The Set Up
It’s a Monday late afternoon on a rather soggy and overcast start of the week in North London. I’ve just signed off work and I can hear the rain lightly pouncing on the windows. I don’t have any music in the background while I’m starting writing. The sound of the rain and the peace of my little Highgate Suite is all I need. I do have though some company with me …my friend’s lovely white and fluffy dog. I’m keeping him in my suite for a few days while my friend is exploring Italy. We’re both cosied up on the sofa, each one of us with different thoughts on our minds. I am reminiscing of my amazing trip to the States and my fluffy friend probably is dreaming of cuddles and playing in the grass.
It’s only been a couple of weeks that I returned from my first experience of discovering North America and I am still finding myself thinking about the trip when I close my eyes. The colours of our hotel in Palm Springs, the amazing sunset of the Grand Canyon, the beautiful view of the waves of the Pacific…I was very sceptical and didn’t think that I would enjoy the trip, but I was totally taken by surprise on what a wonderful experience it was. So, here’s what made it special.
Taking a leap of faith
For years the love of my life has been talking to me about Los Angeles and the US. Since we first met as friends, he would describe me his work trips and some of his travel experiences in America, but I never connected so well with the stories. I was whole heartedly refusing to believe that I would like to travel to Los Angeles as I strongly felt that I wouldn’t like it. Some part of my mind always thought that it is way too far (says the person who travels 24 hours to visit her brother in Australia), way too big for me to understand it and nothing too much of interest to explore.
So, while I kindly listened and nodded on the descriptions of the magic of driving in an open top along Santa Monica and Laguna Beach not wanting to break my love’s heart, I never believed deep down inside me that I would actually do it one day. I guess though that being in love makes you take a leap of faith and so one day after seeing in YouTube someone driving through the Pacific Heights interstate route from Santa Barbara to San Francisco, I finally decided that I’ll visit the continent and make my love’s wish come true for his birthday and for mine as well. What more fitting adventure for entering my fifth decade than this!
From March when I finally said to my love that I will do the trip until July, we took time to create and plan the perfect trip. Guided mostly by his experience of what would be worth visiting and partly by my anecdotal knowledge of “it would be nice to visit this place” based on movies, we created our dream two-week road trip itinerary starting at Las Vegas and ending in Los Angeles.
Doubt turned into delightful surprise
During all the planning phase there was so much doubt at the back of my mind about how much I will enjoy the trip. But I kept on actively participating in making choices of places to stay and even did research on things to do in each area we were going to visit. The biggest doubt was that I could be trusted with sharing the driving throughout the road trip with my love. He was so confident that I would do well, and I was totally petrified of driving on the other side and coping with an automatic big American car. When he booked the open top version for the second part of our trip, he was so excited and happy, while I was thinking that he is a lunatic to trust me with any driving let alone an open top model!!!
My love of my life though has a lot of patience with me and trusts me more than I trust myself, so the day came when we packed our suitcases and arrived at the airport for our American adventure. This was about to become our first big trip together so for both of us, this was so much more than just a holiday. This was special time planned for just the two of us. And as we boarded the plane and sat next to each other, it was the loveliest long haul take off that we both experienced. The flight itself didn’t feel long at all. With a bit of a sleep and a bit of me trying to teach him a game of cards similar to bridge and a bit of a movie, time passed by quicker that one would expect.
As we approached our destination, the sun was setting down in Las Vegas among the clouds and it looked like the clouds were on fire. Out of light of fire of the sun setting, all of a sudden a few feet away from the runaway the entire Vegas strip with all its grand casinos came into view making it a spectacular landing to the land discovered by Columbo. That is when the doubt turned into a big wow feeling. A feeling that didn’t go away at all during the next fifteen days that we were in the US.
Big and like in the movies
I’m sure there are several travel blogs which involve wonderful descriptions of the places that we visited with recommendations of what to do, where to eat and how to make the most of your visit. So, I’m not going to add to these blogs by taking you through a minute-by-minute sharing of my holiday. I’ll just try and give a few highlights of how it felt for me to be in Las Vegas, the Canyons, Lake Havashu, Palm Springs, Santa Barbara and finally Los Angeles.
Las Vegas was hot and full of casinos. No surprises there at all. Plenty of grandeur, glitz and replicas of Venice, Paris and Egypt among other things that were impressive. For me it was my first experience of how big, big can be in US sizes. It felt surreal that I was there in what one sees in the movies and how different the nature and environment is at the state of Nevada. Things that I will remember from Vegas is the Venitian and the Rouge show that we went to.
