We rolled into Chicago in the early evening and pulled up to the family home of our friend, Brian. Not long after walking in the door, I realized that this family had created the type of home in which anyone and everyone is made to feel welcome. Even though it was the week before Christmas, a time when many families barely have room for their own, Brian’s parents, Mickey and Colleen, offered us a warm bed, continually open and interesting discussion and a comfortable Chicago home away from home. On our first night, we all walked over to dinner at Cafe Bernard, a local French bistro, where the atmosphere is cozy, the owner is friendly and the food is delicious. What better on a cold December night than a savory pot of cassoulet and some hearty red wine?

With bellies full of French food and cheeks rosy from the wine and cold winter air, Brian took Sean and me to B.L.U.E.S., a nearby Lincoln Park blues bar. Perched on stools at the side of the small stage, we listened to a veritable parade of local blues talent. After a couple of beers, Sean’s enthusiasm for the blues earned him an all expenses paid trip to the stage, where Big Time Sarah treated him to a surefire cure for the blues, a cure whose adequate description is elusive. Suffice it to say, that Big Time Sarah’s ample backside was an integral part of the process.

Billy Goat Tavern is best known for the personality of its late owner, Billy “Goat” Sianis, who put the infamous billy goat curse on the Cubs in 1945 and had the habit of greeting all customers by shouting: “Cheezborgor, cheezborgor, cheezborgor. No fries, cheeps. No Pepsi, Coke.” (a tradition honored in the classic Jim Belushi and Dan Ackroyd SNL cheesburger skit). But even the most garrulous of proprietors couldn’t keep a restaurant open for 70 years without some solidly good food. The cheeseburger and chips at the Billy Goat will satisfy your deepest, darkest burger cravings and do so in a below ground haunt that has been a Chicago favorite for three-quarters of a century.

Not since Louisiana or Mississippi had I felt such a strong sense of place from the people around me. Blues in Chicago are Chicago Blues. Pizza in Chicago is Chicago Deep Dish. And the people in Chicago are distinctly Chicagoan (albeit just as distinctly from the North Side, South Side or West Side). And while it may be impossible to put your finger on the just where the cultural center of Chicago lies, Millennium Park would definitely be up for consideration. Filled with incredible art and architecture (e.g. Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor and the Jay Pritzker Pavilion designed by Frank Gehry), Millennium Park is a monument to Chicago’s love for and dedication to the arts.

I love going to museums. They give me a feeling something like what I imagine observant Catholics feel when entering a great cathedral: a sense of awe, a sense of being part of something greater than myself, a renewing of my own beliefs. You see, I think being human is a pretty great thing. We have these huge brains that help us figure out how to survive efficiently and, as a result, we have all this time to do other stuff. Now some people, unaware of how precious this time is (not to mention the evolutionary heartache we had to go through to get it), piddle it away. Other people use this time to have great ideas and make cool stuff. I see museums as the place to go to honor these people and to be inspired to take advantage of my big human brain. The Art Institute - by both honoring artists and inspiring others - is one great cathedral of humanism.

A block from the Art Institute, Russian Tea Time is a formal Russian eatery, overseen by a large, black-haired Russian woman who is continually pouring vodka or tea while answering phones, directing the waitstaff and greeting the regulars. Sitting hunched over the small bar, we sampled two of the vodka tasting flights; the first: coriander, black currant tea and lime; the second: horseradish, pepper and pepper-honey. I especially recommend the black currant tea, coriander and horseradish vodka, but really any of them will sufficiently warm you for the short walk back to the Art Institute. Na Zdorovie!

There are only a few words you need to know when you go to Harold’s: half dark, salt and pepper, spicy. When these magic words are said to the people behind the bullet proof turnstile at the counter at Harold’s, you will soon be treated to some of the best fried chicken you’ve ever had.

After walking through the Gothic-style stone hallways past the stained glass windows and opening the creaky, old wooden door to the narrow stairs leading to the bookstore in the basement, I was seriously tempted to find a hiding spot and fulfill my childhood fantasies of spending the night in a bookstore. With low ceilings, shelves crammed with books, and a quiet violated only by the sounds of page turning, the Co-op Bookstore is officially one of my favorite spots we’ve visited on the road trip.

