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Published: August 9th 2007
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Needless to say we were plum exhausted when we pulled up to my friend Triffin's house, but that didn't stop Triffin, Andy, and I from talking and catching up until 2 in the morning The main purpose for visiting Las Angeles for me was to catch up with three of my close friends from College of Santa Fe: Aaron Andzik, Zach Michaelis, and Triffin Koustas and that's exactly what we did. We hung outside in the Jacuzzi, sipping Mimosa's with chips and salsa spending some good quality time together and on Tuesday evening Andy had a Patty Griffin concert to go to and my friends and I decided to go and see 300 in the IMAX theater. It was quite the experience to tell you the truth. Nothing like a testosterone induced, patriotic, war movie to get the ole' blood flowing, leaving the movie you either feel like becoming a male erotic dancer, killing Persians, or maybe a combination of the two. After the film we went back to Triffin's house and did some more catching up until the wee hours of the morning. I knew intrinsically that this would throw off our timing for the following day, but it was
of no consequence to me as any time spent with these old friends of mine is worth all the traveling time in the world. The following morning Andy and I took a ride down to Venice Beach, Marina Del Ray, and Torrence to get in some entertainment site seeing. Those of you familiar with the show “Arrested Development” will be interested to know we went and visited where the Banana Stand was located at the Marina. Now Andy is a big fan of this show, that I hear is pretty good. I've never watched it, but it seems like a ton of people loved it - “Buffy: The Vampire Slayer”. We ended up going to Buffy's High School and Buffy's House and even ended up having a quite tasty lunch at Buffy's Cafe (which coincidently has nothing what so ever to do with the show, it is just named “Buffy's Cafe since 1965”). It is extremely reasonably priced for a good dinner. One thing one should never underestimate in Las Angeles is the traffic. Travel times are completely different in this city. Somethings only 12 miles away, expect the drive to take up to an hour, easily. This city seems
to be in a state of perpetual rush hour, except around 8 in the morning and 6 in the evening when the city undergoes some type of transportational arrest for hours on end. It was utterly amazing to be driving at bumper to bumper 50 mile an hour traffic for a whole hour and not have left the city. Andy brought up the good point that the population of Montana is within a five mile radius of me when I'm in LA.
Around four in the afternoon we arrived at Joshua Tree National Park. In all honesty I wasn't sure what to expect. This park is home to an expansive Joshua Tree Forest and these strange otherworldly, somewhat out of place humongous boulders scattered amongst the plains. Because of our late start, our visit to Joshua Tree was limited. We didn't get to do to much hiking around, but it was a scenic drive and we did get to do a little bouldering. It was like Land Of The Lost meets the Serengeti, except there weren't any dinosaurs. I think this park would be a great park to take four or five days and just kind of tromp around
and climb on rocks and get lost in the stillness of the desert. This desert was quite different from the Great Basin desert which was mostly sage brush and arid plains/salt flats. The Mojave desert is dry and filled with the Yucca tree (another name for the Joshua tree) and Cholla Cacti. The Cholla Cacti are extremely fuzzy looking, but extremely barbed, painful, and plentiful in parts of the park. It really has the more traditional desert feel. One thing that can be said about all these deserts is that they are all extremely silent, which I think is what really gives them a feeling of sacredness. Due to our late start we didn't get to spend as much time in this park and unfortunately didn't arrive at a Palm Tree Oasis until twilight that evening. So we sat in the relative dark, in the silence surrounded by one of the few bastions of bountiful life in the whole park and took it in before jumping onto Interstate 10 towards our next destination the Grand Canyon, were we will hopefully meet up with two fellow Mathematics students there and start a journey back to Bozeman. It has been a long
night's drive and after some restlessness Andy convinced me of the good idea to pull over roughly 50 miles from the Grand Canyon and sleep for the night. The sun is currently rising over the high desert and I'll keep you informed of how our visit to the Grand Crevice and meeting up with my brothers in Las Vegas pans out.
“Going through the desert on a horse with no name, it feels good to be out on the range.” Luke
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Angela
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FYI
Your "weird flower" (above pic) is called a "Bird Of Paradise". They grow naturally up and down the California coast. They are my very favoritest flower in the whole wide world, so thanks for the pic. I enjoyed it.