Pardon My French

It was my idea to go on a getaway to Big Bear Lake.

A small city nestled high up in the San Bernadino Mountains, I first heard of the beautiful ski resort town soon after we moved to Southern California.

A few weeks back I mentioned to Phil that I wanted to get out of the city for a weekend. We haven’t yet had the time or the means to really explore outside of Los Angeles, so there are still a ton of places I’d like to visit throughout California. Because of the time of year, I thought it would be good for us to get some crisp, fresh air and be out in nature. Because it’s just two and a half hours away, this would also be really convenient.

Earlier this week, I pulled the trigger and made the arrangements for us to stay up in Big Bear Lake for a night. The thought of hiking, horseback riding and shopping in the villages small boutiques all sounded fun to me, but if we just hung out in the hotel room’s jacuzzi tub and sat near the fire, that would also be perfectly fine with me.

We woke up early Saturday morning, grabbed some coffee, hopped in the car and headed east for the mountains. After an hour into our car ride, Phil clued me in to the fact that he had a “couple of surprises” planned for us. Since he’s kind of horrible at keeping secrets, he told me that their first of my surprises was a couples’ massage in Big Bear Village. It just so happened that it was exactly what I wanted to hear.

The winding drive up to Big Bear was stunningly beautiful: We were surrounded by mountains covered in massive pine trees. Because the sky was clear and it was sunny, it was all that you could see for miles.

On the way up to Big Bear Lake

See the snow?

When we reached Big Bear, we had an hour before our massage appointment, so we had some hot soup and sandwiches at a small pizzeria and then explored The Village. There was a lot of touristy shops, but there were some gems in the mix. Inside of an old fashioned candy store, I found Cinnamon Bears, a vegan friendly gummy that I haven’t come across since I’ve left Michigan. I also got myself a dress at a small boutique.

Our massage was at The Village Spa and Wellness Center, one of the most beautiful facilities that I have ever been to. (Ahem…I’ve had my fair share of massages in the last year.) The staff asked which areas were troubling me most (shoulders, neck and back) and spent most of the time working out all of my knots and stress. All of the while, Native American flute music played. I was in heaven for a full 90 minutes.

Afterward, in a bit of a daze, we wandered around the village more and got ourselves cider chai lattes at one of the local coffee shops.

Because it was pretty cold in Big Bear (in the 20s!) we soon checked into our hotel and took full advantage of the hot tub and fireplace.

When the sun began to set, Phil encouraged me to get my winter gear back on so we could head out for my next surprise: a horse-drawn carriage ride around the lake. The white carriage was a classic Victorian coach that had been decked out for the holidays, detailed with holly and brass bells. The driver took us for a 45 minute ride around the lake, drove us by some of the multi-million dollar log cabin homes and throughout the village. The best part was that we could see stars twinkling across the crystal clear winter night sky as well as all of the Christmas lights throughout Big Bear. We probably would have been freezing if it weren’t for the huge furry blanket that we cuddled up beneath.

Afterward, Phil took me to dinner at a small, charming little restaurant a stone’s throw away from our hotel. It wasn’t a long walk from the carriages, but we were still freezing when we arrived. To get warm, we sipped ginger ale and whiskey cocktails and sat close to each other in our booth. For dinner, Phil had stuffed salmon and I had a garlic veggie pasta.

When we were finished eating, Phil wanted to take me somewhere up higher, he said, so we could get a closer look at the stars and a better view of the mountains. We spent an hour driving around and unfortunately, we never found a scenic vantage point that worked well in the dark. I took note of his persistence, thought it was strange, but didn’t dwell on it.

We headed back to the hotel so that we could warm up by the fire. It was some time later, after we had enjoyed each others company and sipped on some champagne, that Phil told me had something to give me. I assumed it was a special early Christmas gift and sat down on the edge of the bed.

He asked me if I remembered the first present that I ever gave him. I did–a notebook that I decoupaged for him back when he was my editor at CM-Life. It’s an item that he has told me many times meant the world to him–he still has it and uses it.

I made this for Phil six years ago

That’s when he pulled out a notebook that he had decoupaged especially for me, something that he had never done before. It had my picture on it and words and images that reminded him of how he felt about me. I opened it up and on the first page he had hand written “I love you with everything that I am.”

