California Trip Part 3

For our last leg of the trip we traveled out of Yosemite, staying a night in Death Valley before spending a night in Los Angeles.

Don’t ever buy a Sebring. We were glad to have a convertible for the trip (in fact if you ever rent a car for a California roadtrip, I highly recommend a convertible), but this car barely survived the stresses I put on it (crossing mountains and LA traffic being the things that it hated me the most for).

The Bristle Cone Pine Forest was the best unplanned thing we did on the entire trip. After driving up into some smaller mountains, we hiked through a grove of these awe inspiring trees (with a great vista of the Sierra Nevadas in the background). They can live up to 5,000 years, making them the oldest living organism on earth. They grow in very twisted shapes and their wood coloring has a great spectrum. You really felt humbled in the presence of such old lives.

My trusty copilot.

The drive into the valley in front of Death Valley was more fun than driving into Death Valley proper.

Death Valley.

Devil’s Golf Course

Badwater basin, lowest point in the western hemisphere

A Coyote who was looking for handouts

The house we stayed in at Hollywood. Great old house in one of the rich neighborhoods above Sunset.

Our room.

A Frank Lloyd Wright house down the street from us.

The Getty center, a huge art museum complex designed by Richard Meir.

The Walt Disney Concert Hall designed by Frank Gehry.

The Santa Monica Pier