On day two of our nine-day road trip to Los Angeles in May, My wife Sarah and I headed south from Santa Barbara, but not before we scouted out the burial site of my mother’s parents at the Santa Barbara Cemetery.
Thanks to online research, we were able to track down their modest gravesites and plot number. Donald Eskeline of Proctor Vermont and his wife Lucile (Shepherd), second generation Californian of Sacramento, are buried in the massive, hilly cemetery overlooking the Pacific near Montecito.
After a short drive south on Hwy 101, we made a stop at Carpinteria State Beach, a place that got its name in the 1760s. We read it means “carpenter shop,” given by the arriving Spanish who noticed the local Chumash and their advanced skills at building tomols, or canoes.
In particular, the Chumash used natural tar oozing from the beach cliffs to make their canoes water tight and highly efficient.
We settled into our next hotel, the Foghorn Harbor Inn at Venice Beach, with our giant sliding glass doors leading out onto the sands of the harbor at Marina Del Ray. It felt like we’d wandered into a travel ad poster, with the billowy white sands leading crowded with teams of volleyball players and expansive docks lined with colorful sailboats.
First, we took a short drive to the famous canals of Venice Beach, ditched the car and wandered the paths and dramatic pedestrian bridges that feather through the quiet neighborhood. Small boats, canoes and tourist barges passed us on our walk as clutches of tourists grabbed photos of themselves along the route. Then we drove to Venice Beach and were taken in by the dazzling array of everyday goings on, jugglers, clowns, skateboarders, vendors selling everything from food and jewelry to clothing, arts and crafts and on and on. Taking up a seat on a bench we sat back and took in the colorful show that included booming music of all sorts from people’s radios and sound systems. A skate park there had a huge crowd of people stunned by the display of stunts a bunch of skateboarders were trying.
We enjoyed crab cakes, a burger and a green salad for dinner that night at Jamaica Bay Inn, a short walk from our hotel.
In the morning we aimed for a long-time favorite of ours, the famous Canter’s Deli on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. It’s been there since 1931. As usual, our bagels, cream cheese and lox were great and the folks that work there were warm and inviting. As we were leaving we saw two workers carrying two six-foot long loaves of bear out to a delivery truck.
In the next part of this story we stay two nights in Los Angeles at the Sunset West Beast Western Hotel on Sunset Boulevard to get a taste of L.A. life and history.
