Southern California

We woke up in the desert. There wasn't any condensation inside the bed of the truck, and the sun was quickly warming us in our sleeping bags. Initially this confused Corbin because he had no recollection of getting there. See, Corbin had cozied up in Sherpa's Pack in an attempt to sleep off his food poisoning while Chelsea had driven late into the night to find a forest service road in Los Padres National Forest for us to occupy. He didn't even wake when she crawled into bed. After soaking up a bit of SoCal sun the next morning in Los Padres we hopped back on the highway and began the slow creep into LA and to the coast. 9:30 am on a weekday was probably not the best time to be heading into the city, but what are we supposed to do, wake up early? Don't think so.

We had been talking about soaking up some sweet satisfying poisonous UV radiation since the sun finally came out in San Francisco, but still hand't really gotten around to laying out properly and so we made our very first destination "the beach". We decided on Dockweiler State Beach because it was already familiar to us from a previous visit, and it's noteworthy because it's one of the only places around you can have a bonfire, in a giant protective concrete donut of course, but a fire all the same. The place was deserted when we got there; locals told us it was due to it being the "off season" or as some refer to it "winter". This makes sense because who wants to go to the beach when its only 88 degrees and completely cloudless? I mean it's November, you can't go to the beach in November.

Fire pits aside, Dockweiler was awesome because of the wildlife. All sarcasm aside, we saw some seriously cool stuff. As we were setting up our sun soaking station, an unidentified bird of prey swooshed right between us (it may have even been using us for cover) and after clearing Chelsea's shoulder slammed right into a pigeon with an audible thump. We watched in awe as the pigeon survived and made a break for survival. Though it survived the initial attack, we think the hawk (sparrowhawk, goshawk?) got it a minute later after an acrobatic aerial chase in the nearby parking lot. A couple hours later, Corbin spotted some dark silhouettes riding in the incoming waves and breaching. Dolphins cruise the beach looking for big waves to ride too I guess. Outside of dolphins and pigeon hunting birds, there were also these adorable birds that scurried the beach just out of reach of the waves chasing little morsels in the sand. They were about as afraid of the cold Pacific water as much as Chelsea.

After a lovely sun bath and a delicious lunch at Señor G's we were on to the real reason we came to LA: Corbin's cousin Amanda and her significant other Alessio! We met up with Amanda after work and she took us out to see her neighborhood, Koreatown. K-town was a really cool place, with all types or restaurants, shops, and venues, many of them sporting Korean signage and menus, often without English translations. And of course it sported the diversity you'd expect from many neighborhoods in a large city. For example, we sat down for Colombian beers and yucca fries on our way to the Korean Market.

We've grown to love a good grocery store that sports reasonable prices, much appreciated staples, and a variety of novelties that keep us on our toes. This one was amazing. While Chelsea drooled over giant industrial sized packages of dried and salted seaweed, Corbin inspected the tanks of live Abalone and Flounder and squeezed unfamiliar produce, guessing at ripeness. Amanda disappeared and reappeared each time carrying a more exotic or ridiculous package of snack food for us to try. We finally settled on green tea flavored dessert straws and prawn flavored corn puffs, among the other essentials like seaweed, sushi, and noodles and headed back to her apartment for a quick snack before catching some Z's.

After waking up nice and slowly on Amanda's comfy new air mattress, we spent the morning trying to sign up for healthcare since ours had expired. After chasing down a million different websites and phone numbers we realized it was Armistice day and that the local governmental offices we were looking to contact were closed. Nothing like forced procrastination! We ended up doing a workout and enjoying the snacks procured from the grocery adventures the night before instead. Once Amanda was free from work, we picked her up and headed for Venice beach, stopping along the way to see some of LA's most classic sights: Traffic, more traffic, a car burning in the street. You know, the usual. Once we arrived, Venice was as is should be; an even mix of tourists, swindlers, artists, "artists," head shops, pot doctors, scantily clad and/or absurdly muscled men and women of all colors and sizes. Here, Chelsea found that Muscle Beach is a real thing as we watched the veiny acrobatics of a few daredevils and Corbin learned that you shouldn't let a street seller put anything in your hands.

