The Bay to LA

San Francisco and the Bay Area was a great place to start my trip - I got to visit so, so many cities and friends, found a little bit of adventure and had a similar consistency of itinerary (about the soupiness of pancake batter) to that which I'll be living off in Peru. My half baked plans worked out well though. I stayed in San Francisco, Berkely, Palo Alto and Mountain View and had fun excursions out of all of them! Great start, and thanks to the kind hearts of my friends I was busy and happy the whole time. I'm hopeful that it will be the same in Peru, and looking forward to the new friends there.

But first I have to get there. So I drove down to LA with Paige! The drive was only 6 hours or so and we shared the driving. It went well, possibly thanks to the "Learning to drive stick - thanks for being patient" signs in the rear window. She had it down pretty well, but decided to keep the signs up for awhile since people were so much more friendly and polite... even smiling and waving if the car stalled in the middle of an intersection after a long light! (I'm going to remember this...)

Entering the mountains North of LA

We stayed at Harvey Mudd for the night (a little adventure of it's own)

"The Cube". The Claremonts are beautiful!

I discovered that the Andes Mountains are rather steep in the basement of the campus student center.

After eating some breakfast from Trader Joes, walking around campus, getting her new MotoX and stealing the WiFi for awhile, I got on the train to get down to Santa Monica and Venice Beach... I got on at about 2 and didn't arrive in Santa Monica until well after 6 (only half an hour of delays. LA area is MASSIVE and SLOW)... but I guess the upside was it all ended up being free. Train ticket machines were out of service and a nice guy on the bus gave me a free ride token.
$0 / 4hrs = good

Walking was so nice that I went the 3 miles to Venice rather than taking the bus. Just gorgeous.

First view of Santa Monica beach and Boardwalk! (Please note the immense similarity to the same location in GTA. I was impressed)

25' tall acrobatic fun on the beach! The rings looked sweet - like monkey bars for 100'. I'll be on them today without my backpacking pack! Slacklines everywhere too

Wow for miles. Santa Monica mountains in the background

Plans for my 11 hr layover in Fort Lauderdale. Beeeeach.