The notebook

I tried to turn the page to flip through the rest of the journal, but it was stuck. When I realized that the pages had been taped shut, I pulled it open. There was a diamond ring wedged inside of a shallow hole that had been cut into the paper.

Where the ring was hidden

That’s when Phil went down on his knee and asked me to marry him. When we talk about it now, Phil said that I screamed “WHAT!?”, but I only remember saying “yes” before bursting into tears and sobbing into his shoulder.

Phil and I had discussed our engagement with my parents while we were home in Michigan this past November, so it’s not like I didn’t know that this would happen. I just didn’t expect it to happen so soon. Phil told me it probably wasn’t going to happen until after his book came out this Spring.

I had accidentally destroyed my phone earlier this week and so I kept using his to text friends and make calls. He was very weird about this at times–and I just assumed he was concerned about potentially spoiling a Christmas gift. Looking back, he was behaving strangely, but again, I just assumed he was freaking out between work and the holidays.

I’m still just kind of speechless about the whole thing.

Beautiful mountains, my beautiful ring

By the time we reached Seattle, it was late in the evening and we were going to have to find a place to sleep for the night. Instead of booking a hotel, Frank called a woman who he had never met before and politely asked if we could stay at her house.

Some back story: Frank once met a girl on a bus in Washington, D.C. (where he lives) and we have since referred to her as “bus girl.” The two became friends and have since been corresponding via email while she makes a cross country bike trip with her youth group. One day, in passing, Frank mentioned that we would be taking a road trip up the West Coast and that we would be making a stop in Seattle. That’s when bus girl mentioned that she had family living up that way and that we could stay with them for a night or two if we needed to.

I guess I didn’t expect Frank to take her up on that offer–but, he did.

Friends of the family invited us in and showed us to where we would be sleeping. We hadn’t realized that the family was entertaining that weekend and immediately felt like we were intruding. It was hard to shake that feeling the entire time I was there.

Throughout that evening, I was asked a few different times “So how do you know Emma?” When I explained that I didn’t, I was given an unimpressed “Oh” kind of reply and the family member would immediately turn back to Frank to chat more about their daughter. I didn’t have anything to contribute and so I just stood there quietly, feeling like a huge mooch.

They invited us to join them for brunch the following morning, but we cleaned up and left long before the family had even awoken, leaving a note behind thanking the family for their hospitality. It was the beginning of another rainy morning in the Pacific Northwest.

We started driving toward the city, but not in the direction of any destination in particular. Because it was still very early and not very many places were open just yet, I suggested that we go check out the original Starbucks. Oddly enough, when I pulled up directions on my phone, I discovered that we were less than a half a mile away.

I didn’t know anything about where this place was located and so I was surprised when we pulled into Pike Place Market, a public market whose signature sign I have been familiar with since I was a little girl. My parents always drank coffee when I was growing up and I started drinking coffee from a fairly young age. I can’t remember the first time I saw a photo of the place, whether it was in an ad or a photo at a coffee shop, but I’ve always known exactly what the place was. I was very excited to be there.

Pike Place Market is a continually run farmer’s market that overlooks Elliott Bay

We ended up visiting the original Starbucks, but because they didn’t have any kind of seating, we went to another local coffee shop just a few doors down. I still had some work I needed to get done so while I worked, Frank went to explore the market and watch some of the seafood vendors throw fish around.

In front of the original Starbucks

Just before I went out to go check out the market for myself, I did more research about Pike Place market. On Wikipedia, I noticed a specific part that mentioned Thomas The Balloon Man, a vendor who has been frequenting the market for years. Just as I walked outside, I noticed that he was sitting near the doorway of the coffee shop.

Thomas The Balloon Man

I started talking to him, mentioned that I read that he was “a local favorite” and he seemed shocked by that. I thought it was both interesting and sad that he had no idea what the community seemed to think of him after so many years. After I talked to him about his work and his life, I bought a heart balloon from him and made my way over to the market. It broke my heart when he said “thank you for talking to me” before I headed in the direction of the market.

We didn’t end up spending a whole lot of time inside of the market. Frank got himself a hat and I bought a necklace made from pressed flowers. Shortly after perusing a row or two of vendors, we decided to head back to the car. The morning was slipping away and we still had a few things we wanted to see.

