day 7...

Victorville, California, to Cambria, California; 356 miles.
SCOTT: one truly interesting day. drove out of the mojave desert in the morning and down into the bowels of the megalopolis. except that the air was such a rich brown gooey mass we couldn't see anything. los angeles may have been out there somewhere. we looked. frequently. drove from highway 101 to highway 1 through the malibu canyon and came out at malibu. ahhh. smell the ocean. then drove north on highway 1 to cambria for the night. ahhh. dinner outside overlooking the ocean. ahhh. only downside to the day came when we stopped at a highway patrol office. stopped because olivia and her mom were researching online where she could and couldn't drive with a permit on the trip, and they couldn't figure out what was OK in california. so we stopped and asked. turns out you have to be 16, so it's a good thing she hasn't been driving in CA because she has a tendency to drive 83 miles over the speed limit, and she might have been in a little trouble doing that here. just kidding. honest. her eyes got really big and her jaw dropped on a couple of occasions today when we passed those digital signs that tell you how fast you're driving, and on both occasions i was at or below the speed limit. we agreed that is probably a first since i started driving 46 or so years ago, well before i turned 16. it's my mom's fault. i'm going to stop now and let olivia tell you about the big deals of the day. good night, mom. good night, sue, wherever you are...
OLIVIA: OW! i just stubbed my toe getting to the computer. Well, dad summed up the majority of the day, but he left out two very impressive things. #1: the car wash. We got our car washed right before we headed into Malibu Canyon, and it was the coolest car wash I have ever been in. everything was completely automated and at one point, it spewed rainbow foam all over our car. (I tried to take a picture, but my camera was too slow.) I also think that this was one of the first times -- ever -- that my dad actually agreed to go through a car wash rather than washing his car himself. Anywhoo, after the car wash and driving for a while we came across the small, nice, peaceful, wine-tasting town of Los Olivos. Now you all I'm sure have heard of this town in the news because it is the town that holds Neverland Ranch ... well, seeing as how we were there, we just had to go find this place and join all the Michael Jackson mourners. So we turned down this road that seemed to have lots of people coming out of it, and lots of police officers, and we followed it for about 5 miles. That was when it all happened, all at once. We went around a curve and suddenly we had, in our view, tons of people and cars and news truck thingys and radio truck thingys and news reporters and flowers and police officers and people selling t-shirts and EVERYTHING! People were even selling flowers out of their cars for people to put on the ground. I'm very proud to say that I made it onto some European news channel when we were driving by. (I stared down the video camera as we drove by) Dad wouldn't go top down because he claimed it was "too hot," so all the pictures I took are somewhat not the best. Anyway it was pretty impressive, and on our way out, we were behind a very large horse trailer that came out of the ranch itself (perhaps his horses?) Sooooo yeah! today was pretty great and the ocean just makes everything better. My hair is more blonde now from the sun, and I'm starting to get a T.D.T.T.T. (top down tank top tan!) Goodnight mom, heather, and andrew :)
SCOTT AGAIN: a couple more things about the day. the road to Neverland is narrow, your standard country road. it was interesting to come upon so much commotion in the middle of nowhere, or neverwhere. wouldn't surprise me if the number of TV trucks and satellite dishes rivaled the world series. and the tv reporters were everywhere doing their thing. So today we were near the "palace" so to speak of an icon of sorts from this era, and tomorrow morning we'll be at the "palace" of an icon of sorts from a while ago -- william randolph hearst and his castle at san simeon...
OLIVIA AGAIN: Sunset = Amazing, Olivia = tired.
SCOTT ONE MORE TIME: Olivia went to the pool for a bit but came back and said we gotta go watch the sunset. everyone's going. so we went. walked onto the boardwalk out to a point where the waves were crashing and the seals were cavorting and watched the sun set with a bunch of folks, all wearing nice, end-of-the-day satisfied smiles. it was a good way to end the day, with the sun getting big, and orange, and bigger, and red, and then ... gone.
Tomorrow: Cambria to at least Monterrey, maybe Half Moon Bay.