anonymous intersection here in the desert we live in; from here at Starbucks, I peer out the windows at a Five Guys, Walmart, Petco, Rubios, a mattress shop, TitleMax, GNC, and some other corporate franchised businesses that lack any character, flavor, or uniqueness. But this is not supposed to be a lament post, just a celebration of the things that draw us into travel and out of our generic and mundane corner of America.

I waffled a minute but then decided that the Hello Kitty Moleskine notebook, even at $30, was mine. Monday is my birthday, so I’ll just consider this notebook as my 59th birthday gift to myself.

We were just about a block from Venice Beach, where I was certain I wouldn’t find a hint of parking, although we did find a Starbucks that has 30 minutes of parking out back. To fight back the food coma, we are sucking down a coffee at 7:00 p.m. and doing some writing; well, Caroline was reading, but then it was time for more meandering as our time allowed for parking was quickly coming to an end.

Only a few blocks away, I found that parking spot I thought would be difficult to spot, and it was a cheap $5.00. A walk on the beach is the perfect punctuation to a perfect day; it may be late and gray, but still, we are walking in the sand along the Pacific.

Koreatown in Los Angeles, California

At our hotel back in Korea Town by 8:30, it’s just too early to give in to the heavy eyes we’re carrying with us, and so, out into the night, we go. The idea when I made these plans was to see whatever Korean movie was playing just up the street, but it turns out there’s nothing currently playing that was made in Korea. There was The Batman subtitled in Korean, but we passed on that. The Korean corndog and weird sandwich shop we’d visited before closed already, and the plaza where these places are was not as lively as it was a few years ago. I’d like to say, “Funny how the pandemic changed things,” but none of it is really funny.

Caroline Wise at a taco stand in Koreatown Los Angeles, California

So we continued a short walk around the neighborhood, looking for something light to eat. One place, called Sun Nong Dan, looked seriously promising as it was packed with nothing but younger Koreans, but they were serving giant portions. Their sign out front also noted they serve breakfast; asking the host near the door what time they open, he said they are open 24/7. Galbi Jjim (beef short ribs) covered in cheese might just be on the breakfast menu for the two of us in the morning, though we were also considering a pastrami and chili burrito at Oki Dog; we’ll see.

Off To Los Angeles – Trip 6

Caroline Wise and John Wise leaving Phoenix, Arizona

Hello Friday, April 1st, 2022. Since our return from Mexico on March 16th, I’ve been busy writing up some seriously lengthy entries that more than a lot of words, were packed with a ton of images. Well, that grueling, though very satisfying, writing exercise and extension of immersion was accomplished just this past Tuesday morning. After working over a few other posts (all of them rants), I’m ready to post a couple, but I’m waiting for Caroline to give them the once over and, if need be, pull me back from the cliff of embarrassment.

But today’s post is not about the past yet; it’s about today, tomorrow, and the day after. We are heading to Los Angeles for the weekend. I’ve already raced through the things that are important to leaving, odds and ends kinds of things regarding cleaning and the sort. Now I’m parked at Starbucks trying to fluff this blog post as travel days are typically light on sharing experiences when the majority of the time is in the car before arriving at the destination looking to check in to our hotel (boring) and then go get something to eat (tired), and so there’s that. Maybe we should mix things up, try to get out even earlier and race over to the ocean for some sunset shots of us walking on the beach.

This brings up the idea that social media only shares the side of us we want seen, the side that reflects a kind of skewed perfection. While that may be mostly true, I don’t think anyone reading this could believe that things weren’t pretty good here on our 6th trip together in the first quarter of the year. And that is after 33 years together! Oh god, then I have to go and think of those young social influencers Tom and Alexis Sharkey (or did I mean Gaby Petito and Brian Laundrie?) who died in a murder/suicide situation, and though I’ve never seen or watched their social media lives, I understood they only portrayed things as perfect.

With my coffee done, the music pummeling me with insipid Broadway show tunes, and, well, nothing much else to say, I’m going to wrap things up here, head home, and pester Caroline to leave even earlier (she’ll not budge as she’s doing that work thing that pays for all this Dolce Vita). My next words will arrive from another state, California.

We are sitting in a Starbucks in Palm Desert, California, after pulling off the I-10 Freeway because we were warned that 30 miles ahead there’s an hour delay due to an accident. With the option of sitting amidst the aggression of people who can’t go anywhere or pulling up a chair for a coffee, some ice water, the always-appreciated toilet, wifi to do exactly what I’m doing at this moment, we’ll opt for this chill moment. The photos below are definitely not Palm Desert.

Desert Center, California

It’s already 6:00 p.m. with about two hours left before reaching our hotel, but before we get to that, we stopped at Desert Center for some roadside relief for Caroline about an hour prior to this stop at Starbucks, which should tell you how urgent that need was because we swore off ever stopping at this exit again, forever and ever kind of swore off. You see, we stopped here a dozen or more years ago when the gas station was still operating and determined that this corner of our travels was likely one of the creepiest we’d yet seen. Well, other than the post office, everything here is toast, including the couple parked in front of the broken pumps just smoking a joint, taking in the ambiance

Desert Center, California

The burger joint is boarded up.

