By Steve Cichon | steve@buffalostories.com | @stevebuffalo
BUFFALO, NY – It was really the trip of a lifetime.
Monica and I flew from Buffalo to San Diego, and rented a convertible to drive from San Diego to San Francisco over ten days.
We didn’t have any expectations, not knowing what to expect…. But we had a great time.
I’ll mostly let the photos do the talking, but we ate plenty of good reasonably pricing food at interesting restaurants (as well as sampling the fast food joints we don’t have in Buffalo.)
I really liked that the trip was a great mix of nature, wonderful 1940s-60s buildings and signs along the Pacific Coast Highway, and a few “big things” to see. Perfect nature and world class cities.
These photos aren’t meant to show everything we saw… Just a sampling of the fun we had and an idea of what we like when we travel. (Plus, we took about 2500 photos. !?!?!?)
San Diego
One of the best tour guides we’ve ever had. A lifelong San Diegan who lives on the island town of Coranado.
On the hop on/hop off trolley… We like to take these wherever we go to get a quick look at everything before we decide what to do…
The hills of Old Town San Diego.
Colorful Old Town..
Old Town is a tourist trap… But you can trap me all day if there are Mexican ladies making fresh tortillas. 2/$1 and delicious.
I liked this sign.
Lots of public transportation in San Diego and San Francisco… Lots of it with a vintage flare.
of all the places we visited, we both said we’d like to spend a week in Coronado… a smaller town with a vibrant Main Street and a great beach.
The bridge between San Diego and Coronado looks a lot like the Skyway… except everyone in San Diego seemed to be bragging about it rather than wanting to tear it down.
San Diego had a World Fair in 1915… And Unlike Buffalo’s, many of the great buildings still stand.
These trees with purple flowers were everywhere. Very pretty!
Between San Diego & Los Angeles
Some nice breakfasts, a stay on the Queen Mary, and a visit to the Santa Monica Pier.
PCH. 101. Sometimes 1. This was it. Takes you through plenty of places where it doesn’t look too different from the time they built the bigger highways 50 and 60 years ago…
With the top down, we had to put our luggage in the back seat.
Great place for breakfast…
Huge wait to get in… But the honor system coffee bar with mismatched mugs made the wait tolerable for most…
but not this guy..
California cool in here.
Monica had pecan banana french toast. I was incredibly delicious.
anything for an ocean view…
There’s our rental… the convertible Camaro… at the In-N-Out Burger.
We spent the night on the Queen Mary. It’s permanently moored as a hotel and museum.
Well-worn old ship.
You just don;t see enough fish carpets.
The old ship furnishings were mostly museum displays…
With the stacks…
The room was OK… like clean two-star OK.
Laurel & Hardy sailed the Queen Mary… lots of great photos of all the great stars of yesterday on the ship.
The Main Deck…
Former WBEN Disc Jockey Jay Fredericks is now Fritz Coleman, doing LA Weather for decades…
The stacks…
bow of ship selfie
Note the exhaust trickling out of this thing. The noise this car made was embarrassing.
Great breakfast place in Long Beach….
Potholder Cafe was cool small local place… lots of good food.
cool place!
Great sign across the street from the Potholder
The Camaro, The Wife, The Jack-In-The-Box
Santa Monica Beach
Route 66 ends in Santa MONICA.
Monica and Santa Monica Pier.
Santa Monica Beach…
St Monica at Santa Monica Pier…
Fun afternoon at the Pier
Pier selfie
More beach…
Beach selfie!
beach!
Ferris Wheel selfie!
The pier from the end…
Popeye was inspired by sailors at Santa Monica Pier in the olden black-and-white days…
Popeye eelfie!
We ordered two Sno-Cones, and when she said $10, I thought I was getting scammed. But if there was ever a $5b snow cone, this was it.
Second In-And-Out visit of the trip… this one was very close to LAX… Fun watching the planes come in.
