Day 7: LA to San Francisco
[Day1] [Day2] [Day3] [Day4] [Day5] [Day6] [Day7]
Right..I finally got time to write the last chapter of our journey across the United States. It’s now a couple of weeks after we arrived in San Francisco, which 
have been crazy with work related activities, so unfortunately things here got put a bit on the backburner for a while. Apologies for keeping you hanging on there for a while.
With that out of the way, it’s time to catch up where we left off. Arriving on Feb 2nd in LA, we crashed at our friends Rick & Jamie’s place in Redondo Beach, which is a bit south of LAX. I guess we could have made better house guests, as we were snoring to high heaven on Rick’s spare air mattress when Jamie left for work in the morning, so we didn’t even to say hi to her this time! D’oh – We’ll have to make up for it when you come visit us up north! :-)
An interesting tidbit about the area: Redondo Beach is just a mile or two south of Hermosa Beach. Last time we were out here, the four of us visited the Comedy & Magic Club in Hermosa Beach, and saw none other than Jay Leno live on stage. If you think his 10-minute intro on TV is funny, try out an hour with Leno on full throttle without cameras and tv censorship! My chest hurt the next day from LOL’ing! The Comedy & Magic Club have been frequented by the big names in US stand up over they years. I noticed that Bill Maher is on the schedule this month, You probably want to check out their calendar if you find yourself in the area.
We had a late breakfast at Eat at Joe’s in Redondo Beach. I want to pause here and say a few words about this place too. From the outside,Joe’s place itself looks fairly unremarkable. Inside it’s also pretty standard of what you’d expect from a typical American diner. 
What makes Joe’s noteworthy, is that you on a saturday morning may find 20+ people outside queuing to get in. This place is usually packed and with good reason: Their service is stellar and swift, and the food is flippin’ awesome. Awesome enough in fact to attract the patronage of none other than The Duke himself, back in the day. Personally, I think I had the best damn Eggs Benedict ever here. If you pass through the area south of LAX, be sure to stop in for lunch or breakfast at Joe’s.
After we said our goodbyes and seeyalater’s with Rick, we headed north out of LA. As we had been on the road for 6 days in a row, we had just about enough of life on the highway for one week, and looked forward to NOT spending time behind the wheel the next day. Don’t get me wrong. I’d do this trip all over again – it’s just when you’re on the final leg of a long trip, you’re kinda longing to get it over and done with at the near end.
Route 1, aka PCH aka the Pacific Coastal Highway of California, in my humble opinion, is one of the most scenic highways in the world. This is just one of those drives you have to do at least once in your lifetime. The stretch from LA to San Fran is roughly 7 hours straight if you go by the inland highways, but plan on longer if you’re planning on doing PCH all the way up. There are however several cool places to stay on the way up. My personal favorites is Santa Barbara and Monterey. Click on the image on the right to get a brief impression.
On the way up to San Francisco, we did however make an interesting stop, which I want to share with you. Being from Denmark as we are, it was a must to visit the Danish town of Solvang, California. Solvang has been around for about a century, or since 1910 where it was founded by 3 mad Vikings, who got themselves high on poisonous mushrooms, proceeded to kick the crap out of General Custer, the Native Americans, and Howard Sterns granny too… or perhaps something along those lines… Evidently, Uncle Sam decided the shortest path to world peace, was to turn the blind eye and just let those damned Danes have their little nest in the hills, where they could roam and go beserk on the local wildlife instead.
Alright, so I’m totally BS’ing you :-) Read the wiki on Solvang here (lot’s of nice pictures) Solvang is kinda fun to visit for a 1st gen Dane, as it’s a bit of a glossy picturesque interpretation of our homeland over 6.000 miles away. You will see plenty of buildings which lend heavily from both Danish, German and Dutch 1900′s architecture, yet you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone actually speaking the native tongue, other than the Danish tourists that is. The reason may be that less than 10% of Solvang inhabitant’s these days claim any kind of ancestry going back to Denmark. One thing I found funny as hell though was this: Solvang has created an impressive replica of a historic building from Denmark’s capitol, Copenhagen. The original building, which still stands today, is called Rundetårn (pronounced “runne-torn”, means round tower). It was completed in 1642 as a astronomical observatory for King Christian IV. Solvang’s tower on the other hand is… a Pizza place!! Seriously, you can’t make this kind of stuff up! :-)
After a stroll around town, it was time to leave Solvang behind. No more stops other than to refuel. It was high time to haul ass, so we could reach our temporary home; the Hyatt at Fisherman’s Wharf, sometime that night. We chose this place as we wanted to look for apartments in the city and the northern bay area. Febuary 3rd 2012 @ 23.44 thus marked the end of our 7-day trek across the United States. Here are the final travel stats:
States traveled today: California- All states traveled on the trip: Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California
Distance traveled today: 438 miles (705 km)- Total trip distance: 3.451 miles (5.554 km) For the European readers, this distance is roughly equivalent to driving from Copenhagen to Cairo, Egypt!
- Total fuel consumed: 219,33 Gallons (830,25 liter)
This entry marks the official end to the cross country trip. A few closing notes: As of today’s date, Febuary 17th 2012, the current situation is that we’ve found a really nice little apartment in Sausalito, and we are moving in this weekend. Check out the view from the deck:
Our U-box arrived safely from Philadelphia yesterday in San Rafael, which is about 10 miles north of Sausalito. We’ve bought some furniture which will be delivered in a few days. Until then, we’re slumming it on our air mattress ;) Most important of all though, I gotta go find a propane tank for my BBQ!
As you’re obviously reading this, I would like to to thank you for following along on our adventure. In another month when we’ve settled in, I might write an epilogue on Sausalito and the northern bay area.
Thanks,
Max Ranzau
RESguru | 
February 18, 2012 00:46
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By Chas, February 18, 2012 @ 08:15
Epic journey max thank you for sharing, I felt like I was in the backseat at times. Enjoy your new home in Cali