California Trip Diary

Dear Diary,

How can I describe San Francisco in one word? It's so hard to do since there's so many facets to it that I could spend all day trying to write about, but both of us know that wouldn't benefit anyone, so if I had to pick a word to describe San Francisco, it would be gorgeous. It's really trite, I know, but the city is just so beautiful that I can't find another word that could really sum it up.

California in general is a state of fierce contrasts. Hell, half the state is a brutal, scorching desert with islands of fertile green and miles on miles of agricultural land where countless workers sweat under a scorching and blazing sun, but then the other half of the state, is a chilly, mountainous state with verdant forests and acres upon acres of green where wisps of fog cloud the sky. San Francisco is a city that is clearly found in the chilly, mountainous half of the state.

When driving to San Francisco, we traveled on the freeways (the term used in California for the highway system) for several miles. It was a bit cloudy, but I like it that way. We kept on driving a while and exited into a road leading us through winding streets blanketed by thick trees. Heading up and down and down and up countless houses, parks, and schools made their presence felt. People rode on their bicycles, walked, and all around it felt like one of those European cities where people lived lives that were far different from those that pervade suburban-oriented cities like the city where I come from, Miami, and many others.

We kept on driving and ultimately entered into the heart of San Francisco.

Entry for Monday, June 26, 2017

Dear Diary,

Tiredness. It's something every person on Earth has to deal with at one point or another, but that doesn't make dealing with it any easier. I know that for me at least, being woken up at 8:00 am, as I was still sleeping, certainly wasn't a feeling I would have liked to have had, and yet, I didn't have much of a choice.

That said, we did at least manage to eat breakfast before we left. I had a stack of two waffles with syrup and butter spread, while my dad had some boiled eggs and toast. After that, we were planning on leaving San Francisco to head south to Carmel. It's apparently a city by the sea, which, at least from what my dad had been told, is very picturesque. In order to get there, however, we had to drive through miles and miles of highway. The landscape of California in this part of the state is incredibly beautiful, with miles upon miles of mountains along with lakes with bluish waters paired against the backdrop of a light blue sky and greenish mountains that made those scenes feel like something out of a computer wallpaper.

Driving through the highway, I fell asleep for quite a while, and when I awoke, my father felt an urgent desire to use a restroom. To that end, he exited near a Costco, and went to use the restroom, and even though I didn't need to go as urgently as he did, I decided that I might as well go too. I went and he went, and after we exited the store, he went to get a slice of pizza. That Costco location we were at is one of those where the food court is found outside the store, rather than inside it, and so my dad waited in line, ordered a slice of vegetable pizza, grabbed a seat, and ate it. When he finished, we went into the car, and drove for several more miles.

As we kept on driving, large and imposing mountains started to seemingly look as though we were in a never-ending desert, but that never-ending desert did ultimately meet its end.

Entry for Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Dear Diary,

Wednesday is the awkward, gangly teen of the week. He's smushed in the middle between Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and he rarely gets the time of day as a result. That Wednesday morning, I woke up followed by my dad. We got ourselves ready and headed downstairs to eat breakfast.

Though the hotel did offer breakfast, that breakfast was small at best, but it did help to fill us up a bit. After a while, we headed back to our room and picked up our things. We grabbed our luggage, closed the hotel room door, checked out of the hotel, and boarded the car.

Our goal was to head south to Los Angeles, but we didn't want to head there directly; we wanted to wander off a bit to kill some time, and because of that, we headed south down the freeway until we exited near a small town. We headed down Road 166, a small two-lane road that took us to the small town of Maricopa (not to be confused with the county in Arizona).

As we drove down, rows upon rows of corn and other plants dotted the brown, semi-arid landscape. Small oil wells appeared on both sides of the road, and the mountains off in the distance stretched for miles and miles on end.

Maricopa is a very small town. Calling it a “town” might be overstating it a bit in fact. A small handful of houses, a gas station, and a small motel were most of what made up the town. It would be more accurate it to label it a way station—a pit stop—on a desert road. We kept on driving and driving until we took another road. This road led us past waves of giant mountains that had the color of hay, and which indeed looked like hay. The light yellow color, cast against the blue sky, where nary a cloud could be seen.

Boarding another freeway, we kept on heading down, and after a long while driving, stopped at an In-N-Out. We stepped out of the car and ordered our food. I had a plain Double-Double with French fries and a Coke, while my dad had a cheeseburger with fries and a drink.

After we ordered our food, we had to wait a while, but once we got, we ate it. After all, we were hungry.

Food finished, we kept on driving down the coast....