While it may seem odd to review a dinner party, Frank Night is no ordinary dinner party. You see, at Frank Night, anyone is welcome as long as they are ready to contribute to the discussion of the topic chosen for the night. Given that guests are self-selected by their desire to participate in lively conversation, the salon-style proceedings work incredibly well. In honor of Sean, the topic of discussion during our first Frank Night was robots. The debate about our future with respect to AI became so heated, that everyone had a hard time sticking to the rule that only one person may speak at a time. Luckily, our experience hosts guided us with such aplomb that everyone got their say before we moved to the living room for some singing of Christmas carols and gospel music before ending the night. A huge thank you to all those we met at Frank Night, and especially to Colleen and Mickey for redefining just how great a dinner party can be.

In addition to being a physical location in Chicago, northandclark.net is an awesome blog with engaging interviews conducted by Brian’s brother Casey. His cast of characters range from artists to businessmen and even includes a guy who makes biofeedback fashion accessories!

Apparently a trip to Madison is not truly complete until you have visited Essen House, ordered a plastic boot full of beer and recruited some friends to help you drink it without allowing the boot to touch the table until it’s empty. As we were to learn later in the trip (at the Corning Museum of Glass), the Germans have been making glass drinking boots for hundreds of years. And to what end, you might ask? While the great tradition of the drinking game is a venerated one, the Germans have found that it is greatly improved by adding the element of possible embarrassment to the mix. You see, drinking from a glass boot is a simple matter until, that is, you get to the ankle area of your boot, at which point the beer drinker falls prey to fluid dynamics and gets splashed in the face with beer as they finish their gulp. Luckily, we embarked on the boot drinking adventure with our experienced and benevolent friends, Jeff and Jen, who informed us of the impending beer-in-the-face and shared the technique used to avoid beer splashage. I, however, am not quite so benevolent, but trust in our readers’ problem solving abilities to figure it out themselves. Plus, a little beer in the face, doesn’t sound like the worst thing to ever happen to a person.

A neighborhood place where the bartender literally knows your name, Caribou Bar is a little dive-y, but only in the best sense of the word. We stopped in to say hi, duck out of the winter weather and get a Wisconsin brew, and, after reading the yelp.com reviews, I wish we had stayed for a Bou Burger.

Madison, Wisconsin was the first place since leaving California where we encountered a significant Prius presence, so I wasn’t surprised to find that a city filled with hybrid car-loving locavores supports a year-round farmer’s market. The Dane County Farmer’s Market is a serious affair. Even in the throes of a Wisconsin winter, hundreds of vendors show up to hawk their wares, all of which are made or grown by the people selling them. Plus, in the winter the market moves from Capitol Square to the centrally heated Monona Terrace, a building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, initially rejected by the city of Madison and then built posthumously, after Madison realized that they were sitting on a Frank Lloyd Wright goldmine.

The Old Fashioned, located in downtown Madison, looks and feels like it’s been there for years. In fact, it’s only been serving its traditional Sconnie fare since 2005, but that doesn’t make the food any less delicious. We showed up for Saturday brunch and were lucky to squeeze through the crowd to find some seats at the bar. The Old Fashioned house burger may not sound like brunch food, but topped with fried onions, Bavaria’s hickory-smoked bacon, aged Cheddar, garlic sauce and a soft-cooked egg on a buttered and toasted roll, it was the ideal way to celebrate Saturday morning (or maybe early afternoon).

Our friends Jeff and Jen are the kind of people that tend to gather a group of loyal friends no matter where they go, and one of the ways they often compel this group of friends to come together is poker night. Since it was Jeff’s birthday weekend, the poker party was in full swing on Saturday and we got the chance to interact with Jeff and Jen’s Madison peeps in all their glory (read: under the stress of competitive betting). It was the kind of fun that can only happen when people’s money and reputations are on the line.

Madison was certainly not the first place that I would expect my Sunday brunch to be served by guacho-clad college students, slicing large chunks of meat off of their grilling rods and directly on to my plate, but, that said, the meat was so good that the discordant ambiance was easily overcome. Steak for breakfast; yes, please.

