Greetings my lovelies,

Friday morning, I was ready to see California.

Not just see it in the technical sense, either. I wanted to walk around, poke into places, take entirely too many pictures, look at houses that were none of my business, smell the ocean air, notice the flowers, hear the noise around me and generally behave like someone who had traveled all the way from Tucson to California and was determined to soak up every damn bit of it.

Instead, Friday became a roughly six-hour car ride through Southern California.

Now, we saw a lot during those six hours. Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Mulholland Drive, winding roads through the hills, houses that probably cost more than I could make in several lifetimes and enough beautiful landscaping to make this desert-dwelling woman stare out the window like I’d never seen a tree before.

But if I’m going to tell the story of this trip, I’m going to tell the real one.

I wish we’d slowed down.

Vickie’s fibromyalgia was flaring, and I completely understood that hours of walking weren’t going to happen. I wasn’t expecting my sister to hobble all over Los Angeles in pain just so I could play tourist. But I would have loved to walk slowly for a while, sit when we needed to, wander a street or two and stop long enough to actually absorb where I was.

I didn’t need to see more.

I wanted to experience more of what was already right in front of me.

Santa Monica, Just Not Quite the Way I Imagined It

Santa Monica came first.

The Santa Monica Pier had been one of the places I really wanted to see. Like so many California landmarks, I’d known it long before I’d ever been anywhere near it. I’d seen the Ferris wheel against the sky, the ocean behind it and people strolling along the pier in movies, television shows and photographs.

In my head, I could already picture myself walking out there with my camera, stopping at the railing and staring at the Pacific. I wanted to wander around the shops, people-watch, smell the salt air and hear that mixture of gulls, water and general seaside chaos that instantly tells you you’re near the ocean.

But Vickie was hurting, and the walking involved wasn’t realistic that day.

So Santa Monica Pier went onto the growing list titled Things Rae Is Apparently Going to Have to Come Back to California For.

We did drive through Santa Monica, though, and I got another glimpse of the Pacific. Even from a distance, that water gets my attention. Maybe it’s the Jersey in me. I grew up on the other side of the country with the Atlantic as the ocean, and now I live in Tucson, where water isn’t exactly lurking around every corner. My everyday landscape is mountains, saguaros, dusty earth and enormous desert skies.

Then there was the Pacific, stretching blue toward the horizon.

I knew I’d be closer to it the next day. I did not yet know that “closer” would involve standing on the beach watching those waves come crashing in and thinking, What in the actual hell is THAT?

Saturday’s ocean drama deserves its own story. 😂

The Little Park We Found on Wilshire

One of my favorite parts of Santa Monica wasn’t something I’d planned at all.

We found a little park along Wilshire and stopped for a while. After being in the car, simply opening the door and putting my feet on the ground felt good.

There were little ponds surrounded by greenery and small waterfalls spilling over rocks. The sound of moving water softened everything around us—that gentle splashing and trickling that somehow makes the rest of the world turn its volume down. Sunlight flickered across the ponds, leaves moved overhead, and birds wandered around the edges of the water.

Vickie and I sat together for a while.

And then I saw the ducks.

Naturally, glamorous Southern California immediately lost the competition for my attention.

There I was within reach of some of the most famous places in Los Angeles, and I was photographing a mallard standing on a rock like he’d just been elected mayor. Another duck kept peeking around the edge, probably wondering why this strange woman wouldn’t stop taking pictures.

Sorry, buddy. You were adorable. You brought this on yourself.

That little park wasn’t famous. I hadn’t researched it, pinned it to a map or spent years thinking about visiting it. We simply happened upon it and stopped.

And that’s probably why the memory means something to me.

For a little while, nothing was moving past a car window. I could hear the waterfalls. I could watch the ducks paddle through the pond. I could feel the air and look around without everything disappearing behind us five seconds later.

I was sitting beside my sister in Santa Monica, California.

For a little while, we were simply there.

Then Beverly Hills Happened

After Santa Monica, we continued on, and eventually one of those names I’ve heard practically my entire life became a road underneath our tires.

Beverly Hills.

You have to understand, I grew up in a small town in New Jersey. Places like Beverly Hills were part of that faraway California universe I knew from television, movies, magazines and music. California had movie stars and palm trees. New Jersey had woods, diners, back roads and people who would absolutely tell you what they thought whether you’d asked them or not.

