Walnut, CA - Williams, AZ
Time in Transit - Many, many hours
Total Miles Driven - A lot
View From Hotel - A Small Church and a Soccer Field
I may have mentioned the fact that Tori has some sort of strange obsession with California beaches. Today, possibly due to brain damage from the skull cooking temperatures we have been experiencing, we agreed to take her to Santa Monica Pier, a beach that was attractive to us because it was the closest beach we could possibly have gone to.
Heather and John treated us to a wonderful breakfast at their home and then were kind enough to ned us their Fast Pass for the highway or, as those kooky Californians say, "the freeway" which, now that I think about it, should actually be called "the payway".
The Fast Pass is a small transceiver that you put in your car that allows you to drive in a restricted lane. Theoretically, this allows you to bypass all the poor people who are stuck in the free lanes. It only works on the supposition that everybody isn't going to buy one.
Fortunately, there were still a few people who didn't own one and our 30 mile trip to the beach only took 94 hours.
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| I think I see L.A. |
"Take I-10 west and it basically ends at Santa Monica pier," we were told. "It's completely impossible to miss it unless you are a moron, the likes of which the world has never seen. The road literally ends on the pier."
Much like the rare and elusive Niagara Falls, I somehow managed to miss the pier.
In my defense, it is a smallish pier and the ferris wheel and roller coaster on it only served to further camouflage it.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
We pulled into a parking lot a few hundred yards north of the pier so that Tori could have the experience of walking along the beach.
Yeah. that's it! I didn't miss the pier; I drove past it on purpose.
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| Santa Monica's scenic bathrooms. |
We got out of the van and were assaulted by the scorching sun. Dizzying waves of heat blurred the air.
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| Convenient "Trash Troughs™" are an attractive feature along the beaches. |
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| A wide selection of garbage adds a splash of color to the otherwise dull monotony of the sand. |
A boring, but temporarily important fact about me is that I do not like sandals. I like wearing shoes or going barefoot. Sandals represent a sort of wishy-washy, vague middle-ground that I don't care to visit.
Generally, this does not pose a problem for me. Generally, I am not trekking across 73,000 miles of super-heated sand, however.
The sun, as it is wont to do, was shining brightly and as a result, the sand on the beach was about 3 degrees shy of being melted into glass.
We began walking toward the water.
"Oh, my!" I exclaimed. "This sand is slightly warm."
We walked on.
"Goodness me," I exclaimed, walking a bit more quickly. "It certainly is toasty."
The water seemed to be getting farther away somehow.
"Dear me!" I exclaimed. "Does anyone else smell cooking flesh?"
I shielded my eyes against the sun and looked to the water, my one chance of cooling my feet, which now seemed to be several hundred miles away.
"Jiminy Cricket!" I exclaimed. "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!"
My scream rolled across the beach, merging with and augmenting the screams of other foolish souls who had dared to cross the beach barefoot. Our collective scream is, no doubt, still causing seismic disturbances throughout coastal California.
I splashed into the water and, kicking aside some of the floating garbage that had escaped from the Trash Trough™, stood in the roiling cloud of steam that engulfed me as my feet cooled down.
We walked along the waterline , passing people with asbestos feet and slightly flattened heads who were selling all sorts of things on the beach.
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| Fruit? Water? First aid ointment for your feet? |
Soon, we reached Santa Monica Pier, which I need to emphasize, I drove past in purpose, okay?
We sauntered along the pier, the splintery wood adding a bold sort of texture to the thrumming pain in my scalded feet. Fortunately, the pier is designed specifically to keep your mind away from the pain you are in so you can spend money.
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| You can sign up for trapeze classes. |
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| You can purchase a seven inch long Bob Marley joint from these kids who were rolling one on the pier. In front of the police. |
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| You can get some imported chain restaurant food. |
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| You can take a ride in the DEA helicopter, circling the pier, looking for those kids with the joint. |
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| You can go play "What's This? Will It Kill Me?" in one of the mysterious spiral piles of garbage along the beach. |
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| You can gaze in awe-struck wonder at the unnatural green of the water near the pier. |
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| You can be my daughter, pretending that you are modeling this year's white dress line. |
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| You can match wits against Sam, The Savage Seagull as he tries to steal the food you just bought at that crappy chain restaurant. |
When we had absorbed all the fun, sun, pain, and splinters our feet could handle, we began the long, arduous walk back across the burning Sands of Endless Suffering to Towanda, who was baking in the sun, eager to incinerate us with a blast of hell-fire as we opened the doors.
We made a quick stop back to Heather and John's to return their PayWayPass (thanks, guys!) and then, we headed off to Arizona to see The Grand Canyon.
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| I'm amazed that almost every state we traveled in, west of Illinois, had parts that looked exactly like this. |
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| This little rainbow nub tried and tried, but he just couldn't make it. |
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| This is NOT The Grand Canyon. |
A scant 7 hours and 413 miles later, there we were, in Williams, AZ, near the south entrance to The Grand Canyon.
At 11:30 at night.
We decided that it would probably be easier to see in the daylight and we got a hotel.
My only requirement for the night, excluding the requirement that no cars come crashing through the front wall of my room as I sleep, was that there was an ice machine so I could cool the burns on my feet.
Tomorrow: Scenic Photos of Morons at The Grand Canyon and Horrifying Medical Grade pictures of the actual burns and blisters on the soles of my feet.
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