On Sunday we began to head north again. The plan is to get out to the coast north of Los Angeles and make our way north to visit some old friends in San Francisco and Menlo Park.
My main plan for Sunday’s drive was avoiding Los Angeles. So we meandered north towards Palmdale, CA and ended up west of Palmdale in the Angeles National Forest where we camped in the Cottonwood Campground. It might not have been our first choice but I was tired of driving and ready to stop.
There were some strange people at Cottonwood. First of all, there were a bunch of young teenage guys who seemed to be supervised by an Asian man. They were friendly enough but rather wild running around with machetes (they couldn’t have been real?) and later toy guns and air rifles making quite a racket. But they did quiet down fairly early in the evening.
Around one in the morning I heard a car go by and then some commotion. There was a lot of loud talk but somehow I went back to sleep undisturbed. It was more disturbing in the morning when I woke up and got to see my neighbours. Although they couldn’t have gotten more than five hours sleep they were up making a campfire and once again talking in very loud voices. I thought: “This is what comes from listening to your iPod at too high a volume.”
In any event, there were two guys and two gals ... mid-20s I’d guess. I soon realized that I had my morning’s entertainment right next door. I do think they were smoking something that was making them so antic. They kept bickering among themselves. At one point it seems there was a need for more firewood so the mouthy guy sent the two gals off in the car to get some at the other end of the park. The two gals returned with what looked like a railway tie that was about four times as wide as the fire pits in the park. They had to bring it back with the trunk of the car open. This led to another round of incoherent arguments. All I could think was that they deserved one another. Oh, and I forgot to mention. They had a rather nice looking dog with them. He appeared to be better socialized than any of them.
At least the camping was free.
So we hit the road fairly early having enjoyed our morning performance art. We headed down the twisty canyon road towards Interstate 5 which would take us down to Hwy136 and then out to the coast south of Santa Barbara. At the exit to Hwy 126 I looked up and there it was, Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park. There are friends of mine who will assume this was no accident. But really, I hadn’t planned this. And besides my understanding was that Six Flags would be closed on a weekday as the parks usually are at this time of year. But I thought that it could hurt to swing by for a look. Turns out this is spring break week and the park WAS open. And it turns out they have a dog kennel which has an attendant and is clean and air-conditioned. And there’s no charge. So the only consideration was could I subject Eliot to the trauma of being left at the kennel while I went and got a roller coaster fix. After a few seconds thought I decided I could.
Since we’d showed up at 9:30 am and the park didn’t open until 10:30 am, I got a really good parking spot. (Some parking is so far away from the gate that they have buses to take people back and forth.) I was able to pack a lot of rides into the four hours I spent at the park. Occasionally I had to take a breather as I was left a little disoriented from too many flips and twists and turns. I even got the nerve to ride Batman in the front seat. It was the best.
I also had rides on Apocalypse, Ninja, Revolution (the world’s first looping coaster) and Colossus. Colossus is one of the park’s oldest coasters. It’s a big wooden coaster that was designed as a racing coaster with parallel tracks. I think they only use one track these days. Colossus wasn’t running the first time I visited SFMM. There’s something great about wooden coasters. The noise, the creaking wood, the pealing paint. Colossus didn’t disappoint and having a couple of rides on it was a real treat.
Around 2:30 pm the wait times for the more popular rides were getting long. I wanted to have a farewell ride on Apocalypse but the wait time had grown to 1.5 hours! So I decided to pick up Eliot and hit the road. He seemed fine when I picked him up although I did get barked at for about ten seconds or so.
We hit the road towards the coast. Not far along the road we saw a sign indicating a recreation area and camping to the north. We drove up another winding canyon road to the Piru Recreation area which is along side a lake created by a dam. Turned out to be a really good choice. Quiet with roomy campsites, hot showers and laundry facilities.
All in all a great day. (Oh, and no crack smoking campers so be seen.)
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