Standing in front of the water

Frank’s new hat makes him look like he fits right in

Next, we went to the Woodland Park Zoo. Frank had bought some tickets before we left for the trip because he heard that they had an award winning penguin exhibit. (Frank loves penguins.)

At the penguin exhibit

Penguins pics

I’m a scientist!

Frank is, too!

Tigers are usually always my favorite, but that penguin exhibit ended up being the best part of our day at the zoo. Because it was so cold, a lot of other animals were packed away or trying to stay warm. I was excited that I got to see my first jaguar and that the giraffe walked out of the barn that they stay in during the colder months.

This experience was also a reminder me that I kind of hate zoos. There were a lot of little kids there when we went, many of whom were either banging on glass cases and screaming at animals through bars to get them to “MOVE!” And their parents did nothing at all to shut up them up. It was disrespectful on a lot of different levels and the experience made me feel a little bit sick to my stomach.

We didn’t want to leave Seattle without seeing The Space Needle, so we mapped ourselves there, next. We soon realized that this landmark was in the middle of everything and was kind of difficult to photograph up close. I dropped Frank off to take photos while I drove around to block.

The Space Needle

The rest of our time in Seattle was spent hopping between two different neighborhoods: Capitol Hill and The University District.

We discovered this abandoned, graffiti-covered building near the University District

We checked it out from inside the car

We did a lot of exploring, went into some clothing and bookstores, ate at a vegan noodle restaurant and had ice cream at another eccentric ice cream shop called Molly Moons Homemade Ice Cream.

Eating my lavender flavored ice cream

By the end of the day, we had covered a lot of ground and I was really tired. We checked into a hotel near the airport so that Frank could hop onto a shuttle the next morning.

I left early the next morning to meet Phil at Portland International Airport.

After some plans involving our road trip fell through, it became apparent that I was going to have to drive back to Los Angeles from Seattle by myself. I accidentally stumbled onto some articles about the number of women who disappear on highways over the last couple of years and scared the hell out of myself. Phil agreed to meet me just a few hours outside of Seattle so that we could make the drive back together.

I was excited to show Phil a little bit of Portland–mostly the monster bookstore Powell’s books. And I really wanted to take him to Noodles & Company, a chain that we frequented the summer we lived in Ann Arbor.

We started driving again and didn’t stop until we got to Ashland. On our way up the coast, Frank and I had been disappointed by Ashland, as our friend Kelsie had told us it was a really great little town. We apparently had made a wrong turn somewhere, however, because we were taken to an entirely different section of town. We had some sushi and then shared a pumpkin cupcake before we got back on the road, again.

We had some offers from friends to stay the night with them if we needed to, but Phil and I ended up doing the trip in one straight shot. It was an 18 hour drive and Phil never left his spot from behind the wheel.

We arrived back home at approximately 3 a.m. and we felt like zombies.

This road trip made me fall in love with every single city we visited. I especially loved San Francisco and I am quite certain I would like to live there someday. At one point when we were in San Fran, my mother called me and asked what I thought of the Bay Area. I responded “Mom, I think I moved to the wrong city.”

I like Los Angeles, but I don’t love it. I’m not sure that I would love San Francisco, either, but something about the place just made me feel at home.

The day we left San Francisco, we spent the entire day in the car and it didn’t take long for me to learn why people from Portland have a pine tree on their license plate. The entire state is covered with them.

From the very hilly road I could see for miles and miles in every direction: there were tons and tons of trees. It was the most green I have ever seen in my entire life and it was beautiful. I had this eerie feeling I couldn’t shake the entire time we were driving through the Pacific Northwest, though–that I was suddenly living inside of a Stephen King novel.

TREES!

Driving

At some point on the road, I realized that we desperately needed to get some gas. I kept my eyes open for signs that had pictured of chain gas station logos on them. But when I didn’t see any signs for miles, I started to worry. Suddenly, we passed a sign with just the blue gas pump logo on it, telling us to get off at the next exit.

