Apr
20
2005

Santa Ana

(Add / View Comments) (0)PhotosWednesday, April 20, 2005 - 09:29:29 pm
(Posted Under: Travel, Arizona Trip)
The drive towards Santa Ana was reasonably eventless, until we hit Los Angeles - which truely is the rat race it is reknown for. Being from a big city myself, even I was shocked at the bumper to bumper traffic - on the interstate! Truely crazy.

We finally headed south to Santa Ana. We'd actually arrived a day early, and so we had no hotel booked, and the one we had for tomorrow and the night after had no vacencies. So we drove around, trying to find one, Katie wanting to just be anywhere after all of the driving. We eventually pulled into a gas station, and Katie phoned her family to do an internet search / booking. The Jensen's camee up with The Days Inn. We got the address, and headed out there. It turned out to be on the same road as the booking we had for the next two nights. However, I started to become dubious about the situation as we drove further and further into what looked like the wrong side of town. We eventually hit the Days Inn, which actually didn't look that bad. We got a room, and took the car around. On opening the door, my first thought was "should I really have used my credit card".

The place was an absolute crap shack. Katie was glad to be anywhere, but at the same time was quite upset. After reassuring her that it was going to be okay, and agreeing that we weren't going to look for dead bodies under the bed, because we didn't want to know what we were going to find, we decided to go out and eat. Appropriately, we found a Denny's and ate there. It had been on our list of things to do, so that was good, but I was really concerned that Katie's car was still going to be where we'd parked it.

After eating, we headed back, pulled out some clothes to sleep on (above the covers). Watching the news was interesting, hearing about the highway shootings on the I-10, where we were headed tomorrow.

I really had thought that Katie was fairly okay with the crap shack. However, it became apparent at 7am the next morning with her tugging on my arm saying "Maaaaark, can we goooooooo?!?!?", that her seemingly contentness last night was purely tiredness! She didn't have to ask me twice!!

Santa Ana / Crap Shack photos. Most of them illistrate how bad the place was (though, in highensight the photos don't really show how craptastic it was), and the last one is a nod to living the white trash lifestle. [wink] Not hard at all to do in that place!
Apr
20
2005

Cathedral City

(Add / View Comments) (0)PhotosWednesday, April 20, 2005 - 08:42:36 pm
(Posted Under: Travel, Arizona Trip)
Much like the Grand Canyon, we pulled into Cathedral City quite late. It was about a 7 hour hike from the Grand Canyon to Cathedral City. Once thing I noticed is that border lines in the U.S a pretty boring. I don't think you could eveb notice the Arizona / California border.

Cathedral City in the dust. Standing tall in twilight, and held up by rust.

For those who don't know, Cathedral City is a song written by Doug Hopkins, originally for the Gin Blossoms, and then recorded by The Chimeras, hence our reason for wanting to go through it / stay there. It's a town located right near Palm Springs. As per the song (29 Palms align the way. Towards a place I think of often but don't really want to stay in.), we'd planned to head through 29 Palms, and then on to Cathedral City.

The ride became interesting, travelling through the black landscape of California, using a map without road names, and watching the fuel guage drop, and drop and drop. We were travelling through some mountain range, we continually thought "29 Palms will be just over this peak", but it seemed like the mountains just would not end - not a light in sight, and that fuel guage dropping further. At some point we drove through an area where both sides of the road looked like a salt lake, or lake - or something. Very eerie looking at night, not being able to tell what it was.

Finally, after what seemed like forever we could see the lights of 29 Palms, and in particular the 29 Palms air force base, which was huge, and seemed to me to be bigger than the city itself. With much delight we found an open gas station and filled up.

From there, we continued on through Joshua Tree, Yucca and then finally Cathedral City. On the drive into Cathedral City was a huge snow capped mountain, totally sillouetted in the darkness, which was barely visible, and looked really cool once you noticed. The interstate was also littered with wind generators, which again looked quite eerie until you realised what you were looking at.

We hit Cathedral City, obviously not being able to see much in the darkness, and looked for the first decent looking hotel we could find. On finding a holiday in, we checked in, and it wasn't long before we were both asleep.

In the morning we slept as late as we could, then checked out, exporing Cathedral City. A lot of the time was spent trying to find a good photo opportunity with a city sign, which we were finally successful with. We also tried to find a Cathedral City shirt, however, everything was Palms Springs - not all that suprising either. We did however happen to find Cathedral City postcards.

After exploring the town, we headed back to 29 Palms, to see what we hadn't seen on the way in. It was definately cool seeing the Californian landscape in contrast to the Arizonia landscape. I prefer the Arizona landscape, but the change was cool. On hitting 29 Palms, we stopped at the city's welcome sign, took photos, deciding we didn't need to go any further, and that it was time to head to Santa Ana.

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