On the day we were there I wasn’t in the mood to give MMOCA the attention that was its due, but I did sufficiently rouse myself out of my steak-y brunch torpor to realize that this museum was a remarkable place. I mean how often does a town of about 200,000 have its very own contemporary art space, let alone a full on museum with a decent permanent collection and enough presence in the art world to draw notable exhibitions? Given my experience, not often. Huzzah for you, Madison.

Since Jeff had already hooked us up with some delicious home-cooked brats, we weren’t jonesing for the brats at State Street, but it was a good place to stop in, get a brew and warm up. And since we weren’t there during a Badger football game, we actually got to sit down.

Crossroads Deli turns out to have been aptly named with respect to my personal history. It’s a Minnesotan deli that serves up a mean western New York classic, the beef on ‘weck. It was a deliciously unexpected intersection of my dad’s and mom’s respective roots.
Sean says: I’d never had a beef on ‘weck, but I’ll be darned if that ain’t one good sandwish!

When lumber baron T.B. Walker opened an art gallery in downtown Minneapolis in 1879, it was the first public art venue west of the Mississippi, and ever since that time the Walker has lived up to its cutting edge reputation by bringing innovative modern and contemporary art to Minneapolis. The museum has an impressive collection, but manages not to be too overwhelming thanks to the intelligent layout of the galleries. We spent the better part of an afternoon there and were able to see the entire museum, including the exhibition of Dan Graham’s perception bending work, which made the museum space feel more like a playground than a gallery.

I can think of no better place to sample the wild game meats of Minnesota than Lord Fletcher’s. From our table by the window, we could look out across one of Minnesota’s thousands of lakes while we savored our dinners of pan-fried walleye and smoked wild pheasant stew. Thanks to Uncle Frank and Aunt Kathy, our dinner was also complemented by stimulating conversation.

The Mill City Museum is located in the renovated ruins of one of the many flour mills that used to line the Mississippi as it winds through downtown Minneapolis and it offers an interactive and fascinating look at the history of flour milling and how it affected the people and economy of Minneapolis.

If you can only hit one spot in Minneapolis, the Walker Sculpture Garden should be it. The garden is a huge park littered with sculptures by some of the world’s foremost sculptors. Even the snow and cold didn’t keep us from spending a couple of hours wandering around the grounds. Plus, it’s free!

Although the name evokes images of pre-teen girls in overly Bedazzler-ed Christmas garb dancing to disco holiday tunes, the Holidazzle parade is actually a spectacular parade in which a number of childhood tales (from The Princess and the Pea to Wizard of Oz) are embodied by delightfully light-covered floats. It gave a few Burning Man art cars a run for their money (and that’s saying something).

Since my Uncle Frank and Aunt Kathy are seasoned Minnesotans and wise in the ways of warming up, they took us directly to a fireside table at Brit’s after the parade. We engaged in the traditional pub activities of beer drinking, food eating and shooting the breeze. It was warm, it was cozy and it was great fun.

We arrived at my aunt and uncle’s house in Rapid City just in time to avoid driving in a pretty serious snow storm, but my uncle, being the dyed in the wool South Dakotan that he is, decided that a snow storm was the perfect time to go see Mount Rushmore. Turns out, he was right. Our footprints were the first to mark a path through the newly fallen powder and we walked around the monument in the silence that only comes during snowfall. Being there without the usual crowds of tourists did, however, make me carefully consider the point made by opponents to the original plans for Mount Rushmore. They argued that no artist, no matter how talented, could improve the beauty of the granite pinnacles of the Black Hills, and, while I do agree that the Mount Rushmore sculptures are remarkable, they do take one’s attention from the natural beauty that surrounds the monument. Only when snow was in the process of reclaiming Mt. Rushmore by blanketing it in white, was I reminded of the sculpture’s place in the larger environment of the Black Hills. Strange to have a monument to human accomplishment in the midst ofa place whose beauty exists only because it has been protected from human destruction.

I don’t normally get in to Indian trading post style stores. They often seem to have more to do with bilking tourists for money than celebrating the Indian artist and their work. Prairie Edge, however, is not that kind of place. The owner’s respect for Indian art as art in it’s own right comes through in the way the art is exhibited and in the forum he provides for artists to show their work.

After a day spent outside, trudging around in the snow, the hot apple cider and warm, juicy bison burgers at Firehouse Brewing (located in an actual old firehouse) hit the spot.