When I pulled off the interstate, we found ourselves in a very small town and one that looked like it had been abandoned for some time. Former front lawns belonging to crumbled homes had turned into weedy fields. There was also a house that was so worn down and empty that we could actually see through it. Following the signs to the gas station, we passed an old abandoned restaurant that had creaky and rusty amusement park rides set up behind it. There were no cars and the only life we saw were two teen-aged boys on bikes, hanging out off to the side of the road.

When we drove up to the gas station, we realized that not only was the place also vacant, but the pumps were old-fashioned and might not have been used for years. Deciding that the place was very scary, we quickly booked it out of town. Later, we suggested the possibility that those kids might have been ghosts.

I ended up getting scared thinking about a (the new) “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”-like scenario, in which the entire town would be in on trapping Frank and I before handing us over to Leatherface. Later, I accidentally stumbled on articles about the number of women who go missing while out on the road on the West Coast and really freaked myself out. I was relieved when we found a chain gas station just another couple of miles up the road.

We ended up stopping in a town just inside the state line called Ashland, Oregon where Kelsie had recommended that we stop for lunch. (Much later, on my drive back down through Oregon, I realized that Ashland was a very interesting and cute little town. Frank and I just wandered in at the less exciting part of it.) We had some sushi for lunch and then decided that we wanted to grab a quick cup of coffee before jumping back into the car.

Because we were in a pretty deserted part of town, there were two just two places where we could get what we were looking for. There was a smaller ma and pop kind of place that was called a coffee shop, but like a lot of places in Southern California, was really just a diner. And then there was the Starbucks, inside of a grocery store.

We decided to go with Starbucks, which is slightly out of character for us, but only because we knew that they would have our fancy schmancy latte-mocha-crappa-whatevers. Frank waited in the car while I went inside.

Because I was outside of the state of California, I decided to try to get my hands on some hot apple cider. Back in Los Angeles, I had tried to obtain apple cider on more than one occasion, but had ended up with apple juice by mistake. Apparently, most people there just don’t know what apple cider is.

I asked the barista if the small Starbucks had any apple cider–REAL apple cider, not apple juice. She hesitated a moment before responding that the Starbucks could add a powder to some apple juice to make it into cider, or if I preferred, I could go buy a fresh jug of the stuff from the grocery store and she’d prepare it for us.

I was thrilled! I quickly located some apple cider made from Washington state apples (jugs of the stuff was everywhere), I bought it and took it back over to the barista. She then steamed it and added a few dashes of cinnamon and caramel. I took away from this experience that, as a native Michigander, you should never take cider for granted.

After a long day of driving, we ended up stopping for the night at a hotel that was just a few minutes outside of Portland. It felt good to repack my suitcase (my stuff was everywhere and it was driving me crazy), take a long shower and rest my tired eyes.

The next day ended up being our only day in Portland. We started the day early and hit The Portland Saturday Market in Old Town-Chinatown. I immediately knew that I loved Portland when the Market’s website said something like “If you must drive, there’s a parking garage up the street.” I ended up really liking Portland and a lot of the reason was because it was such an environmentally friendly little city.

The Pacific Northwest stayed true to it’s reputation of being a rainy region by raining almost the entire time Frank and I were there. Portland, Oregon was no exception. But, that didn’t stop us from getting the very most out of the market.

We spent a few hours walking around, listening to the live band, people watching, eating lunch and shopping. Frank and I bought each other our birthday gifts. (Frank got me a feather hair extension from an artisan named Courtney is a Seahorse–I’d link her, but the site is down–and I’ve been wearing it almost every day since then.) I also got myself a silver spoon ring just like I’ve always wanted and a pair of leg warmers made from recycled T-shirts. Later, when I felt a lot warmer than expected, I was grateful I had them.

At the Portland Saturday Market

There were a lot of different and exotic choices for lunch at the market. I was actually quite surprised by the selection. There were basic pretzels, nachos and elephant ears, but there was also a small coffee shop, Clam Chowder in a bread bowl, spicy chicken, ceaser salads. The list seemed pretty endless. I ended up eating Pierogis while Frank had some Mediterranean food. We ate while we watched a band play for the crowds.

Our lunch

Afterward, we decided we wanted to check out the world famous VooDoo Donut, a small, independent chain that has caught the attention of the national media with it’s bizarre donut themes and flavors. Apparently, the place also offers wedding services, bot legal and pretend. When we got to where the donut shop was supposed to be, we ran into a huge mass of people standing on the sidewalk. It turns out that all of these people were in line for donuts, and the donut shop was actually a very tiny little building that could only hold eight or so people at a time. We ended up waiting for over an hour, in the rain so that we could get a taste.

