#RSRSeesTheUSA Day 31: Los Angeles, CA
Wrapping up my time in LA with a couple more ticks off the “when in Rome…” list.
Despite the 95º F (35º C) baking heat, I headed up to the Griffith Observatory and hiked around in the Hollywood Hills. I snapped my requisite pics of the Hollywood sign (📷), saw a pile of human poop on the trail (💩), celebrated with a giant vat of fresh fruit from a street vendor at the end (🥭).
The other oh-so-LA thing that I did was duck into Liberate Yourself and buy crystals.
And with that (plus a scoop of Jeni’s Everything Bagel ice cream… which was delicious, and a copy of Emily St John Mandel’s new book, Sea of Tranquility, which I’m super excited for), I am bidding LA adieu.
It’s been fun to spend a week in a city again where there’s so much happening and new things to discover packed into one area. It was fun to be rerouted through residential neighborhoods on my drive home today and see how people live in different ways. It’s been lovely to have a mix of staying in an Airbnb and a fancy hotel and with friends. It’s been a whirlwind of making plans with more people in the last week than I’ve hung out with in literal years.
I’ve done so much that I feel like I’ve been here a long time, even though it’s only been a week, and I’m very satisfied by the eclectic combination of sightseeing and eating and wandering and people-visiting and museum-going I’ve done here.
I’m also feeling the pull to get out of the city again. I miss having quieter discovery moments where there’s just one thing to focus on at a time. I want to get back to places where the natural world wow’s me. I want to have some time to focus on re-establishing the rituals I’ve fallen out of, distracted by city life.
So tomorrow I’m camping as I head up the California coast. And I think I’m going to curtail my hypothetical plans to visit more friends in wider-flung places for a longer stretch in one place somewhere beautiful (Sequoia? Yosemite? Kanab?). This is the bit of the nomadic lack of planning that I’m really appreciating on this trip; it’s giving me a needed push to listen to my heart and my body and let my brain take a backseat. So far, that’s led mostly to me feeling like I’m getting back in touch with my peacefully independent self, and to finding some joy in serendipitous moments.
You’ve been swell, LA. But I’m ready to leave the big city behind again.