Los Angeles
In LA, I found myself recognizing street names from 80s game show ticket announcements. For example (from memory): If you’d like to see the Price is Right in person, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Tickets, The Priiiiice is Riiight… CBS Television City, 78-hundred Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles California, 9-double oh-3-6. OK Bob!
Also, I found myself looking for scenes familiar from watching every episode of Dragnet at least five times. Then I remembered about Randy’s Donuts, and we drove there.
In other words, it was a successful trip.
Lots of editing on this one , so hopefully you can make out HOLLYWOOD in the hills behind us.
Beverly Hills iconic view…
Iconic couple and iconmic view. hahaha.
It was hazy on the day we were in LA…. Bad for getting good shots of the sign.
Beverly Boulevard. Home of CBS Television City.
It looked like a Bernie Sanders campaign headquarters exploded all over LA.
Iconic Hollywood coffee shop turned Bernie.
Chinatown is the only place we saw in LA that seemed real.
On the tour bus…
More Chinatown.
More tour bus.
**Trip highlight for me…
Took lots of photos of this place…
It’s a LANDMARK, people!
We had an orange glazed donut… Very tasty!
LA to SF
We went to the Reagan Library is Simi Valley… and then took the coast to San Francisco. The prettiest, most treacherous part of the trip. A stretch that was about 40 miles as the crow flies took about four hours on the winding, coastal mountain roads you see in the video and photos below.
Ron & Nancy, Steve & Monica
They towed a retired Air Force One to the Middle of nowhere, then built this glass structure around it.
Touring Air Force One was worth the trip…
I took about 7,000 photos of Air Force One, which was in service Ford-Obama.
The Ptresident’s desk on Air Force One…
Beautiful views…
Reagan using a Neumann U-87 mic.
Presidential limo used to take Reagan from the airport to his Santa Barbara ranch.
Tear down this wall speech notes.
A piece of the Berlin Wall.
This guy was all over the museum. One of my favorite guys of the 80s. Not Reagan. Not Gorbachev. Gorbachev’s mustachioed interpreter.
Carl’s Jr in Simi Valley.
I wish I had seen this sign BEFORE Carl’s Jr. I swam anyway! Suckers!
Back on the road, plenty of beautiful coastal views.
This is the actual look mMonica had on her face the whole time.
More beauty.
Elephant seals!
What look like rocks at first glance are seals.
Beautiful views….
Just breathtaking.
The open road.
Treacherous curves.
You won’t come back from Deadman’s Curve….
There were so many of these little places, but you just want to take them all in…
Look at that winding road….
For as annoying as the big engine and loud exhaust was, thank God we had it though this part of the trip. The handling was great. I wouldn’t want to try this in an economy rental.
More curvy roads and beautiful views.
Natuire.
Bob Ross painting or PCH view?
Yep.
Beach.
Funky room in Carmel at the end of a day of white-knuckle driving along the coast.
From Carmel to SF along Highway 1 was the most worn out. Good donuts here, though.
This town was probably big before they built the expressway.
San Francisco
The whole trip was foggy… But San Francisco was really foggy both days.
Cold on the open air tour bus.
Fog at Golden Gate!
BREAKING NEWS…
cold and windy and Golden Gate
The bridge was half foggy, half not.
Great Crab Salad lunch here…
view from out table…
view of the back of the place…
This area is where San Francisco’s last independent fishermen dock….
That’s why they called the tourist trap next door Fisherman’s Wharf.
One of the old Pier warehouses….
Hilly streets…
The only view we had of Alcatraz… Tickets sell out WAY in advance.
Great neon sign…
Another great neon sign. What else does a guy need?
Great tour guide looked like some dude who just walked in off the street… Talked that way, too. Made it very interesting.
Taking the tour…
Great old trees near Sausilito on the way to Muir Woods
More great trees!
TREES! VIEW!
View from Muir Woods towards San Francisco…
San Jose basically runs into San Francisco. We were staying between the two. Stanley Cup game overtime in San Jose. Bar shows only soccer. !?!??!