Next in the plan was the Canyons. Zion Park, Bryce Canyon and Grand Canyon. Next in the plan was also yours truly actually driving in the long, endless interstates and not just that but also enjoying it. Biggest discovery ever was using the cruise control function on our chevy (which we didn’t drive to the levy) and basically not doing much other than just ensuring the steering wheel was steady. While we didn’t see one of those whirling bushes moving with the wind across the long road, we saw the magnificence of the dessert, the big trucks, the wavy roads and lots of mountains.
The scenery in the Canyons was colourful and in each of the national parks we visited I could have easily spent a whole week exploring each one of them. Highlights for me was our sweet wooden cabin in Bryce in the middle of nowhere where we marvelled at night stargazing in the skies, the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon and sunset at Grand Canyon at the Watchtower. Without knowing it, we were lucky to arrive at a special event that was taking place with real Indians performing a sunset ritual which was as spectacular as the views of the Grand Canyon.
With an unprecedented heatwave hitting us, after the Canyons we reached Lake Havashu where the 49 degrees Celsius that the temperature reached gave me a slight taste of what a chicken feels like when it is roasting in a fan oven!!!! Never before have I felt so much heat in my life, nor did I expect to see the actual London Bridge, so many miles away from London. The heatwave continued into Palm Springs but somehow the beautiful colours and Mexican inspired theme of the area didn’t dampen our spirits. It was in Palm Springs that I celebrated my special anniversary of surviving the earthquake in 1999 (25 years anniversary), by reaching the top of Mt San Jacintho and the aerial tramway which climbs up via the spectacular cliffs of Chino Canyon.
Leaving Palm Springs it was my turn to drive and lead towards Laguna Beach, with my love feeling confident that I would be absolutely fine. But despite his confidence and my ignorance, the limits of my comfort zone of driving with safety hit the roof when approaching the suburbs for L.A. That was the moment that from seeing it on a movie it became reality in front of my eyes…seven lanes of traffic and fast driving madness of various levels. Needless to say that it wasn’t too long after my first spaghetti junction experience that I drove to the nearest exit and gave the keys to my love and told him to take over. Luckily, my fear of surviving all these lanes of madness was totally forgotten by the site of the Pacific ocean when we reached Laguna Beach. And what a site that was. Huge big waves, palm trees in the bays and vast non-ending sand with lots and lots of properties built just a breath away from the waves.
A cool black Mustang waited for us after Laguna Beach and took us (well actually my love tooks us, the Mustang wasn’t driving itself) to Santa Barbara where we stayed at a very cute and sweet traditional bed and breakfast. The place reminded me of those movies where the girl takes the boy to her parents’ house to introduce him and the house is wooden and everything around the house seems to be old fashioned and from another era. Creaky floors, big, long bay windows, chintz blue tapestry, wooden furniture and a garden with a gazebo from where Alice started her adventure in Alice in Wonderland. Highlights in Santa Barbara was kayaking and coming in close contact with sea lions in Santa Barbara harbour and mastering the art of pottering in the mountains of Ojai. Oh and of course my driving the Mustang for a very brief period from Santa Barbara to Ojai. The closest of being cool in an open top I’ve ever been!!!
Los Angeles was the last part of our road trip and the epitome of wealth, versatility of scenery, architecture and glamour. My love tried to show me everything and anything in the three days that we were there from the mountains of Pasadena searching for bears, to the Sunset Boulevard, to downtown LA, to the Getty, to Venice beach. He did a pretty good job at trying to fit in everything and even sneak in a drive through Rodeo drive at nighttime for which I’m pretty sure we will be charged for even passing by!!! But when the last day arrived and it was time for us to check out from our place, that feeling of doubt that I would enjoy being in California, was completely wiped out by sadness of not being able to explore more and in Arnie’s famous expression taken over by the “I’ll be back” promise.
Epilogue
Nevada, Utah, Arizona and California have made an impression on me. Apart from the travelling however, what made this trip special was discovering how happy I am with the love of my life and how many more reasons there are for me to love him so much. Being away from the comfort of our known worlds and experiencing together this beautiful adventure brought us so much closer and gave us the chance to make lots of happy moments that I hope to cherish in my memory for ever. Beyond this, I had the opportunity to push the boundaries of my comfort zones in various ways and for once more survive through to tell the story. From driving long distance, to going through dark tunnels, to getting at the edges of the canyons, cliffs and high places like the aerial tramway.
Thank you my love for persisting and finally persuading me to make this trip. And for making me push my boundaries and discovering new thresholds. I can’t wait for our next one.
Walks and Smiles 