And suddenly, there I was.

The streets were lined with palms and thick greenery. Everything seemed manicured without looking sterile. Beautiful buildings appeared between enormous trees, and every few minutes I’d see another house, gate or garden that made me reach for my phone.

Then I saw the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Not a picture of it. Not a television shot.

The actual Beverly Hills Hotel.

That was one of those wonderfully strange travel moments where your brain takes a few seconds to catch up with your eyeballs. I had known that building existed my entire life, but seeing it sitting right there in the California sunshine was different.

There is something almost surreal about finally standing—or, in my case, riding—in a place you’ve known through a screen for decades.

Suddenly Beverly Hills wasn’t a television location.

It had trees. It had shadows. It had traffic. It had sunlight bouncing off buildings. It had ordinary people going about an ordinary Friday while I sat there thinking, Holy shit. I’m actually in Beverly Hills.

Apparently I Am a House Stalker Now

If you look through my pictures from Friday, you might reasonably assume the purpose of this trip was to conduct an unauthorized architectural survey of Southern California.

So. Many. Houses.

And I loved them.

Some were sprawling behind enormous hedges and iron gates. Others had pale stucco walls, tiled roofs and balconies tucked beneath trees. There were stone entrances, curved driveways, sleek modern homes, traditional homes and houses perched against the hills as though someone had looked at gravity and said, “Nah, we’ll be fine.”

The landscaping fascinated me almost as much as the houses.

Living in Tucson has made me notice green in a completely different way. I love the Sonoran Desert—the saguaros, mountains, warm earth, strange desert plants and the way everything turns gold and purple in the evening—but California was lush in a way my everyday surroundings aren’t.

Bougainvillea spilled over walls in bright bursts of color. Palms stretched into that ridiculously blue California sky. Huge leafy trees shaded the roads. Hedges created thick green walls around properties, and flowers peeked through fences and climbed along stucco.

I kept trying to photograph everything from the car.

That worked about as well as you’d expect.

I’d spot a gorgeous house, grab my phone, aim—

Tree.

Another house would appear.

Phone up—

Utility pole.

Then I’d finally get one and immediately see another.

At some point I became the human version of, LOOK! LOOK! LOOK AT THAT ONE!

This is apparently who I am now.

Bel Air and the Hills

Then came Bel Air, another name filed away in my brain from decades of pop culture.

Of course I photographed the sign.

You don’t spend your life hearing “Bel Air,” finally get there and then casually say, “Eh, I don’t need a picture.”

Please.

We continued through the hills and canyon neighborhoods around Beverly Hills and Bel Air, including Mulholland Drive. The roads twisted and climbed, sometimes enclosed by trees and greenery and then suddenly opening onto hills and enormous stretches of sky.

Houses sat above us, below us and seemingly on the sides of cliffs where I personally would have looked at the building lot and said, “Absolutely the hell not.”

Some of those homes were enormous. Not merely big. Not “Oh, they probably have a guest room.”

These were houses where you could probably lose a family member for three days and just assume they’d gone to another wing.

The higher we went, the more I wanted to stop.

I wanted to look at the views without watching them disappear around the next curve. I wanted to walk through some of the residential streets in Beverly Hills and really look at the gardens and architecture. I wanted to take photographs that weren’t an ongoing battle between me, the moving car and badly positioned trees.

I wasn’t unhappy to be there.

Quite the opposite.

I wanted more time because I was fascinated by what I was seeing.

California Changed With the Light

Eventually afternoon began slipping toward evening, and the landscape changed again.

The hard brightness softened. The hills darkened against the horizon, and the sky began glowing gold behind them. Thin clouds caught the last sunlight while palm trees became black silhouettes against warm streaks of amber.

Those are the moments when I stop caring whether something is famous.

Give me a beautiful sky and I’m happy.

The houses in the hills became little shapes in the distance. The green softened into shadow. The sky seemed bigger as the light dropped lower, and I kept snapping pictures because apparently six hours of photographing California through a window had done absolutely nothing to cure me of photographing California through a window.

But golden hour will get me every time.

There was something beautiful about watching the sun set over a landscape that still felt completely new to me. The sun goes down every night, but put unfamiliar hills beneath it and suddenly you’re paying attention again.