The line for donuts

The line from inside my car

FRANK

Keep Portland Weird

The namesake Voodoo Doughnut is shaped like a voodoo doll and oozes blood red jelly.

In the end, I decided that the donuts weren’t really anything especially spectacular, but the novelty of it all was very fun.

We spent the rest of our time in Portland wandering through the labyrinth-like bookstore Powell’s City of Books, the largest independent bookstore in the country. It was in the Pearl district on the edge of downtown, a really pretty historical area that has seen a lot of revamping over the last couple of years. I didn’t end up buying anything there, even though I was tempted to, and I think partly the reason for that was because I felt so overwhelmed. There were so many different levels and colors in that place, each pertaining to a specific type of book. I just did my best to take it all in. (Later, I bought an autographed anthology of modern Fairy Tales when I came back with Phil called “My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me”.)

Before we left, we made a stop at Portland’s vegan strip mall a place there there are four different vegan stores in a row: Sweetpea Baking Company, Herbivore Clothing, Food Fight Grocery, and Scapegoat Tattoo. We went into every shop with the exception of the tattoo parlor. We started at the bakery, where we grabbed some lunch. I had black bean soup and an imitation BLT, which ended up being my most favorite meal I had during the entire road trip.

The vegan strip mall

Eating my vegan soup and BLT

At lunch

We went into the grocery store afterward and bought a couple of snacks and some ginger pop for the road. We didn’t get a whole lot, however, because the ride from Portland to Seattle was only supposed to take us a couple of hours.

“Vegan means I’m a sex machine.”

“Vegan Grocery: Open Every Fucking Day”

Frank and I ended up spending the most time in San Francisco. I had no qualms with this, as I quickly fell in love with the city and found it difficult to leave.

From the moment we first drove into the city limits, I was immediately struck by the architecture, the charm, all of the independently owned businesses, how clean the streets were (compared to L.A.) I also sensed a change in attitude.

I loved how clean and environmentally conscious San Francisco was. Everywhere you went there were bins for trash, recycling and compost.

Later, Kelsie Fons’ roommate–the girl whose home we stayed at– told me he noticed that people in San Francisco were of a more gentler breed. He has found that when one person does wrong to another, he or she tries to make it right. It’s a place where the golden rule seems more evident, where people believe in instant karma. I do realize that this is just one person’s opinion, but I think it helps to explain how the vibe felt to me while I was there.

Kelsie lives in the Lower Haight, just east of the famous Haight-Ashbury district. Months ago, when Frank asked me what kinds of things I would like to see and do in San Francisco, the only thing I mentioned was that I desperately wanted to go to the Haight-Ashbury.

Houses near the intersection of the Haight-Ashbury.

Since I was very young, I’ve been captivated by the music of the late 1960s. I was raised on it, and to this day, I still prefer classic rock over anything else playing on the radio. A few years ago, I was given the book “Hippie” by Barry Miles as a birthday gift, which only fueled my interest in the era. It was this book that lead me to pick up Vincent Buglioisi’s “Helter Skelter: The True Story of The Manson Murders” and read Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”, both of which made a huge impact on me as a journalist.

I even went a step further and began to conduct a lot of my own research, about the deaths of the rock stars, the protests of The Vietnam War and other cases involving civil disobedience, the drug culture and life in the Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco.

Friends warned me that it had become a tourist trap, that I wouldn’t find what I was looking for there. But, who is to say that I came looking for anything in particular? I know that in the fall of ‘67, just after the Summer of Love, the people who remained in the district staged a mock funeral ceremony to mark the death of “the hippie”, to keep more people from moving there. The era ended quickly and it ended a long, long time ago. I just wanted to go there and stand on the street. (I had also wanted to check out Jerry Garcia and Janis Joplin’s old houses, both of which are close by, but we unfortunately never got around to it.)

Here’s my obligatory, really touristy photo

The worst tourist trap I think I’ve ever seen is just a few miles away from my apartment. The Hollywood Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard is lined with souvenir shops, oddity and wax museums, lingerie stores, costumed actors and countless different bus tour companies created so tourists can stalk celebrities homes.