My aunt, uncle and cousin Jon run Simpson’s Printing in Rapid City and we were fortunate enough to get the full tour of the print shop while we were in town. Jon is a real expert on their massive new printer, the Heidelberg Speedmaster 74, and it was a treat to hear him explain the capacity of the press and his ideas for the future of the business. Thanks Simpson family for a great time in Rapid City! We love you all and hope to see you again soon!

Driving across eastern South Dakota is a test of endurance. It is flat, it is cold and there’s not much reason to stop except for the bare necessities of gas, food or bathroom. Thus the success of the Corn Palace. When you haven’t seen anything but the wide open prairie for hours on end, a building decorated all in corn sounds downright fascinating. In the end it was ok. It is a building completely covered in corn, but, honestly I would’ve rather stopped at the Laura Ingalls Wilder house (a.k.a the real “Little House on the Prairie”).

After much too brief of a stop at my sister Vanessa’s house, we began a new phase of the road trip — the all driving, minimal stopping, hauling of our behinds to get across the country in time to spend Christmas with my grandparents in western New York. But given the fact that we had just spent about 9 months taking our sweet time to get around, we eased ourselves into things by taking the scenic route eastward on Highway 60. In traditional southwestern style, there were magnificent rock formations, stunning vistas down winding canyons and more blue sky than any two eyes can reasonably take in.

Parked between a frost grizzled herd of grazing cattle and an empty highway, we awoke to a very cold morning and a burning need for some hot coffee. We drove into Springerville with little hope of finding a cafe, and with a hefty dose of disbelief we pulled into Java Blues’ parking lot. Turns out, Java Blues had coffee, free wi-fi and a lounge-y atmosphere (the place doubles as a bar at night). Certainly an unexpected and happy surprise on a 2 degree morning.

In the wilds of western New Mexico, two ancient worlds collide. In El Malpais, a ring of long dormant volcanoes surrounds a plain where lava once flowed like water, stopped only by the majestic Sandstone Bluffs formed when giant sand dunes were compressed and solidified over a period of thousands of years, long before the volcanoes erupted. While at the El Malpais, we explored Lava Falls, La Ventana Natural Arch and the Sandstone Bluffs, and all in the relative isolation to be found in most places in New Mexico.

After a long day of driving and a surprisingly difficult time finding parking in downtown Santa Fe, we were in no mood to search for a place to eat. Luckily, my sister Abby had given us a recommendation for the Atomic Grill, where they put a southwestern twist on diner food and have a significant selection of regional brews. Sean says: Watch out for the Santa Fe Chicken Killer… it’s a tasty brew, but it’s serious.

Winding through Pueblo Indian villages and old Spanish mission towns, the High Road from Santa Fe to Taos is a visual tour of the social forces that shaped the southwest. The route is dotted with nineteenth century Catholic chapels, squat adobe houses, motor homes and signs advertising local artists, giving the impression that the human mix along this road has long been an interesting one.

Located in the town of Chimayo, along the High Road to Taos, Santuario de Chimayo is a Roman Catholic chapel built in 1816 by a Spanish priest and to this day Catholics from around the world make a pilgrimage to the site to acquire some of the healing “holy dirt” from el pocito, a small dirt pit in a room off the nave. Although I was not in need of the “holy dirt”, I did find the folk art adornment in the chapel interesting and the shrines along the creek that runs behind the chapel were a testament to the importance of the chapel in local religious life.

Jim Bishop, castle builder. Is he a visionary architect, metalsmith, mason and carpenter? A madman of the mountain, battling government forces real and imagined? A kook with bottomless energy reserves and an inexplicable calling to build a castle in the woods of Colorado? After meeting him and listening to him rant and rave about the New World Order, the governor of Colorado, the tax code, legalization of marijuana, Social Security and his vow to never stop working on his castle, regardless of who tries to stop him (and the attempts have been numerous according to Mr. Bishop), I would argue that Jim Bishop is all these thing and more. Oh, and the castle…it is simply a thing of beauty. Stone from the local forest, lifted in to place by Jim Bishop, and Jim Bishop alone, to create a structure that towers above the evergreens below. It was thrilling, and, I will admit, more than a bit frightening to venture up into the towers and metal domes of the castle, but I just had to see for myself the heights to which Jim Bishop’s imagination had taken him.

