Days 17 and 18: Palm Trees in Santa Monica

"I just want to see some palm trees.

I will try to shake away this disease."

-"Santa Monica" by Everclear

When we left Morrow Bay, we had a little more inland driving than coastal driving to get us to Santa Monica.  We passed through a lot of farm land - the kind of farm land you picture when you read The Grapes of Wrath or Esperanza Rising or anything that has to do with California's role during the Dust Bowl.  Strawberries were in season when we were passing through, and the scent of ripe strawberries in the air was absolutely tantalizing as we were driving along with the convertible top down.  As soon as we found a roadside stand, we had to buy some.  While we might have turned our noses up at California strawberries at a market in Pennsylvania, California strawberries straight out of the fields of California in the middle of July were just amazing.  We ate the whole big box in 24 hours!  What a nice, healthy treat to take to our hotel with us!

Another great find between Morrow Bay and Santa Monica was a fun, little Dutch town called Solvang.  It literally looked like somebody plunked a town straight out of the Netherlands and plunked it down in southern California.  They had windmills, Danish architecture, fun little shops and Hans Christian Anderson memorabilia.  It was almost like a year-round, live-in folk festival.  Unfortunately, one thing this town did NOT have was an escape from the intense heat that seemed to permeate California as soon as you got away from the coastline.  Luckily, the main reason for our stop here wasn't the European influence - good old Kutztown doesn't hurt for that!  The primary reason for stopping was a unique - and air conditioned - motorcycle museum RJ had heard about called the Solvang Vintage Motorcycle Museum.    The museum and its contents belong to a private collector who prefers to remain anonymous (that means famous, right?!), and it has a huge variety of bikes, each with framed descriptions in front that were written by the collector.  Definitely a one-of-a-kind visit!  

After our stop in Solvang, we started to head back toward the coast on our way to Santa Monica.  We passed through Malibu on the way in, where the architecture and landscape starts to take on much more of the "Hollywood" look, and the cars start to get a LOT more expensive!  Porsches, Lexuses, and BMWs were the Fords and Kias of the greater Malibu area.  

Check out the BMW I8 we snuck a picture of!  We saw quite a few cars we've never seen before, including Bentleys, Lamborghinis, and more! 

Finally, we made it to Santa Monica. It was a long day on the road!  While Santa Monica is beautiful in this picture, we weren't as impressed as we had hoped to be.  We were staying a little over two miles inland, right on Santa Monica Boulevard, and that part of town was more than a bit shady.  However, we really didn't feel the safety/glamor factor improved that much the closer you got to the water.  It was very crowded and very commercial.  Despite the fancy cars, the California "glam factor" just didn't seem to be there.  The pier was no better than the ones at the Jersey shore, the beaches were hard to access without driving and parking there, and the shopping/restaurants weren't anything we couldn't have access to at home.  We thought we were going to want to spend a lot more time in this part of CA, but we quickly decided maybe it was time to turn east again.  

Part of our reason for staying a little more inland was because we weren't planning on spending all of our time in this area at the beach.  We wanted to hit L.A./Hollywood while we were here as well. RJ's main purpose for visiting L.A was to visit the Petersen Automotive Museum.  We were able to view three floors of unique cars of various notability - whether they were off of Hollywood film sets, belonged to famous individuals, or were extremely rare cars.  We enjoyed this museum a lot!  It was different than your typical car museum because there was a lot of "Hollywood" influence in the way everything was presented.  There were films made about some of the cars that you could tell were professionally done by real artists, not just car enthusiasts who are good with video software.  The cars themselves were treated like works of art more than cars.  The gift shop had a lot of neat stuff, too, and we finally caved on some souvenir shopping.  Now that we were almost ready to turn back east, we could fill a few more nooks and crannies in our little two-seat MX5.  By the time we made it home, we had souvenirs tucked behind both seats, between the seats and the doors, and under our feet!

While not overly intrigued by Hollywood, Kerri's one request for this leg of the trip was to see the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  It just seems like one of those things you should see if you're that close.  Of course, it was kind of like trying to see the Statue of Liberty in NYC.  Parking was a nightmare.  Lots were full or were claiming to "only have valet parking spaces left" which were offered at a much higher rate than the self-parking rates.  But we persisted and found a small, outdoor lot near the Capitol Records building right along the Walk of Fame.  Trying to get near the stars with handprints was nearly impossible - there were busloads of people getting dropped off there - but the section we were walking wasn't nearly so congested.  Sweet bonus - we found an awesome coffee shop called Groundwork Coffee Co.  Not only did we get to caffeinate, but they had a cookie-butter-iced-donut that was one of the more memorable sweets of our trip and the only memorable food item we experienced during our stay in Santa Monica.  We walked around for a while noticing all of the different stars and visiting a couple other local businesses, and then it was time to hit the road out of Hollywood.  Next stop, Palm Springs!  Hollywood/Santa Monica/Los Angeles was something to see once, but we were ready to turn around and start heading east again.