The Haight-Ashbury district didn’t feel like this at all and I found it was the most at peace I’ve ever felt while visiting a site where something historical took place. It was life as usual for the people who lived there, and most of them didn’t seem interested in making a buck off of some tourists. I felt strangely connected to the district and wasn’t overcome with disappointment the way I’ve felt while visiting other similar kinds of places. (Examples: Hollywood Boulevard, The various castles across Europe, The Eiffel Tower, Times Square, The Champs-Elysées in Paris.) A few blocks east of the actual Haight-Ashbury intersection, I felt especially at home while sitting in a coffee shop called Coffee to the People, eating a vegan donut and people watching.

Donuts!

My donut pictured here was chocolate rose flavored.

We ended up eating a lot of donuts and other pastries while we were on this trip. (I’ll go more in detail about donuts later, don’t you worry.)

Everyday seemed to include an exciting culinary adventure. Over the few days we were visiting, we had freshly baked croissants, Indian and Pakistani food, home-baked pizza tarts, bizarrely flavored frozen treats from an ice cream parlor called Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream (Frank had Bourbon and Cornflakes flavor, I stuck with plain-Jane Mango) and Dim Sum followed by Fernet in San Francisco’s Chinatown (Dim Sum the Cantonese term for a type of Chinese dish that involves small individual portions of food, usually served in a small steamer basket or on a small plate and Fernet is a licorice flavored liquor that supposedly helps with digestion.)

Standing near the Banksy in Chinatown. This was the first time I’ve seen a Banksy in real life!

The same day that we went to Chinatown, we ended up hitting the road for a day-long adventure.

Right after lunch (the Din Sum), we headed for the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers, which is the oldest public conservatory in the United States.

Myself, Kelsie and Frank inside the Conservatory of Flowers

Frank was really excited about going for the carnivorous plants exhibit, which did turn out to be pretty interesting. I was just happy that we were going to a conservatory.

Some carnivorous plants

When we were younger, my dad used to take my sister and I to the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory and Belle Isle Park Greenhouse on Belle Isle in Detroit and I have a lot of fond memories from those visits. My sister Courtney has said on more than one occasion that she’d like to get married there.

Because the Bay Area is naturally a bit cooler than Southern California, I dressed in warmer clothes. And because the conservatory was designed to accommodate plants that mostly come from more tropical regions, my trip to the conservatory wasn’t a leisurely and relaxing as I had hoped it would be.

Later, we went to a beach near the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a cool day so I didn’t go in the ocean, but I did enjoy sitting near the water. There were some dolphins swimming just off the shore and they would occasionally break the surface, but we weren’t able to get any photos of them.

There weren’t a whole lot of people there, and this beach was pretty private feeling to begin with, so it was definitely a change in pace. It felt relaxing to just sit on the sand.

The Golden Gate Bridge

Down by the water

Later, we went and got some coconuts at a place called Trouble Coffee and Coconut Club, a small coffee shop in a small surf community. I didn’t have any of their food and just mooched from Frank’s coconut, but the whole experience was memorable just in the way the place was decorated. I really enjoyed being there.

Inside the coffee shop

It turns out that San Francisco was also a bountiful land of amazing boutiques and thrift stores. I ended up buying a couple of things for myself and justifying the purchases as birthday gifts. During my time in the city, I got for myself a new pair of sunglasses, a scarf covered in peacock feather designs (I can never resist cute and practical peacock anything), a pair of newsprint leggings (print’s not dead), a pair of thin black suspenders, a Grateful Dead T-shirt for myself (I also got a similar one for my sister) and a vintage wrap around skirt. I should note, however, that shockingly none of these thing were very expensive. For instance, my new glasses were $6 and my scarf was $8. I’ve become sort of used to a high price tag cost of living in Los Angeles, so this certainly came as a nice surprise.

We ended up staying in San Francisco for four days and we left early Friday morning. We probably wouldn’t have stayed so long, but my brand new Droid 2 phone suddenly stopped working on Wednesday.