Thanks to the recommendation of Abby, our first stop in Las Vegas was a trip through time at the Neon Sign Graveyard. At the present the graveyard is about a city block holding hundreds of old Las Vegas signs, neon, incandescent and otherwise behind a chainlink fence. It’s not really set up for touring at the present (although that maybe changing in the near future), but it’s really great to walk around the fenced area and see the discarded glitz and glamor of yesteryear juxtaposed with their more modern replacements some 20 blocks away.

Thanks to the book “Drive-ins, Diners & Dives” that Litty gave us, we found this little joint out in North Las Vegas. A sports bar named Four Kegs wouldn’t normally be our standard fare, but the stromboli was really quite good.

I’m not a mall guy, which is pretty much the 3rd party to Las Vegas’ gambling and stripper culture. However, in addition to the quite high end jewelry stores in the mall, there were also a number of quite neat works of art. From room-sized geometric sculptures wrapped in braided copper to 6 foot high whirlpools encased in plexiglass tubes and ice pillars that melt away as visitors touch them, Crystals was quite a relief from the stench of boring consumerism that pervades most other hotel/casino/mall money pits that we walked passed.

Another gem on the Las Vegas strip is the fountain at the Bellagio. There are some 1200 individually controlled fountain heads and each can change the angle, rotation, and pressure of emitted water. With speakers surrounding the plaza, the fountain plays out a choreographed show to a different tune every 15 minutes and depending on the music the show can be quite a spectacle.

Since giving away our money isn’t our idea of fun, we opted to just park ourselves on a bench in the Caesar’s Palace lobby near the elevators. It’s quite a show watching people come and go from their gambling and debauchery, often either enflaming or attempting to abate the accompanying marital strife.

Hoover Dam is an amazing feat of engineering, especially considering that it took only 5 years from breaking ground to completion. For all the folks out there who refuse to accept that anything good has ever come out of government, I suggest you make a trip to Hoover Dam. Drive over to the Arizona side to park for free rather than pay to park on the Nevada side. For security reasons, they’re building detour highway to divert traffic off the dam, making it unclear how visits to the dam will be managed in the future.

Sean says: Thanks to a recommendation from Michael, we made our way from Joshua Tree to Death Valley via the scenic Kelbaker road through the Mojave National Preserve.

Sean says: Zabriskie Point is a nice stop on your way into Death Valley from the southeast entrance. From on top of the vista point you get a great view over the badlands and into the valley. Hiking on the 2 mile loop trail into the badlands was interesting in parts with somewhat different views of the area, but was very badly marked, so we spent a bit of time wandering aimlessly in the various washes and to this day we’re not exactly sure where we were supposed to be hiking.

I could think of much more uncomfortable and inconvenient things to do on the jagged salt crystal formations at Devil’s Golf Course than playing a round of golf, but I suppose the namer was pining for the lush greens of another place when he looked over the sparkling field of white in Death Valley. Perhaps if he had stood quietly for a bit longer, the spot would have been christened for the soft symphony of metallic pings that heralds the destruction of salt crystals as the sun warms them throughout the day.

The heavy footsteps of the crowds have flattened the Salt Flats into a thick crust, so to see the intricate beauty of the crystalline salt structures we had to walk away from the parking lot until the crust became more uneven and eventually blossomed into a field of tiny, icy growths.

Sean says: When I saw Artist’s Palette on the park guide, I thought it would be neat, but figured we’d already seen the Painted Desert in Arizona earlier on the trip. However, the Artist’s Palette drive was really something and quite different than the Painted Desert. Imagine streaked hills similar to the Painted Desert in the background, but hill size dollups of red, white, purple and green paint in the foreground that really give the impression of an artist’s palette. Give yourself the better part of an hour to really take in surroundings and finish 30 minutes before sunset to get the best light (that we unfortunately missed).

