The adventure of the West Coast College Tour was still very strong when we woke up in Tempe, even though we had yet to actually reach the coast. That would happen at the end of the day. We had checked with the Admissions Department and asked what we might be able to do to learn about the University on a Saturday and were told that there were no tours, but that ‘someone will be here.’ “Everybody knew that anybody could. Somebody should, but nobody
did.” Is that how that goes?
It was Saturday, the only reason I hang on to it at all was the promise that someone would be available. Our prospective students were disappointed more by the heat than the lack of excitement over their visit and we found our self guided tour of the campus brief but interesting.
From the Admissions Building you can see the Gammage – the last public commission of Frank Lloyd Wright. We walked around the Auditorium and climbed a tree or two. We found a stand of grapefruit trees planted to obscure the power transformer for the auditorium. There were fruit on the ground and fruit hanging on the trees. I reached out to touch one of the hanging fruit and it dropped into my hand so I tasted it. I promise that if all grapefruit tasted that bitter, grapefruit would only ever have been appreciated by the Borgias. It probably wasn’t ripe. ASU apparently has a tradition of treating students and staff from produce grown on campus.
The college tour stop was served its purpose. The girls agreed that they didn’t need to see anymore of ASU on the grounds that they couldn’t detect any humidity, it had to be the heat! We stopped by the college bookstore to buy proof of our visit and were on our way to Los Angeles. We kept it simple by staying on I-10 until we were in the City of Angels and then we were on any number of 3 digit divided highways.
We had a couple interesting things happen on the road. We went through a Burger King drive through for lunch in Quartzite, AZ (I-10 just east of California border) because we thought it would be quick. Unfortunately the police had made a traffic stop and the driver must have been known to the staff of the restaurant because they were more interested in watching the policeman issue a ticket than in filling our order. We were able to watch due process happen as well. It also gave us the opportunity to admire the saguaro cactus that was the closest thing to a tree that we had seen in miles.
The other thing that stuck in my memory of that drive was the wind farm that was on both sides of the highway. about halfway between the California border and Los Angeles. I don’t suppose I’d like it if it were in my backyard, but it was pretty cool to see all those white blades spinning in the wind.
For the first time on our trip we arrived at our destination before dark. We wanted to visit UCLA on Sunday morning. Saturday evening was open. Our hotel was in Manhattan Beach so we went to find the ocean.
It was wonderful to smell the salt air; to see crowds of people walking and talking. having spent hours seeing people whose goal, like ours, was to drive to their destination as quickly as possible it was tremendous see people just getting their feet wet. It was great to do things that had to do with the ocean.
We were at the beach so we thought it would be good to eat right here. We found the Manhattan Beach Post. We don’t usually eat at
places that are so impressed with themselves, but it was fun and the fact that it was packed made it very high energy. One thing on the menu was Duck Prosciutto which confused me, I thought Prosciutto was dried ham. It was delicious. I once heard Prosciutto described as what happened to bacon when it went to heaven — that has to be a bizarre concept if you eat kosher. Probably doesn’t do much to make the pig feel better either.