A Familiar Place

RAFFI: I’m pretty surprised by the frequency of our updates on this blog; I really doubted three eighteen-year old dudes were collectively responsible enough to keep a blog up to date. I hope someone out there is actually reading it. If not, that’s cool, too; we aren’t that interesting.

Anyhow, the trip:

Since the first time my family and I drove its curvy roads to “The City”, driving on the Pacific Coast Highway, also known as Highway 1, has been my favorite drive. When my brother enrolled at UC Berkeley in 2007, trips by way of the 1 became more frequent, and, as a result, I couldn’t have been happier. But the more I’ve traveled the 1 over the past four years, the more my yearning to drive other scenic highways has grown, especially to drive the 101--seemingly a brother to the 1 because it runs parallel to and continues where the 1 leaves off not far from the Bay Area and still runs beside the Pacific all the way up to Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Perhaps this yearning explains the scenic nature of the route of this trip, strategically chosen by three of this country’s finest route planners (if there is such a thing): yours truly, Duncan Conley, and Horea Porutiu.

And… the actual trip (backtracking to day one):

Upon escaping the gorgeous smog-and-trash-infested lanes of L.A.’s world-renowned stretch of the 405, we entered the 101, drove past that weird college in Santa Barbara that Duncan and I are to attend, and in San Luis Obispo, next to that other weird college, we took a turn onto Highway 1. Its two-lane stretch is a sight I’ve seen many times; nevertheless, its presence bears the unique quality never to tire a person. The first stretch of the highway is mostly flat and mostly straight. To our right there was an only-slightly familiar sight: rolling hills—the same ones we are accustomed to at home, only these ones reveal their bare selves—bare and grassy and completely dry, decorated sporadically by a few trees. To our left was the Pacific—another familiar sight—decorated with a variety of weathered black rocks, which are constantly sloshed by the whitewash of a fierce swell. On that day, the climate was foggy and cloudy, which, depending on your mood, can be a good thing, but on a clear, sunny day, this stretch of the 1 is breathtaking in that the vibrant gold of the hills is contrasted with the rich, deep blue of the ocean. Eventually, the hills graduate to mountains, and the 1 ascends, winding and clutching to the periphery of the mountains, composed of rocks and even larger rocks that sit precariously looking down on your car and waiting for the day they’ll fall and hit it. But the hills aren’t the only things that grow as the road ascends, the rocks in the ocean evolve into giant boulders, and, in this way, very small islands. All this continues on until the nice little city of Carmel. I’m probably getting too in detail, but all this is truly a sight to behold every time I see it, and this time was no different.

Day 6: 8/5

Duncan: In one day, I developed a strong affinity for the city of Portland. Its quirks, its people, its places, and its culture created an almost magically unpredictable atmosphere. Horea and I started the day with a quick workout at Portland’s 24 Hour Fitness (infinitely better than Torrance’s) while Raffi walked around the Pearl district, and then we all got delicious Italian food at another cart. We perused record shops, sat down and read a while at Portland’s famous Powell book store (home to over 3 million different titles), went to Buffalo Exchange and bought some discounted yet hip’n’happenin clothes, and just generally soaked in the vibe of the place. I was pleasantly surprised by how lucid and alert strangers on the street seemed; pretty much everyone I met, even store clerks, were completely willing to engage in conversation and seemed genuinely interested in other people. People were accepting of pretty much anything and anyone. They were also incredibly stylish for the most part.

But seriously, in Portland I found a much more open and positive society than I was used to living in PV. I think Palos Verdes could use a little dose of Portland.

In the late afternoon we left north toward Seattle and passed downtown on the freeway just after nightfall. That was definitely a sight to remember, Seattle at night. We passed right through it and checked into a Motel Six five miles outside of the city. I immediately proceeded to break a part of our room’s window off as I was trying to open it. Fearful that it would be charged to the room, I threw it up onto the roof, only to have it slowly unfold and hang from the rain gutter directly above our door. Horea and Raffi were in hysterics. I ended up having to fish it down (haha) after five minutes of trying to capture it with my fishing pole. I threw it in a bush, the lady in the room told us to “shut the fuck up”, and we all three went to sleep dreaming of the what our next day in Seattle might bring us.

