Motor City Muscle: San Diego, CA to Detroit, MI: Lincoln Hwy

Monday, August 13, 2012

San Diego, CA to Detroit, MI: Lincoln Hwy - Day 1

As we headed for home, no trip to California would be complete without checking out a bit of L.A. On the way however, I had to make a stop at a destination that popped in my head. Most everybody my age is a fan of Top Gun to some extent. I knew it was filmed in the area, yet was unaware it was filmed almost exclusively in the San Diego area. One stop in particular I wanted to see...Charlie's house. It wasn't the romance, nor the Porche and bike chase scene. As a kid, it was what expectations of L.A. I had established. I first visited L.A. in high school back in 1995, and left the city seriously disappointed. San Diego on the other hand, it was the California in which Top Gun brought me to expect. So, needless to say, I wanted to see the house. I knew ahead of time that the place is hanging by a string, possibly destined to be leveled, like so much of the area surrounding it, in order to make way for condos or mansions. Sad really, as much of the neighborhood consisting of the quaint little beach cottages in the movie were no longer standing.

After seeing the house, we continued on to L.A. Downtown isn't so unlike Detroit, though the homeless population greatly exceeds Detroit's. As one officer who gave me directions to another precinct in hopes of a police patch exchange put it "take a right, you'll come upon a shit load of homeless, turn right, and it'll look like skid row. That's were traffic enforcement is." After our little venture in L.A., we drove through Hollywood, which like in 1995, was the same shithole it was then.

Beverley Hills and Rodeo Drive were very impressive, as was our final destination in the L.A. area, the Santa Monica Pier, the final stop of Route 66. After an hour or two on the pier, we started our venture east, with our planned stop for the night in Ely, NV.

We passed through Las Vegas, and then north through the desert on 93 north, on the way to Ely, Nevada for the night to rest up for the salt flats the next day. On our journey, I stumbled upon The Silver State Classic Challenge, the course in which is an open road race over a 90 mile stretch. It's on my dream list of things to do (race) and felt lucky to be blasting through the desert on the two lane black top, as many racers have. It was truly the most desolate area of our drive, as we didn't come up behind, or have a vehicle catch up to us, for several hours. There were the occasional trucks and gamblers heading to Vegas, but heading out our way, we owned the road. This was one of my favorite stretches to drive.