We were treated to a forces-of-nature sampling while in this behemoth of a state. First, the forest fires and then an earthquake. The fire didn’t lick its way close enough to concern us and the quake only registered a 2.1—puny by California standards, so we weren’t affected. Still, it’s good to get some insight into what it feels like to be native. The uncouth part about “playing native” is paying the elevated California prices on absolutely everything. While the national average on gasoline still dangled below two dollars per gallon, we motored past a pump near Yosemite touting $3.09 for regular unleaded. Throughout our trip, Holly has carried a house-price comparison chart so that we can look up how the housing compares to the ones back home. Even though the houses in La Jolla (“la HOY-ya”) appear completely modest, a quick peek at the reference chart reveals that a 2,200 square foot house here will cost you another $1,073,000 more than it does in Columbia, Maryland. Yow! That’s one costly American Dream.

Where else but in Los Angeles are you going to find an Adopt-A-Highway road segment sponsored by a plastic surgeon? I’m guessing it’s some good advertising, given the amount of time a person spends on the freeways going 0 mph here. If you think you’ve seen some bad congestion before, LA’s traffic scene will leave you dumbfounded. I’ve driven in a lot of DC rush hours and I’ve even gotten stuck in beltway gridlock at half past midnight, but Los Angeles traffic is in a league all its own. Still, it didn’t squash our fun here, it just delayed it each time we set out.

Our friend Eric lives in Venice Beach where it doesn’t feel like Los Angeles at all. Venice is a lot more laid back and neighborhood-centric than the rest of the city. E took us to all the notable LA sights like the Whisky a Go-Go, Chinese Mann Theater, Sunset Strip, Hollywood and Muscle Beach. We sat in on the taping of the Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn and lucked out with the evening’s guests: Los Lobos and Quentin Tarantino! It’s eye-opening to see how the show is actually done versus how it appears on TV. The musical guest performs first and is spliced into the show to appear later. That’s due to the equipment set-up time. Some shots were done a second and third time. Guest Mary Tyler Moore couldn’t attend the night we were there, so they shot her appearance on an earlier date and seamlessly slipped in the footage for broadcast. In addition, for each bit they had the audience laugh and applaud extra-loud and extra-long, which winds up sounding extra-fake when you pay attention to it. It takes about three hours to complete the forty minutes of show that ends up airing. We’re afraid the experience may have ruined talk shows for us because we can’t help but notice all the phoniness now.

California’s got some pretty terrific National Parks in it, so we felt compelled to visit most all of them: Death Valley, Yosemite, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Joshua Tree and Redwood. Each of them seemed to be a semester’s worth of education in itself. Death Valley isn’t the characteristic desert of sand dunes like you might picture. Rather, it’s mountainous, gravely and scrubby and, by gosh, there’s even water. The river waters at Yosemite have an Evian-like clarity, where you can see every little rounded pebble sitting on the bottom. At Sequoia we gaped at a 2,100 year-old specimen with a 31 foot diameter. To get a good idea of its size, this thing has enough wood to yield a line of 2-by-4s that stretch all the way from Alexandria, VA to Trenton, NJ. It turns out these trees rarely, if ever, die of old age—death comes from toppling over, thanks to their shallow root bases. And if you think that these trees are tall, wait till you get to the Redwood. These giants check in at heights taller than a 35-story office building. The wonders go on and on in these parks and even though we spent a whopping month in California, there’s still more that we didn’t have time to experience.