…and I thought about live-boarding it, but I realized pretty quickly that I didn’t want to look after a thread whilst on vacation. But I did take a bunch of photos on my camera, which I have posted here!
En route, boarding passes en hand.
After landing at LAX, I rented a car and drove to the Wigwam Motel (est. 1949) in San Bernadino. The rooms were round and they smelled like my grandma on the inside but they were cute and kitschy and full of Rte 66 flair. I tried not to think of all the British tourists who had probably banged in my tepee over the years.
Next day I drove to Joshua Tree and stopped at the Wheel Inn in Cabazon. You may remember this as the “Wheel Inn,” where Large Marge dropped off Pee Wee Herman after scaring the shit out of him with her face. There’s a Burger King and Shell station on either side of this joint, but the inside hasn’t changed since the filming. The pie carousel and arcade game are in the exact same spot as they were when P.W. walked in. On a night…just like tonight…
Outside, the dinosaurs are still there but they’re now owned by some creationist nutjobs. At least they spruced up the area a bit. I didn’t go inside the T-Rex, but I did climb up the brontosaurus butt to visit the gift shop. It was mostly religious shwag, so I didn’t stay long nor did I buy anything.
After I finished off my tuna fish sandwich and chocolate chip milkshake, I ventured forth into the desert and unbeknownst to me, it was National Parks day so admission was free. The first thing I did was drive to the top of Key's View and take this picture of Coachella Valley. If you look hard enough, you can see WU LYF playing in the distance.
I drove through the park some more and went down a dirt road with a sign on a gate that said "closed at dusk," parked and then went on a 5 mile hike up around a deserted gold mine and other derelict properties such as this homeless chimney.
At one point I lost my perspective on how long I had been hiking and got more than a little concerned about my well-being and sense of direction, so I picked up the pace and jogged for a mile or so. (Probably a pretty brilliant idea, in the desert and all.) At one point, after hours alone on the trail, I came across a guy sitting alone and silent on a blanket in the shade under an arthritic-looking bunch of desert trees. It was…
surreal.
I hiked until I ran out of water, and then I hiked some more which is apparently a desert no-no, so I found my car and drove to the nearest gas station outside of the park to chug two 32oz G2s until I was no longer lightheaded with dehydration. I checked in at the Harmony Motel on the outskirts of Twenty-Nine Palms, which was where U2 stayed while shooting Joshua Tree promo. The management told me I had Bono’s room which was cool and also neat.
The only thing I did the following day after having a date shake from a hippie desert shack was drive to Temecula to get the red and yellow ink in the death angels on my upper back. Two vicodins later I hit the road for Santa Barbara.
That evening, I grabbed a cioppino dinner with a mai tai nightcap at a boardwalk fish house and then slept at a motel on the beach. My body clock was still on eastern time so I was still getting up at 6am feeling like I'd slept all day.
Piers. Morgan.
San Simeon was my next stop but I found a little geriatric tourist hole hidden away in some hills called Cambria, which looked like it would have been cool at one time maybe 100 years ago when it was filled with miners and dames, but was now filled with retirees and fudge. I walked around for an hour and then went to Hearst Castle.
William Randolph Heart made $50,000 a day in the 1920s, and he wasn’t even the richest fast talking high trouser of the era. Underneath this outdoor tennis court is the “Roman Pool,” an insanely large and decadent indoor pool. Jumping in will get you a $750 fine and a misdemeanor. Take it from me!
Relaxing by the Neptune Pool, listening to
Nuages on Spotify, pretending there were not actually Asian tourists immediately outside the frame.
I drove further up CA-1 along the cliffs and shoreline, enjoying what spurts of open road I could when not actually behind a rental RV trying to do the same thing. Grabbed dinner at Nepenthe, a Big Sur restaurant owned at one time by Orson Welles and designed by Rowan Maiden of the Taliesin school perched on the side of a cliff overlooking the ocean, and then slept in this artist studio in Carmel-by-the-Sea.
Santa Cruz wasn’t planned, but it was on the way to San Francisco and I figured I might as well indulge my nostalgia as much as I could and visit the boardwalk where The Lost Boys was filmed.
Maggots, Michael. You're eating maggots.
I had a big day planned in the Bay Area, starting with the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose. Unfortunately it wasn't open on Mondays (mystic Sabbath?), so I snapped a couple photos around the outside.
Then I went to the Winchester Mansion several blocks away. The house itself was a genuine old freakshow of a house, but the tourist trap stuff that was added on was a little disappointing. Cheese logs and shot glasses have no place in a haunted house, amirite?
