Mrs. Nomad's Birthplace (Los Angeles, CA)

Trip miles 5948
Daily miles 385

Mrs. Nomad and I drove down from Pebble Beach to her childhood home, Los Angeles, yesterday.

The fog in Pebble Beach was pretty intense.

We originally wanted to take Route 1 down along the coast, indeed it was supposed to be one of the highlights of the trip. I have very fond memories of doing the drive in earlier days and was looking forward to driving my own car on the road. However the forest fires around Big Sur meant that part of the road was closed, hence we had to backtrack a bit and take Highway 101 on the other side of the mountains. There were plenty of interesting things to see on it, so it was by no means a total loss.

I were puzzled by this sign.

How exactly does an aircraft enforce speed? Does it fire air-to ground missiles or strafe you if you're not going fast enough?

These lights indicate the road is part of the old Camino Real.

I just thought it meant you needed more cowbell.

Here are some oil derricks which seemed quite incongruously situated amidst the vineyards of Central California.

We passed under a grove of some very impressive trees.

We were baffled by this.

The fog was still heavy when we got back onto Route 1, so perhaps we didn't miss that much.

We had a chance to see a forest fire very up close along Route 154 through the mountains into Santa Barbara. Pictures don't really capture how impressive it was. Firstly, the smoke plume was huge.


Secondly it completely changed the color of sunlight.

Everything was colored a dark and sickly shade of orange.

There were firefighting airplanes and helos all over the place.

There was a lot of ash fallout from the sky. Mrs. Nomad said last time she saw so much ash was during the LA riots.

We stopped by a couple of our friends who just recently moved back from Europe to Santa Barbara after the birth of their son. It was great to see them and their new family member in their new digs but then we had to press on to LA.

After a while we started to close in on our destination!

Civilization (...) at last! Note firefighting helo in the upper right.

Here are two iconic road signs.

Downtown looked beautiful in the evening sun.

Despite the fires the sky was remarkably blue.

As you would expect, there were plenty of nice cars cruising around LA.

Here's an impressive-looking LAPD helo.

I do think they should have invsted in Blue Thunder though...

I love seeing heavy infrastructure around LA. It provides a nice contrast to the palm trees.

And then we safely arrived at Mrs. Nomad's childhood home to spend the next two nights. Almost immediately after arrival we drove to San Clemente to watch fireworks over the water.

It very was fitting that my drive across America ended on July 4. We all have so much to be grateful for.

Sunday I start the journey home!