Thanksgiving Perambulation

Hold on to your butts.  This is a long one.

I had some time off for the Thanksgiving holiday, whether I wanted it or not.  Being that the four day weekend wasn’t quite long enough to drive the 2200 miles to Ohio and back, I instead took the time for a mini road trip.  I had wanted to head back out to Joshua Tree, if nothing else to see what it looked like when it wasn’t gloomy and raining all day, had been meaning to get up to San Francisco to visit some friends for a while, and there was a green spot on the map between SanFran and LA called Pinnacles National Monument that looked interesting.

Joshua Tree, Take Two

Day Trip to Joshua Tree National Park

Right.  ‘Been a while.  I was about to whip up a post about my holiday travels, only to have it dawn on me that I haven’t posted anything since September.  So instead of going all Dr. Who on you and skipping around in chronology, I’m going to spend a few posts catching up with myself.  First up is a day trip to Joshua Tree National Park back in November.

The park is two hours and change from downtown LA.  I got into the town of Joshua Tree midmorning looking for breakfast.  The only place I found open was The Joshua Tree Saloon, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.  One of the regulars was wearing a t-shirt with the text “In dog beers, I’ve only had one.”  At one point, he was talking about getting thrown out of a series of bars in the early 70′s and explained, “That’s why I stopped drinking so much…  Oh wait, I didn’t stop drinking so much.  I stopped drinking so little.”

Anyway, they served a pretty decent impression of biscuits and gravy, so I ate my fill, and so engorged, found the park visitors center to rustle up a map or two.

I didn’t have a whole lot of time, and Joshua Tree encompasses over 1000 square miles, so I didn’t want to burn what few daylight hours I had left driving all over.  I spent most of the afternoon in and around nearby Hidden Valley (No relation to the salad dressing).  There aren’t any trails to speak of, but Joshua Tree has a fairly laissez-faire policy towards backcountry use, and Hidden Valley is a veritable playland for scrambling and climbing.

The road into Hidden Valley

Wandering through Carrizo Plain National Monument

It was Labor Day weekend a week ago, and I figured spending an entire three day weekend in my apartment is kind of lame.  Not knowing L.A. well enough yet to find much to do on the spur of the moment, I cracked open the atlas and started looking over the page with Southern California for anything that sounded interesting.  My eyes centered on “Carrizo Plain National Monument”, a silver dollar sized green spot on the map about four inches from Los Angeles.

I didn’t bother googling the place before leaving; I decided I’d figure it out when I got there.  I grabbed my pack, chucked my bike and a few water bottles in the Cherokee, and set out.  After a couple hours up I-5 and then across a few state routes, I found myself out here:

Weekend in Limbo

So I was homeless last weekend.  I couldn’t move in to my apartment until Sunday afternoon and the hostel I was at had no vacancy for the weekend.  So I had nowhere to stay from 10:30 Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon.  I suppose I could have stayed at a hotel or something, but that’s decidedly blasé.  Instead, I sort of wandered for about 26 hours.

I spent most of the afternoon perambulating around Runyon Canyon Park, a few blocks off of Hollywood Boulevard.  It’s basically Griffith Park’s much smaller sibling.

Change in Residence: Part 4 – Arrival

I’ve been in LA for a day and a half now.  I’m set up at a hostel for the week, and I’m now in the business of getting things situated out here;  Finding an apartment, finding work, etc.  So this post concludes things for now.  Posts like “Looked at an apartment today.  Bathroom smelled funny.” aren’t really what this blog is about.  I’ll be finding plenty to point my camera at in the future, and I’ve still got a lot of older material that I want to post, so stay tuned, if desired.

Yep. Definitely not in Ohio anymore.

Change in Residence: Part 3 – Gallup, NM To the doorstep of LA

After waking up reasonably well rested in Gallup, I got back on the road, heading in a general western direction.  If I were heading directly to LA, I would have stayed on I-40, then taken I-15 into town.  Instead, a bout of wanderlust brought me northwest and into the hinterlands of Arizona.

Along Route 264 in Arizona

Change in Residence – Travel Accommodations

I thought it was a good time to quickly document my travel accommodations for this trip.  The Might Kia is long gone, and I’ve moved on from the Battle Axe, bringing me to this:

It has yet to earn a distinctive moniker, so for now, I’m just going with “The Cherokee,” which to give credit to the Chrysler brand mangers of yore, doesn’t sound half bad itself.

Change in Residence: Part 2 – Oklahoma to Gallup, New Mexico

Day three went pretty much by the numbers.  I had to stop a few times for cat naps, but overall I made good time, covering western Oklahoma, the Texas panhandle, and most of New Mexico.  I’ve landed in Gallop, about 10 miles from the Arizona border.  It was much cooler out, so I spent a pleasant evening about 15 feet from a railroad behind a TA Travel Center.

I didn’t really make any stops, but I’ve decided that it is against natural law to drive through Amarillo without stopping by the Cadillac Ranch for a few minutes.  This was my second visit.  Go here for the lowdown on my first.

Change in Residence: Part 1 – Bowling Green to Somewhere in Oklahoma

So much for my itinerary.  After day two, I was supposed to be in the vicinity of Springfield, MO.  Instead, I overshot and am somewhere west of Oklahoma City.

After dinner with my family in Dayton, I arrived in Indianapolis on schedule.  Gen Con is this week, and several good friends are attending.  Since Indy was on my route, it was a great opportunity both to visitate and to wander the convention hall floor.  Gen Con’s particular brand of nerdery isn’t really my bag, but any time when that many people, all passionate about the same thing, gather in one place, it’s something to see.  The cosplay alone was worth the price on admission.

Who's Awsome? Abe Lincoln. Who's more awsome than Abe Lincoln? Abe Lincoln on stilts.

This Took Longer Than Expected

So this is finally happening.  In 2002, I came to Bowling Green to start college at BGSU.  Five years after graduation, I’m still here.  Oops.  That changes today.

After a very long period of saving money, losing money, paying down debt, gaining debt, and working the precious few career track jobs I could find, I have finally come to a point where I can move forward, or at least make a respectable attempt.  In about an hour, I will have finished packing and will be on my way to Los Angeles, where I have the best chance of landing work in my chosen field.

Overall, BG has been good to me.  But after nine years, I’m more than ready to see what’s next.  As a touch of ceremony, below is one of the first photos I took in BG.  It was about midway through first semester freshman year.  I ventured into the Doyt Perry stadium hoping for  good sunset.  I’m not sure why I thought there’d be one, being that there hadn’t been a single cloud in the sky the entire day.  I was about to leave when a flock of migrating bird happened by.  This shot looks out across the BGSU campus, Kreischer Quad barely visible in the foreground, the Jerome Library, and the city building in the distance.

So long BG.