There would have been some cool Alcatraz pictures right about here, but I missed the boat for the tour. So I dropped my bags at the San Remo Hotel in North Beach and then walked through Little Italy and Chinatown where I had dinner in the basement at New Woey Loy Goey with some Indiana Jones villains. Met a friend in the Tenderloin for a couple hours of sazeracs at Tradition, which was also called Mr. Lew's Win-Win Bar, but sometimes also Grand Sazerac Emporium.
Next day I drove up to the Forest Moon of Endor, aka Jedediah Smith State Park near Crescent City.
I regret that I didn't get an earlier start, because I only got about 2 hours of hiking in before nightfall. So I packed it in early, grabbed the chicken wrap and lambic I stowed in the locker and smoked a Romeo y Julieta to keep the bears away. When my fire went out, I crawled into my $25 wal-mart tent and watched first season episodes of
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia on my dying computer until I (and it) passed out.
Came across this Lovecraftian fellow 'round nightfall.
I ate a proper American Diner Breakfast the very next day in a small and nearly vacant establishment just north of the park. It was wet and foggy and I was surrounded by giant redwoods, so I listened to Julee Cruise all morning on the drive up to Portland. I grabbed lunch at a Montavilla sandwich shop full of computers and beards, then met noted boarder D for a beer at Coalition before heading to the Commodore Hotel in downtown Astoria, OR.
It was one of those old-timey hotels like the San Remo where everyone shares a bathroom and all the wiring runs in conduits on the outside of the walls. I went for a night time walk, but was cautioned away from a few nearby areas by the hotel desk person, because apparently "Astoria has a bit of a heroin problem" and the concierge believed for some reason that junkies were a violent people. So I ended up in a Labor Temple a few blocks over knocking back a couple local brews before heading back to my room.
The Fratelli's Jail.
Mikey's dad's museum.
The Goondocks. The abundance of "Nobama" stickers and Romney swag around the property was like a dull knife tearing away huge bleeding chunks of my childhood.
The town had a decent antique shop.
And some pretty decent oil tankers.
Around ten I crossed the bridge to Washington and headed to Aberdeen to visit the Kurt Cobain memorial. Aberdeen is very much a shithole. It reminded me of a semi-rural Indiana town, with lots of broke down people living in broke down houses. Within ten minutes, I saw a guy beating up his dog in the front lawn of his mobile home.
Kurt's bridge, where syringe caps were plentiful in the grass nearby.
The muddy banks of the Wishkah.
Home of the Cobainses.
Dale Crover's old house.
After that, I drove 2 hours east past Seattle until I arrived at what I consider to be the highpoint of my trip…
Pop. 50,201
The Mt. Si Motel, or known in the Twin Peaks universe as the Blue Diamond Motel, is shady as it gets. I paid $55 cash money for a damp smelling room next to some junk cars. At least two of the units had perpetual guests with the kinds of strung out faces where it’s impossible to tell if that person is 30 or 50. At night, I moved the table in my room in front of the door. Just in case.
I'm proud to say I finagled my way to stay in room 6, the same room where Leland met Teresa Banks for tricks in
Fire Walk With Me. Laura Palmer was also in that bed once, so I can die now. The water stain on the wall was painted there by the production crew.
Unfortunately the Double R (Twedes) had a fire several years ago that gutted the inside, so while the outside is essentially the same, the inside is more or less new. I ate dinner and breakfast there and happily burned the first layer of skin off the inside of my mouth on the cherry pie and coffee.
Ronette Pulaski bridge. This is part of a walking path now.
Murder scene.
The Great Northern aka The Salish Lodge.
I spent a lot of time driving around the rural back roads of Snoqualmie and North Bend, stopping whenever I felt like it to take a picture like this one. I want to believe Agent Cooper is still back in there with Windom Earle and Little Jimmie Scott.
coffee.....coffee.......coff-EE...My final stop was in Seattle, and by that time I was more or less burnt out on driving and venturing out to see cool shit, much less Instagramming my way around the city. I got a private room at City Hostel downtown and walked to a nearby bar called Cyclops where I drank pumpkin ales before retiring early so I wouldn’t be too wiped out for the 12K I had so wisely signed up for in the Magnolia neighborhood the next day. Regrettably, I had a rather large cabal of friends scattered around the city, but was too tired to even let them know I was in town.
The Sunday weather was great for a race. I ran a slow 9:30-minute mile or so up and down the hills and saw some great views of the city along the ridge. And when it was done, I found this great little coffee joint called Starbucks, which had some pretty decent coffee. I hope it catches on.
Overall, a great trip! I hope to do it on the east coast some day soon
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