Duncan: Let’s see…. There’s so much to recap, but so little time and effort I’m willing to expend. I guess I’ll try to summarize the highlights of these past seven days as briefly as possible, which may be a difficult undertaking given how nuts things have gotten lately.

Day 5: 8/4

DUNCAN: Emerging from our tent in Humbug National Park, we stretched out, cooked up a quick breakfast of oatmeal on our camp stove, packed up, and hit the road, our ultimate goal for the day being the city of Portland. A couple hours after we set out up the 101 along the Oregon coast, I spotted a billboard that advertised a “walk-through safari” coming up in 10 miles and displayed a picture of a tiger. We doubted the place’s legitimacy, but decided to make the stop anyway, even if it was just to check it out. Horea pulled up reviews of the West Coast Game Park on his phone, and we were surprised to find them all extremely positive. One review even claimed that visitors got to pet a baby tiger. Now this was an opportunity we simply could not afford to miss.

We arrived there a little while later and paid the $ 16 entry fee. As we entered the park itself, we were immediately greeted by an exceedingly amiable, curious ring tailed lemur in a cage by the door. It loved human contact and even licked our hands as we pet it. It was like playing with a dog with a person’s hands. We explored the rest of the park (which was really more like a petting zoo) and discovered a plethora of animals. Here’s a list of just some of the park’s animals listed on its website:

African Serval Cat
Baboon
Hamadryas
Barbados Sheep
Bears
Binterong
Black Buck Antelope
Camel
Capybara

Chimpanzees
Caracal

Coati
Chinese Muntijac
Cougar
DeBrazza's Monkeys
Emu
Goats
Lemurs
Leopards
Lions
Llamas
Lynx
Nilgai
Panther
Peccari Boar
Peacocks
Raccoon
South American Rhea
Silver Fox
Snow Leopard
Swans
Tigers
Wallaby
White Skunk
Zebra

And that was only some of them. Needless to say, it was an amazing experience, especially seeing as we were allowed to touch about half of the creatures listed above, and yes, that did include a 15-week-old baby leopard. Highlights included blowing raspberries back and forth with a chimpanzee and getting spit at by a lama. After about an hour, we once again piled in the car and headed north.

The Oregon coast was pretty, but not as breathtaking as California’s. We passed miles and miles of sand dunes and evergreen forests. At one point we stopped to see Oregon’s famous sea-lion caves, but were saddened to find the place egregiously commercialized. You had to pay close to twenty dollars to even go down to the caverns, so, with a collective sigh of disappointment, we got back in the car and left. Our only other stops before Portland were at a scenic beach to check our oil and take some pictures, and then at another beach just outside of Lincoln City to take a farewell dip in the Pacific Ocean before we set out eastward. The water was absolutely freezing.

Portland was something else. I’ve never been anywhere quite like it. We checked into a Motel 6 ten miles away from downtown at around 9:30 and, after we had snuck all three of us and our luggage into our two-person room, we left for the city. Upon arrival we searched urgently for something to fill our starving bellies, which proved to be a difficult task seeing as it was already eleven o’clock and, bars excluded, pretty much everything was closed. As we roamed the streets, we got a taste of Portland’s very unique and bustling nightlife. Hoards of attractive young people raged in bars and clubs, and packs of crossfaded hobos smoked joints and partied out on the sidewalks. There were a lot of different sorts of people out that night, but Raffi pointed out that there seemed to be an indefinable factor that unified them all, desolate runaways and shined-up, indie-looking yuppies alike. And he was right. Each in their own way, they all contributed to the unique collection of idiosyncrasies and clashes that make Portland such a weird and wonderful place. They were all there for their own reasons, damn good ones, too, and they wanted to make that crystal clear to everyone around them.

We eventually found a gyro cart that was still open, and after watching the flamboyant Greek guy that ran the place repeatedly wipe his runny nose on the back of his hand as he made our food, we wolfed down our meals and walked around some more. We came across a corner store w.ith a line going out the door, and walked over to investigate what could pull such a crowd at 12 p.m. Turns out it was the world-famous Voodoo Donuts, so we got in line to try some of the renowned pastries. As we waited, we were serenaded by a musical banjo/guitar/accordion trio of post-apocalyptic gypsies. That is, they looked like how I’d imagine post-apocalyptic gypsies would look. We ate some delicious donuts and then headed back to our motel room. Day 5: totally gnarkill.

