Glark

Today was the first day of a small trip I’m taking while Tara is (finally, thankfully) in Los Angeles on official TV critic business for two weeks. I rented a car and headed east from Los Angeles. It’s like a mini version of last year’s Atomic Tour. I’m writing this from Mammoth Lakes in a little chalet-y hotel right on the edge of the National Park here.

Very cool but let me rewind a bit.

I took off from an LAX hotel this morning. The first thing I did driving out was curse myself for starting the day too early to eat lunch at the Marina del Rey Souplantation. I love Souplantation. It’s like you died and went to Salad Bar Heaven. I will get there before this trip is over. Oh yes, I will. I use to live in Los Angeles in the late 90s and I never ventured further out east then Van Nuys. I was surprised how soon after that you really leave the city. I had it in my mind it went on for hours like it does when you travel south towards San Diego. It doesn’t. It gives away to nature pretty quick. Nature being the desert.

Holy shit the desert is hot. I stopped at a few places along the way like Mojave (an entertaining shithole with a mind-boggling giant wind farm), Jawbone Station (spent some quality time with a lovely but lonely station ranger volunteer who not let me leave the visitor center with a pound of literature), Pearsonville (a ghost town with a creepy playground) and Olancha abandoned cafes), and it just got hotter and hotter. It was 126°F in the sun and a cool refreshing 118°F in the shade.

The high desert eventually gave way to the Sierras (above). Wow. This part of the drive made me sad Tara wasn’t in the car. It reminded me of last year driving through the redwood forest in the Valley of the Giants. The car demanded to be slowed down, it was dead silent and we’d catch ourselves leaning forward over the dashboard admiring the canopy through the windshield. Some of the vistas today demanded the same attention but I was looking down into vast valleys below me instead of the towering trees above.

I’m using Mammoth Lakes as a base of operations for the next few days. I’m going to try to fit in the ghost town of Bodie, Mono Lake and chunks of Yosemite before heading towards Las Vegas to visit the Neon Boneyard.