Sean says: Nice hot showers at an ok price ($4 each). Don’t expect the wifi to work unless they get a better IT team. Also be warned that they have a security guard that circles the motel in his golf cart. Since the motel is in the middle of nowhere (i.e. Death Valley), the security guard’s only real concern is finding penny pinchers like ourselves that didn’t shell out the $80 to stay at the motel (and were trying to avoid shelling out $15 for a spot in the “campground”, i.e. parking lot across the street). Our van’s incognito exterior might have slipped under the radar had it not been for the light of my computer screen as I tried to edit a few pictures before going to sleep. After peering past our blinds with his spotlight and rapping on our window to kick us off the motel’s private property, we headed up the road 10 miles to the free Emigrant campground.

After our trip’s first encounter with a motel security guard (see Stovepipe Wells above), we made a late night drive out to one of Death Valley’s free campgrounds. Since we arrived there well after sunset, it just looked like a sanctioned parking spot to us, but upon waking, we found that Emigrant campground is in a satisfyingly stark part of the valley. And although it certainly looks remote, there were flush toilets and potable water available.

Mosaic Canyon was simply one of the most sensorily satisfying experiences on the road trip. The smooth marble walls ran like water underneath my fingertips as I walked through the narrows. The colors of the rocks flowed together in a current of gold, white, orange, purple, green, black and blue. And just when we were about to turn around, the sky opened up into a brilliant blue, the sunlight flowed down the canyon walls and we stood there stunned at the beauty of it all.

The Paiute believed that the first members of their tribe emerged from Ubehebe Crater. In current times, the way the desert mountain falls into itself in a fiery cascade of rust, gold and orange rock tells of the earth’s life blood emerging in violent shower that created, at the very least, a new wrinkle on the planet’s skin.

Joshua Tree is the kind of place where it would be downright difficult to live an ordinary life. Even the rocks and strangely animated plants seem as though they must have interesting back stories simply because an uneventful existence couldn’t possibly result in such strangely shaped creatures. Hidden Valley is evidence that Joshua Tree’s human history is at least as captivating as its natural history. After walking through a small opening in the wall of rounded rock formation, you come out into a large valley surrounded on all sides by more rock. Apparently, in the days of the wild wild West, this valley was famous among cattle rustlers because they could herd their stolen cattle into the secluded and easily guarded spot for rebranding before they were taken to market. These days the main activity in Hidden Valley is rock climbing, but, luckily, the climbers are busy enough in their own endeavors that they didn’t intrude too much in my endeavors to imagine myself standing guard at the opening, watching for the sheriff, while the cattle deeply lowed their indignance at the illegality of it all.

Although its name doesn’t suggest anything of grandeur, Keys View is a spectacular vantage point from which to see the sunset behind the mountainous edge of valley below. While there, we shared the view with only a few other people, one of which was a New Zealander whose interests involved computer programming and travel. After several minutes of discussion, we discovered that he was also a DIY electronics person, who was a subscriber to Make magazine and had heard of Sean’s Truth Wristband. What are the odds?

The silhouettes of Joshua Trees and the full moon rising in the distance inspired Sean and I to venture out for a moonlight walk away from our campsite at Ryan campground. As we walked, the palette of grays and watery whites of the desert at night was broken up by the occasional glint of moonlight off the sharp spine of a cactus and the menagerie of shadow monkeys hanging off the feet of the Joshua Trees.

Somewhere after the Mojave turns into the Sonora Desert, there are cactus that jump out and bite. Well, not quite, but if you get anywhere close to cholla cacti their spines will penetrate even the slightest of surfaces touching them. Unfortunately, cholla cacti are also enchantingly fascinating, but temptation fulfilled can be exquisitely painful.

Sean Says: So the story goes, Leonard Knight was flying a hot air balloon over Southern California, when he broke down in the desert just outside the middle of nowhere. Mr. Knight took this as a sign from God that he should take a couple of weeks to make an 8 foot totem proselytizing the Lord’s word. Some 24 years later, Mr. Knight is still out in the middle of nowhere and his 8 foot totem has grown into a mountain and adjoining cathedral of donated hay bails and hand mixed desert adobe with painted on flowers, trees, streams, a yellow brick road, and many bible verses, all in the most fantastically bright colors.

