Wednesday, May 19, 2010

May 19, 2010

After a refreshing night's sleep in the car for a few hours at a Wal*Mart, we were back on the road leaving Utah, driving through the top corner of Arizona and entering Nevada.

Nevada is a lot of what you would picture as the desert. The American desert, anyway; flat, sunny and with a highway full of Hummers, Navigators and, incidentally, at least one Nissan Altima.

Another trademark of the Nevada desert that we drove through was this little town called Vegas. It's been less than a year since I've been here and I didn't really miss it. Not in the daytime especially. If only there was another Blink concert today..

We did hit the big 5,000 on the odometer today. That's a lot of miles. It's been about two weeks. I don't feel like doing the math but it's a good amount of driving.

Ah, the California sign. It makes you think, "California! Beaches! Palm Trees! Los Angeles!?" But the truth is more like: "(more) Desert.. Heat.. Traffic.. Los Angeles!?" Oh, and I still laugh because Nathan and I talked about San Bernardino meaning Saint Bernard last time we drove here.

Once we got close to the city we could see the skyline in a haze over the highway. We didn't really hit much traffic on the way through, but we didn't attempt to go downtown.

We found a disc golf course outside of the city and went to play. The first bit of it was pretty nice but then we came upon the hills.. Once a disc traveled all the way down the hill into the road and we had to walk through plants that left painful thorns all over our shoes. This wouldn't be the only time it happened.

We skipped a few holes along the way after several more trips down a hill and after I lost one disc. I did find another while I was here but that didn't make up for it. The view of the skyline from basket 18 was nice, though.

This is definitely a course of no return. The shots are very similar and it's just annoying to have to search for your disc on every hole. Not worth it.

We had been in touch with Joanna's friend, Adam, who works at Warner Brothers. He invited us over to the studio for a quick tour so we picked up our passes and found our way to the small suburban Warner Village inside the studio. They really just work inside suburban homes built on the lot.

We hopped on the back of a golf cart and headed out to see the lot. There were a lot of warehouses and nondescript buildings but we also saw people's parking spots! Like Chuck Lorre, of The Big Bang Theory, and George Lopez, of whatever it is he does.

We came upon the famous WB water tower. The tour was brief but we saw a good amount of the set and got an idea of how the back lot works.

We got to wander around without supervision for a while after he went back to work. The city streets look very realistic until you go behind them and realize they're only a few feet wide.

I saw the Friends stage and wanted to go in but you have to buy the real tour in order to do that one!

Once Adam had finished work and we found our way back to the gate we parked near, we went to get dinner at Pequito Mas, a Mexican restaurant near his apartment. The food was really good, partly because I was extremely hungry at that point.

Adam offered up his floor to us for the night so we laid out sleeping bags and, after the lack of sleep last night, I fell asleep pretty quickly.

Total distance traveled: 416 miles. And most of it was through the desert. That's something that will keep you driving just so you can find something else to look at.

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