When visiting Los Angeles, they tell you, start at Venice Beach. I agree, the Pacific Ocean is as good a place as any to begin your tour. Or, better yet, to start a memorable journey. You never know where those westerlies will move you once you have turned your face away from their caress and feel them press like a firm hand upon your back.
Let go. You might just wind up anywhere.
Many a panorama glimpsed will make you gasp, especially those met unexpectedly as you round a bend in the road: mountains (sandstone, granite or cloaked in woods) rising impossibly high before you, valleys (desert or fertile) sweeping seemingly from sky to sky, relying on the mountains on either side to tell them where to stop.
You’ll wind your way through grimacing canyons, towering walls made grotesquely beautiful by the scars they still bear from the greater will of passing glaciers from long ago. You’ll encounter monuments in rock-strewn hills, some of them left behind by purposeless process, others hewn out of solid rock by the stronger will of human imagination. And in the cities, towns, farms and pastures met along the way one can see testament to human conquering, dreams and destiny — or at least fruitful occupation. Continue reading