Sean says: I first saw Slab City in the movie “Into the Wild” and somewhat dismissed this RV park full of society’s rejects as a Hollywood fantasy. But when we met up with Ryan & Gerit in Red Lodge, Gerit spoke of Slab City as the magical wonderland she had never visited and convinced us that we must go. Turns out that Slab City is indeed a real place, though you might forget that as you drive in past the dream-like colorful display of Salvation Mountain into the RV, hippie bus, trailer and general squatter-rights shanty-town built on the concrete slab of a WWII marine barracks that is Slab City. Unfortunately on our new road trip pace to make back to New York for Christmas we didn’t have time to stay for the nightly music jam at “The Range”, shop at the local garage sale, or visit the local Christian center, but it does look like they have most of the amenities of a small city (except for maybe running water, treated sewer or electricity).

I never really thought that L.A. would be one of the spots on the trip that would feel like a temporary home, but thanks to our friends Norbert, Yolanda, Xavier, Michael, Judith, Teddy, Charlene and Aaron, we had a Thanksgiving weekend surrounded by loving, generous, intelligent friends that made us feel like we’d come home for the holidays.

Standing on the bright white art deco observation decks looking at L.A.’s lights come sparkling to life as evening fell, I felt the allure of old Hollywood. I suppose it was nostalgia springing from the national collective memory of a world created on the studio lots of Burbank. Ah, the magic of movies. The observatory itself is also pretty amazing, with two giant telescopes, excellent exhibits on the solar system and the history of astronomy. My favorite were the images of solar flares and the surface of Mars.

Comfy neighborhood coffee shop with a dedicated group of customers. We spent three mornings there and, in that short time, recognized several regulars. Pretty reliable wi-fi and decent coffee too.

Given L.A.’s reputation for being the hub of car culture, I was surprised to find that their metro system was at least as extensive as the BART in San Francisco. Unfortunately, L.A. is also more spread out than San Fran, so the percentage of the city that can be reached on the train is still pretty low. But if you want to get to any of the major attractions in downtown, it’s a great way to get around. Plus, if you show a Metro ticket at either branches of MOCA, you get 2-for-1 pricing on regular admission.

Los Angeles was the first city on our trip where we found any art museums that could even come close to rivaling our old favorites in NYC. The Museum of Contemporary Art on Grand is the branch of MOCA that exhibits art from 1940-1980 and, during our visit. there was a retrospective from their permanent collection covering those four decades. It was great fun to see a lot of familiar artists and discover a few new ones.

A big Italian dinner at Tarantino’s has been a Hill family tradition for many years and, since they pretty much made us honorary Hills for the weekend, we joined in the feast. On an unassuming side street in downtown Pasadena, Tarantino’s is a tiny local Italian restaurant where it would take some effort to pick a less than great meal. Everything we ate, from the garlic knots and antipasti to the spinach and sausage pizza, were delectable.

All we knew of the Museum of Jurassic Technology was that our friend Aaron, a Los Angeleno of over a decade, suggested and then insisted that we go. In retrospect, I think it best to visit the museum with no expectations, so I will only say that it is an endearingly absurd combination of an intricately executed art piece, a Victorian style cabinet of curiosity and a Wes Anderson film set. And at the end of it all there is complementary Russian tea from a samovar and a plate of cookies.

Venice Beach stands as a monument to all that is so wonderfully strange about L.A. It is concentrated mayhem of the California kind. And it is spectacular.

Our friend Aaron works on the animation team at Dreamworks and was gracious enough to take some time out of his busy schedule working on Shrek 4 to give us a tour around the Dreamworks campus. The entire place is not-so-vaguely reminiscent of a movie set with the addition of lots of free food, a gaming room complete with pool and foos ball tables and multiple gaming systems, an on site yoga instructor and a stream with its own family of ducks. Oh, and I can’t say too much about it, but the preview we got of Shrek 4 looked pretty darn good.

After seeing one half of the MOCA 1940-1980 retrospective at Grand Street, we had to check out the 1980-present portion exhibited at the Geffen Contemporary. The exhibit, which contained a large number of unfamiliar California artists, was interesting, but a reminder that contemporary art is mostly concept based which often means that the ideas are compelling, but the visual components of the pieces are unappealing to the point of being repellent.

Reminiscent of a Manhattan deli, complete with small tables, metal chairs and a case full of sundry pre-made sandwiches, Black Dog Coffee has a gregariously friendly owner, fast wi-fi and a stay as long as you like policy (although I imagine around lunch time the crowds may push you out the door before you’re ready).