Day 4: 8/3

Elk mean business

Tuesday, August 2^nd

Departed from: Eureka, CA

Arrived at: Humbug Mountain State Park, OR

DUNC: The three of us woke up at 9 and got the hell out of Eureka and that godforsaken motel as fast as possible. We planned to drive up to Redwood National Park, hike around for a while, and then drive up as far into Oregon as we could and camp on the coast. Thus, we set out again, fueled by a breakfast of Cliff Bars and water. The arid grass-and –shrub patchwork soon gave way to towering forests of thick-trunked redwoods. After a few hours of driving, we pulled over at an elk viewing point and observed a few of the beasts through binoculars from a healthy distance. Just as we were about to leave, I overheard a man in a group of fellow observers say something about a whale trapped up a river. I walked over and inquired further, and sure enough, he confirmed that there was a whale that had wandered up the Klamath river, gotten lost, and was now circling around a bridge located just eighteen miles North of where we were. Raffi, Horea and I all exchanged looks of exhilarated disbelief. We hopped in the car and made a beeline for the Klamath River.

We arrived at an RV park on the bank of the Klamath shortly thereafter. We gathered from our inquiries that the whale was, in fact, still circling the bridge just a quarter mile north of the camp. However, there was no trail from the campsite there, and a couple suggested that to get a more intimate look at the whale we should wade along the river’s edge to the base of the bridge. Horea and I decided to do so, but Raffi didn’t feel like it, so he stayed with the car. After about 20 minutes, we arrived at the base of the bridge. We could hardly believe our eyes. The thirty-foot-long titan of the sea swam no more than 40 feet from us, circling the bridge and sending up geysers of mist from its blowhole every so often. The fact that this scene was unfolding in the middle of a redwood forest made it all the more surreal.

I jokingly suggested that we should go swim with it, but Horea didn’t miss the hint of uncertain earnestness that lay under my jest. We slowly gathered up our courage, and before we knew it, we had stripped down to our boxers and jumped in the water, swimming towards the spot we had last seen the whale surface. The crowd of about a hundred people gathered on the bridge to observe the whale erupted in cries. Everyone seemed to be either encouraging us or telling us to get the fuck out of the water, so we decided to listen to the former camp and persisted in our pursuit of the enormous animal. We did so apprehensively, however. I know logically that a whale won’t harm a human, but the primordial fear that arises when you’re in the water with something that big is difficult to overcome. The closest we got was probably about 35 feet. At that point, someone who might have been a park ranger (we couldn’t really tell) shouted at us in a booming, authoritative voice to “get OUT of the water!” We obliged him, snuck up a narrow trail, and hitchhiked back to Raffi and the Golf.

We continued our journey through the redwoods, detouring of the 1 along the 199 with the intention of eventually rejoining the 1 by way of the 197 North. We stopped along the beautiful, powerful Smith River to take pictures. I brought my goggles down as well, and, finding the water surprisingly warm, swam around in its pristinely clear waters. At some points it was over twenty feet deep, but I could still see all the way to the bottom. We got back in the car and I soon fell asleep.

When I awoke, we were lost. We had taken a wrong turn (we stayed on the 199 instead of turning onto the 197 back toward the 1) and ended up well west of where we thought we were going. We figured out that we would have to take a huge detour to get back on track, a detour that would add a full hour and a half to our trip. As it turned out though, making the wrong turn that put us on this detour was an excellent decision. The road climbed through redwood-covered mountains and took us to some unfathomably beautiful views. As Raffi put it shortly after the sun set red over the blue mountains, “That might have been the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

A short stop during our detour

We finally pulled into the Humbug Mountain camp site at around 11 p.m. We set up our tent, cooked some franks and beans on our camp stove, Horea and I packed a lip, and we fell asleep. Day 4: unforgettable.

Day 3: 08/02

DUNC: Hey everybody—

Sorry for the irregularity of our posts. I can imagine it’s probably incredibly frustrating for you hundreds of loyal fans out there to be kept in the dark about the minutia of our daily experiences, but bear with us. Wi-fi is a rare commodity out here on the open road.