After a beautiful sunset and whale spoutings at Venice beach, we headed back into traffic to make our way to Amanda's home before dinner plans in the city. As you can imagine, city parking for our large truck don't exactly get along, so we called an Uber to take us to Pizza Romano, Alessio's place of employment, where we'd be meeting Amanda's friend Karinya for an amazing dinner! After eating our fill, we walked to a nearby bar that was way too crowded and opted instead for the Village Idiot, where we had a couple of rounds and exchanged our favorite Australian movie titles.

After a lively and wonderful conversation, Karinya decided that Corbin and I have the strangest taste in Australian films and left us as we caught another Uber to Harvard and Stone for a few more drinks. This was a speakeasy themed bar which boasted hourly burlesque shows set to live music, which were both very entertaining. After some dancing, we caught our last Uber for the night home, which was much appreciated in our inebriated state.

But you know what what most entertaining? The Ubers themselves. Turns out, you meet some interesting characters and we had a great time hearing their stories from driving and in life. Most memorable was our driver who had recently retired from the police force and was "easing into retirement" by working with Uber. He told us stories from his time in the force and shared some insight regarding the current political climate and social unrest. It was all quite interesting and we're thankful for these kinds of strangers who readily open up and have meaningful conversations, even if only over the course of 15 mins.

The next day Chelsea bounced out of bed and Corbin oozed. It was a rough morning for him. His penance for over-indulging the night before was to cook a noodle stir-fry for everyone, which turned out well. After hanging with Alessio at the crib, we headed to Malibu where we'd heard tell of a secret beach. This not 100% secret place was near the tip of an old volcano, Point Dume.

Over time, the cone of the volcano weathered into steep cliffs along the seaside with a beach to either side, and right in the middle of the highest cliffs a tiny little sheltered sand cove formed. This small beach is only accessible by traversing along the rocks and cliffs to either side or hiking to the top and climbing down the steep slope to the waters edge. Pirate's Cove Beach, as it's also fittingly known, even has a creepy cave high up on one of the cliffs for you to hide your booty in if you're feeling adventurous enough to climb up to the entrance. We stayed here long enough to catch another beautiful Pacific sunset and then joined the eternal traffic jam back to LA for another dinner at Pizza Romana followed by a quiet night in.

Our last day in LA, Corbin and Chelsea ate a sensible breakfast from the grocery store before tagging along with Amanda and her other house guests to the ultra trendy rooftop restaurant, "Perch". It took Corbin a moment to get that it was named after the thing birds do, rather than the fish. But once that was sorted out we were able to have a good time gawking at the menu and not ordering anything while appreciating the art on the walls and the view over the railings. After Perch, the days destinations included a local farmers market and the coolest of cool bookstores, "The Last Bookstore."

This place is awesome! It's an absolutely huge venue with two full stories of shelves, new books downstairs, and used up above. Also upstairs are amazing works of art fully constructed out of old repurposed literature. Whoever envisioned these had some serious creative genius and no boundaries when it comes to making books do things that would make most bibliophiles cringe. This was probably our favorite part of LA and we wish we could have stayed longer and left with more books. The final undertaking of the day was escaping: LA just didn't want to let us go and we had to endure one more traffic jam as a farewell gift from the big city on our way to the slightly smaller and less gridlocked San Diego.

First order of business in San Diego was to say hello to our old friend Andrew and meet his girlfriend Kate for the first time. We bonded a little by cooking up a big meal just like we used to in college, by throwing everything we had in a pan together. We ended up with some bomb-ass spicy shrimp and veggies. After dinner was another long time favorite of ours, vegging on the couch and watching Planet Earth, marveling at the beauty of the planet while discussing life and catching up on the happenings between when we last visited.

The next day we went for a great hike at Torrey Pines State Park, to see the rare and gnarly Torrey Pine Trees which used to grow all over the California coast but are now confined to a few preserves. We hiked up through the pine covered hills and down to the shore and back along the beach, walking in the surf and dodging the biggest waves. After we'd worked up an appetite we booked it over to Andrew's favorite sushi restaurant, Gami Sushi. We at a truly american amount of delicious fresh shushi, and Corbin had "hand rolls" for the first time. If you haven't tried one, it's basically a seaweed taco full of sushi fillings, perfect for people with the chopstick dexterity of a two year old, like Corbin. We continued our Asian food binge later that evening with huge bowls of ramen at RakiRaki and topped the day off with local beers at a pool hall nearby. We spent our last day in San Diego vegging around Andrew's place waiting for him and Kate to be done with work before cooking a final big family meal and pointing Sherpa's hood East to Joshua Tree National Park.