If it weren’t for the huge cement wooly mammoths surrounding it, you might think the La Brea Tar Pits were just a fenced off Superfund site. The fact that they’re smack dab in the middle of downtown just adds to their strangeness. Just when I thought I might have become acclimated to the ubiquitous eccentricity of the place, L.A. threw me another curveball in the form of bubbling ancient tar.

Perched up in the hills high above L.A., the Getty Center’s Italian limestone buildings, perfectly manicured gardens and flowing fountains give the feeling of standing at the cultural center of a golden empire. It’s certainly fun to be a member of the leisure class for an afternoon and the Getty collection is extensive, but it took some effort to fight off the sense that I was standing on the precipice of great collapse.

The walls at El Carmen are lined with luchador masks and old Mexican newspaper ads, but don’t let the kitsch fool you, their tequila selection is top notch. We had a great night sipping tequila and Tecate and downing tacos.

Although Sean and I spent less than an hour in this town, I’ve already made plans to return. With its old Victorian homes converted into B&Bs, its small main street lined with tasting rooms from local wineries and its relaxed vibe, Los Olivos is the perfect place to spend a weekend with my sister Abby and my best friend Margot. Put it on your calendars, ladies.

Remember those scrap metal sculptures that were so interesting that we had to pull over in Sebastopol, CA just to check them out?  Well, when we later looked up the artist, we found that he exhibited more of his work in a gallery in Los Olivos. So when we passed through Los Olivos, we made sure to stop at the Judith Hale Gallery for a chance to see Philip Glashoff’s newest work. I was happy to see that he’s still making whimsical figures, still with ball bearing toes, crazy hair and even a few with glasses.

I’m a sucker for restored historical sites. I can spend hours wandering around, imagining the lives and faces of the people who lived there, placing myself (in period dress, of course) in their midst. So, La Purisma Mission was an ideal place for me to spend an afternoon. In the 1930s, the CCC fully restored this enormous Spanish mission to the state it was in at the height of its function in the 1790s. We explored the infirmaries, the schools where the young native women were housed and taught to weave on looms, the gardens filled with edible and medicinal plants, the animal pens complete with live horses, longhorn cattle, turkeys, chickens and burros, the spring house where fresh water was drained into an aqueduct system that brought water to the fountains and bathing pools, the padres’ home, and the grand hacienda which housed facilities for weaving, making soap, pressing olives for oil, tanning leather, making pottery, carpentry and milling flour. And everything was outfitted with artifacts making it seem like everyone had just walked away from the mission leaving their work until they returned. It was great fodder for my history geek imagination.

Hidden in among the mansions in the hills above Santa Barbara, the Chumash Cave Painting State Park is little more than a pull out on the road, but up a very short trail and behind a metal gate, the cave holds native paintings from the 1600s. The paintings were much different from those we had seen in the southwest, as they were mostly geometric with very few identifiable figures, but they were definitely intriguing. It was however, a bit difficult for me to keep perspective on the the fact that we were looking at centuries old native artwork given that we were mere steps from the road. Thinking about it later, though, I came to like how the cave was a reminder that Native Americans lived and worked and loved and painted in all parts of this country, including those parts now inhabited by us, even if being surrounded by contemporary civilization made it hard for me to connect with the experience of the paintings’ artist.

While in Santa Barbara, we spent a couple of days with Sean’s Uncle John, who filled our time with spectacular stories from his and Sean’s dad’s childhood, from his time living with Sean’s parents in their college years and from his crazy exploits living on an 80 foot boat in the Santa Barbara harbor. After hearing all these old yarns, we couldn’t pass up the chance to go down to the harbor with John for some breakfast and a look at his old stomping grounds. We sat outside in the warm California sun, ate our breakfast and then went out to the docks for a few final stories from John before heading south to L.A.

Solvang was originally a communal farming community founded by a group of Danish immigrants. As these Danes built their homes and farm buildings in the traditional Danish style to which they were accustomed, they found that they were attracting attention from tourists for the old world, European feel of their village. Not ones to poo-poo a chance at making money, the Danes ditched the farming and put all their energy into creating a cheesy tourist town where people could snap pictures of wooden windmills and spend all their cash on baked goods, hotel rooms and knick knacks. Not exactly our scene.