Six Hours in a Car Earns You Barbecue

By evening, I was hungry.

And I don’t mean, “Oh, I could nibble on something.”

I mean six-hours-in-a-car hungry.

We ended the day at Lucille’s, where the table quickly filled with enough food to make it clear that nobody was leaving with a delicate little appetite intact.

There was brisket, burnt ends, pulled pork and chicken, along with creamy macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, grilled corn covered in cheese and herbs, and those big fluffy biscuits with sweet butter.

The smell alone could have brought me back from the dead.

After hours of California scenery, winding roads and me yelling internally about houses, there was something wonderfully uncomplicated about sitting down in front of a plate of smoky barbecue and deciding that this was absolutely not the moment for nutritional restraint.

Pass the brisket.

And the biscuit.

Actually, pass everything. I’ve had a day.

By the time we walked back outside, darkness had settled over California and Lucille’s neon glowed against the night. I was tired, full and carrying a phone packed with enough pictures of random houses to concern a reasonable person.

Friday was officially over.

What I Brought Home From Friday

I’ve thought about that day quite a bit since coming home.

When you live somewhere, the extraordinary eventually becomes ordinary. You stop seeing things the way a visitor sees them. The landmark you’ve passed five hundred times is just that building on the corner. The beautiful road is simply the way you get to work. The view that makes someone else grab their camera is something you barely glance at anymore.

But your visitor hasn’t seen it five hundred times.

They’re seeing it for the first time.

Friday taught me that when someone comes to visit me in Tucson, I want to remember that.

If they want to stop and stare at a saguaro I’ve driven past every week for ten years, we’re stopping. If the mountains turn pink and they want pictures, take the damn pictures. If something catches their attention that seems completely ordinary to me, I want to give them a chance to experience it.

Because I understand now how different it feels from the other side.

I was genuinely grateful to see Santa Monica, the Pacific, Beverly Hills, the Beverly Hills Hotel, Bel Air, Mulholland Drive and those beautiful hills and neighborhoods. But I’m not going to turn my trip into a glossy little travel story where every moment went exactly the way I wanted.

It didn’t.

I wish we’d stopped more.

I wish we’d walked more, even if we walked slowly. I wish we’d sat more. I wish I’d had time to stand beneath some of those enormous trees, wander a few residential streets, take in the architecture and really feel what it was like to be somewhere I’d heard about since I was a Jersey kid.

I didn’t need to cram another five destinations into the day.

I would have traded some of those miles for more time in the places we were already seeing.

That little park in Santa Monica made the point better than anything else could.

We weren’t doing anything spectacular there. We weren’t checking off some famous California landmark. Vickie and I were sitting beside little ponds listening to waterfalls while I took ridiculous pictures of ducks.

But I remember it.

I remember it because we stopped.

For those few minutes, California wasn’t scenery outside the window.

It was beneath my feet.

And I Am Definitely Not Done With California

Friday gave me beautiful pieces of Southern California.

The blue of the Pacific beyond Santa Monica. Water tumbling over rocks in a little park on Wilshire. Ducks who did not consent to becoming part of my vacation photography. The Beverly Hills Hotel appearing in real life after decades of seeing it on screens. Bel Air. Mulholland Drive. Bougainvillea spilling over walls. Palm trees against blue sky. Houses tucked into hills and hidden behind gates. Golden light settling over everything as afternoon became evening.

And barbecue.

Never forget the barbecue.

There were also things I missed and things I wish I’d experienced differently. I’m okay with saying that because that’s what actually happened.

A good trip doesn’t have to be a perfect trip to matter.

I came home appreciating what I saw while also knowing exactly what I want to do differently next time. I still want to walk the Santa Monica Pier. I want to wander. I want to stop for coffee somewhere and watch people go by. I want to explore some of those beautiful residential streets instead of photographing houses like a lunatic through a moving window.

I don’t feel like I’ve “done” Los Angeles.

Not even close.

I barely scratched the surface.

And maybe that’s one of the best things Friday gave me: curiosity. There is still so much I want to see, smell, hear, touch and experience for myself.

California isn’t checked off my list.

It’s just been introduced.

And next time?

I’m getting out of the damn car. 😂