I had been using the phone as a camera in order to document my trip, but soon learned that this quickly drains the battery. One night, my phone died after a long day of use and so I charged it overnight before attempting to turn it on, again. Unfortunately, the next morning I found that it wouldn’t turn on at all. The screen would flicker the “M” symbol for Motorola before it would shut off again, suddenly.

Because this was a brand new phone, and one I need to do my app reviews (I’m freelancing for a website called Appolicious) I naturally panicked. In addition to using the phone as a camera and a means of communicating with Phil, this was also our GPS system. Frank and I ended up spending half the day trying to sort out the situation at the nearest Verizon store, which was just a few miles away.

An associate at the store told me that my phone had been purchased at a location that wasn’t an official Verizon outlet store and they, therefore, could not replace it for me. I would have to wait several days for the company to ship me another one. After several minutes of arguing with this man, trying to explain that I was on a road trip and needed my phone immediately, the company was finally able to work out a way to ship it to me overnight.

The package appeared on Kelsie’s doorstep the next morning and the new phone worked without a problem. I was also happy to learn that I was able to easily place my SIM Card into the phone, so I didn’t lose any of the photos from our trip or any of my downloaded applications. I was, however, annoyed to learn that I had lost all of my phone numbers.

When all of this mess was happening I was very upset about it. I actually, embarrassingly, almost burst into tears at the Verizon store when this man told me threw his hands up and told me I was out of luck. (Thank you, again, Frank, for helping to keep me together.) But, in the end, it was a blessing, because this meant we were able to spend another day in San Francisco–and I absolutely love San Francisco.

It was sometime shortly after I moved to Los Angeles that my friend Frank and I talked about the possibility of one day embarking on a road trip across the West Coast.

It wasn’t much longer after we had this conversation that one of us said something like: “Hey, why not?” and we made plans to hit the road for San Francisco, Portland and Seattle in early October, just in time to celebrate our birthdays.

It turns out that this vacation came at just the right time, just a week after I was laid off. While this wasn’t necessarily conducive to smart financial planning, I really needed to get away from the anxiety I was feeling by just escaping Los Angeles for a couple of days.

This trip was such a step outside of the ordinary for me, I decided to be really thorough in my posts. Seeing that I’m trying to get back into blogging as heavily as I used to, providing more thoughtful insight and regular reflection, you are all just going to have to bear with me. For the sake of organization (and intense length) I’m going to break up these posts by city.

Frank flew into L.A. on a Saturday and we picked him up at the airport. Phil and I took a couple of days to show him what our life is like in Southern California and to show him some of the places that we really enjoy about our home.

Because Frank arrived around noon, there was still time to grab some brunch at one of our favorite restaurants, Cafe Figaro, a small French cafe on Vermont in our neighborhood.

Later, after we had eaten, we decided to take a hike up near the HOLLYWOOD sign.

When I had first arrived in L.A. and people would mention hiking, I was initially very turned off to the idea. “Hiking is walking,” I remember telling Phil. But, sometime during the last few months, after trying it for myself in beautiful Griffith Park, I have really gotten into it. It’s now become a weekly activity and every Sunday, Phil, myself and our friend Drew attend evening hikes at Griffith Park through the website Meetup.com. None of these hikes have ever taken us near the HOLLYWOOD sign, however.

Phil, posing near some cacti

Months ago, when I stumbled upon an article on the internet called “How to hike to the HOLLYWOOD sign,” I sent the link to Frank and he loved the idea. Now, the one issue I foresaw with this, was that I felt like this wasn’t exactly 100 percent legal. We live near Mount Hollywood and often hear helicopters flying in that general direction and echoes from what we presume to be megaphones, yelling at and chasing brave hikers and possible vandals off of the sign. But, I knew we likely weren’t going to be getting all that close, hence, this whole concept “trespassing” would not be an issue.

We drove to the Bronson Canyon entrance of Griffith Park, were careful to park on the outside of a gate that locked at sundown and began the 2.5 mile tread to the sign, which turned out to be mostly uphill. It wasn’t until after we reached the top that we realized that it was dusk and that it would be dark soon. The article had said that we would be positioned directly above the HOLLYWOOD sign, but we ended up a ways below it.We snapped a few pictures near the sign and because we were starting to run out of daylight, we decided to head back down to the car.