Desert Center, California

The cafe and garage are no longer in business…

Desert Center, California

…though somehow the cafe has avoided being ransacked. As I was looking for info on when the cafe shut down, 2012 was the year I found a brilliant article detailing the auctioning off of much of what belonged to the family that once owned the town. Check it out at Never Quite Lost; it features some terrific photos.

Desert Center, California

What remains of the old market after the roof caved in?

Desert Center, California

This might have been an old-school facility, but we couldn’t be sure, and we weren’t very interested in exploring buildings that might offer us ticks, bed bugs, black widow spiders, collapsing floors, or skeletons.

Desert Center, California

As we were getting ready to drive away, I asked Caroline to look up the history of Desert Center, and that’s when things got even more interesting. Once upon a time, long ago a man by the name of Sidney R. Garfield set up shop in this town to care for injuries happening to the men working on the Colorado River Aqueduct nearby. Nearly bankrupt, he was visited by Henry J. Kaiser, head of Kaiser Steel, one of the companies involved with the Aqueduct project, who convinced Garfield to head with him to the Grand Coulee Dam where instead of treating 5,000 men, he’d be dealing with 50,000 which would be far more financially viable. From this partnership, Kaiser Permanente was born. Now, if you don’t know about this California company and the nine states it services, this will probably mean nothing to you. For us, though, this is as cool as passing through Ft. Thomas, Arizona, where the founder of the Lions Club, Melvin Jones, was born, or learning of Hi Jolly (Hadji Ali) and his Camel Corps in Quartzsite, Arizona.

Desert Center, California

Not sure if people used to stay here or were murdered here. Enough of Desert Center, we return to Starbucks over in Palm Desert.

After maybe 30 minutes, it appeared the heavy traffic on the freeway was clearing up, so we got back on the road. It’ll be 8:00 before we reach our dinner location at El Gallo Giro in Fontana. It’s been years since we’ve been there, and it turns out that it might still be years to come as, at the last minute, we opted to drop in on the Northwoods Inn in Covina we’ve not visited in a few years at least.

Clearman's Northwoods Inn in Covina, California

We arrived at 8:45; they close at 9:30. Seated by 9:10, our order was made in 2 seconds as there was no need to think about what we were going to have. Now, if only our hotel room was upstairs, we wouldn’t have had this 40-minute drive through traffic mayhem to Korea Town. It’s 11:30 as I write this, and I’m as tired as can be, but that’s okay; we are on a much-needed mini-vacation after hanging out in Phoenix for 15 days straight. Don’t pity us, though; we are trying to do the best we can now that we’re so ancient…heck we’re so old that when I wrote that, I had the beat in my head from KLF’s Justified and Ancient with Tammy Wynette, yep, we’re that old.

The Race is on…Or is it?

Caroline Wise in the surf in Santa Monica, California

Back on the weekend of January 7th Caroline and I drove from Phoenix, Arizona to Los Angeles, California as we embarked on the monumental personal challenge of attempting to travel somewhere away from home no less than 25 times this year. This was our first trip that included museums, a botanical garden, the ocean, and dinner on the ocean in San Pedro among other things.

Caroline Wise at Teakettle Junction on the Road to Racetrack Playa in Death Valley National Park, California

On January 21st we returned to California, except this time we were aiming for Death Valley well north of Los Angeles. Caroline is seen here posing at Tea Kettle Junction on our way to Racetrack Playa to see with our own eyes the rocks that sail across a dry lakebed. Now, while this second trip of the year qualified as just that, I’d like to point out that was actually our third consecutive trip following the idea of going somewhere every other week. Over Christmas, we were over in New Mexico at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge for some birdwatching, 10’s of thousands of birds.

Caroline Wise at the Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

February 4th seemed to come on fast but this time we were staying right here in our own state of Arizona. I’d booked us a couple of nights at Bright Angel Lodge and hoped that we wouldn’t encounter snowy roads on the way up. As you can see, we had great weather, great views, and consequently a great time here at the Grand Canyon.

Caroline Wise at Leslie Canyon National Wildlife Refuge in Cochise Country, Arizona

Maintaining the theme of trying to avoid snow in the wintertime, our travel plans had us going south on the weekend of February 18. We came down this way to revisit a hiking trail we’d visited nearly 17 years prior. Well, we didn’t make it there because we were distracted by news of a mass of sandhill cranes nearby, and even on the way there we got sidetracked by a quick visit and hike to the Leslie Canyon National Wildlife Refuge. So you can better understand just where we were on the map, Douglas, Arizona, is about 250 miles southeast of us right on the border of Mexico and about 20 miles west of New Mexico.

For the 5th trip away from home this year, which is coming up very soon, I’m now scrambling to finish a ton of details that I put off until the last minute. Because we are so familiar with traveling I need not worry too much about getting things perfect too far in advance. I believe Caroline and I have confidence that the flow of our travels, no matter how they unfold, always seem to have been well-planned and fortunate regardless of the situation once we’re there.

So maybe this shouldn’t be considered a race at all but more a marathon because with 21 trips still ahead of us we need to pace nearly everything we do so we don’t burn out by feeling like we’re always on the run. This is where my preparations which occur in the background while Caroline is at the office should allow her a seamless move from working to being transported someplace where a real adventure in exploration, beauty, and fun can be woven together, allowing the high frequency of so many trips to remain exciting and not slip into feeling like chores. Oh yeah, the last thing, where are we going next? Ha, check back soon.