I’m writing this having just left the good ol’ 101/Highway 1—and with it, the Pacific Ocean. Horea is driving us along Highway 18 East toward a certain Motel 6 in Portland, Oregon, our final destination for tonight.  The salt is still dried in his hair from our parting plunge into the Pacific just outside of Lincoln City. Boy, is the water cold up here.

 But I’m getting ahead of myself. Allow me to start from where we last left all you devoted followers: the morning of day 3.

Monday, August 1^st

Departed from: Berkeley, CA

Arrived at: Eureka, CA

DUNC: With nothing but Cliff Bars in our bellies, we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and headed North. After about an hour we made a stop at a turnout overlooking a particularly breathtaking section of the 1. We hopped over the guardrail, sliding down cliffs and running through scrub as we narrowed the gap between us and the ocean. Only once we had reached the boulder-laden shore did Horea realize to all three of our respective horrors that his wallet had fallen out of his sweatpants’ pocket on the way down. If we didn’t find it, Horea wouldn’t be able to drive, he’d have no ID, and our trip would be potentially crippled, but by some miracle Hor and Ra found it after a mere twenty minutes of frantic, despairing searching.  

Having averted disaster, we once again struck out North along the 1, detouring at Point Reyes National Seashore to see what we could see. A wonderfully secluded peninsula of rolling hills, sheer cliffs, cattle ranches and pristine beaches, it provided us with scenery enough to keep us there for close to 3 hours. After Raffi snapped some pictures of the place, we chased deer, climbed a ramshackle water tower, and hiked around for a while. Horea and I did our best to sprint back up the three-hundred-seventy-something stairs we walked down to get to the Reyes Point lighthouse. We ate in a nearby town and proceeded with the long haul up the 1, and later, the 101, stopping only briefly to admire the scenery and snap a photo or two.

We finally decided to stop for the night in the city of Eureka, as it was the only place within a reasonable distance that had a Motel 6, but after Horea read an online review of the place that compared staying there to “sleeping in a sewer”, we instead found lodging at a place called The Lamplighter Motel. This proved to be a big mistake. Long story short: the place was shit. The Indian family running it was insane. But the beds were soft and we were tired, so we called it a day and crashed. Day 3: fulfilling

Day 2: 08/01

Departed from: Berkeley, CA

Arrived at: Berkeley, CA



The BART station in Berkeley





HOREA: After waking up past noon, we were ready for a day in San Francisco. I had never been in the city, and was extremely pumped to see what it was like. We took the BART (a subway type thing) that actually runs under the ocean. We took the BART from Berkeley to San Francisco and saw some pretty strange people on the way. A 40-year old white man was wearing a large, incredibly shiny “San Francisco marathon” gold medal around his neck while dressed in short shorts and running shoes. I couldn’t help but chuckle. We started walking around the city and immediately spotted 2 bulldogs sleeping parallel to each other in the exact same position. They were cuter than bunnies nibbling on baby carrots so we had to take a picture with them. Soon after, we went to Chinatown and ate at Sam Wo’s. This authentic and run-down Chinese shop was the epitome of value. The tea was served in a rusted metal tea pot, the water that Duncan ordered came in a crusty plastic jug type thing.  Not to mention that our chow-Mein with duck that we ordered came from the first floor to the second floor on a pulley system that was maneuvered through an old laundry chute. Damn.



Climbing the hill to Coit Tower in SF



We then walked through a random park and saw a group of drunk hobos and decided to walk by. I took a video of us walking by the hobos while the hobos asked us if we were on a bobsledding team. We said no and ignored whatever crazy statements they might have slurred. Randomly walking into an Roman Catholic sermon in an enormous cathedral was our next escapade. We kept walking around the city and enjoyed its company for a couple more hours until it came time for us to return to Raffi’s brothers house for dinner. We had surprisingly tasty chicken quesadillas. Next, Duncan and I got dismantled in a game of beerpong, and then decided to play some smash bros. Levon, Raf’s brother, taught us the rules of drinking smash and we all proceeded to play for a good hour. Every time you die, you have to chug while your character is floating on the platform (no touching the controller of course). After a good hour of this game, we were ready for bed. The two 30’s that Levon had bought were almost gone. Almost…

                Waking up the next morning was great. Beer cans everywhere, plates with greasy avocado and quesadilla remains scattered any open space. It was a beautiful sight to wake up to. Day 2: colorful.