The view from the top

On the way back down, we noticed that we had in fact been trespassing on private land. This was even more of a reason for us to quickly get out of there. We started to head back the way we came, when we hit a fork in the road. Frank and Phil seemed confident that we came from the left, but I wasn’t so sure. And after we had been walking for a few minutes, the guys seemed a little less insistent that we had made the correct decision. That’s when I whipped out my fancy new smart phone, which I was (and still am) learning how to use. The navigation headed us back in the opposite direction.

By this time it was quickly getting dark and we started spotting owls and hearing rustling in the shrubbery along the path. I started to walk more quickly, even though the ground in front of me was difficult to see.

I almost jumped out of my skin when a couple approached in the darkness and wondered if we knew where we were going. They were German tourists, and while the man spoke English fluently, the woman barely spoke any at all. We spent the next couple of minutes trying to help them figure out where they had come from. The only clues we had were that they had parked near a horse ranch somewhere nearby. I handed them my phone and they used the phone’s navigation application to zoom in and out of the map over and over again. The man would occasionally turn to the woman to speak to her in their native language and then turn back to talk to us. After awhile, the couple decided that they were going to continue going in the direction that they had initially set out in. I offered them the park service’s phone number and my phone number in case they got lost.

That’s when a two men, each riding horses, came by and asked if we were lost. It turns out that the couple was heading in the direction opposite of where they should have been and that they had parked illegally on the rancher’s property. The good news was that they just had to follow these annoyed horseman in order to find their car.

By the time we got back down the trail, it was very dark and the gate to the park had been locked. We had to walk around the enormous, metal fence and because it was partly in the woods and on a slippery hill, we had to use the fence to keep from falling down.

The day before we left for San Francisco, Sunday, Frank and I went to The Museum of Jurassic Technology, a museum that I had heard a lot about in passing, but had never visited, myself. I had no idea what to expect. It turns out that it was a very strange place and I didn’t know what to make of it. It’s a dim and musty kind of place with a lot of bizarre relics that don’t seem to have anything in common. Honestly, a lot of it didn’t make any sense to me. I left feeling that this wasn’t a museum about Jurassic or technology-based anything.

There is a lot of taxidermy, a strange and superstitious exhibit about healing traditions (there’s no information here about the origin of these beliefs), a portrait gallery dedicated to the dogs from the Soviet space program, a diorama exhibit dedicated to the history of trailer parks, microscopic statues of the Pope and Goofy placed on pinheads and a growth that was surgically removed from a woman’s skull, to name a few.

I’m not sure what the origin of the place is or what the creators were trying to accomplish, but I had a good time, anyway, mostly because Frank and I kept talking about how weird it all was. The best part about the whole experience was that there was a small tea room on the top floor where the museum served tea and cookies.

Later that evening, we went to a social media/screening event at the Globe Theatre at Universal Studios Hollywood to promote the return of “Caprica,” a prequel series to the show “Battlestar Galactica” (BSG). (Both are super nerdy shows about futuristic civilizations that include robots called “Cylons” and appear on the Syfy channel.)

Phil, who got me into, BSG a little over a year ago, won the tickets through Twitter. Even though we weren’t all caught up with the show just yet, we still wanted to go and we dragged Frank and Drew along for the ride.

I could take the brochure photos for this place, eh?

The social media aspect of the event was very fun, mostly because I am so in love with Twitter. The theatre’s four screens showcased real-time tweets featuring the hashtag #capricaisback. A few times, Phil, Frank and my own tweets appeared on the screen. I tweeted about seeing Jane Espenson (a writer for a lot of different TV shows that Phil and I follow and love) during the event and wishing that she would have coffee with me so that we could talk about “Buffy The Vampire Slayer.” (For the record, she never tweeted back.) Before the screening, Phil got to meet the creator of “BSG” and “Caprica” Ron Moore, which I think was a bigger deal for him than he made it out to be.

Phil’s tweet up on the screen (I realize that this is probably very difficult to see.)

Later, I met a woman wearing a T-shirt that said “FRAK” on it and knew that I had to interview her for PSLA. (Check out “The Woman Who Cried ‘FRAK!” at PSLA.)

Frank and I left mid-day Monday for San Francisco. Phil, sadly, decided to stay home so that he could get his work done.