California..​.

HI 9ers

In a couple of months I'll be traveling to California, mainly Los Angeles and San Diego, (maybe even Vegas).  Any suggestions for places to spot? Roadtripping route?

Thanx

Go to Disney Land, Universal Studios? Or SD wild animal park.

Or Getty Center at daylight, hike on Observatory trail afternoon, and Santa Monica at night.

You should probably go to the Griffith Observatory.

Disneyland and the other attraction parks are rip offs even for Socal residents who only pay $100 for a season pass.

Six Flaggs is just about the only good one. You'll probably want to visit the Queen Mary at the port Long Beach and the Russian submarine there.

The Queen Mary does Groupons all the time if you want to stay the night there.

http://www.groupon.com/deals/the-queen-mary

http://www.groupon.com/ch/getaways/deals/ga-queen-mary-hotel

You may want to go see the Dodgers or the Galaxy. I dunno if you're a sports fan.

Beware of the public beaches in Venice and LA, they're dirty as hell and some gangs hang out there.

In San Diego there's the zoo. Also you'll be in proximity to Mexico and Tijuana in San Diego, so if hookers, drugs and donkey shows are your thing, that may interest you. Oh yeah, and really bad gangs that will do awful things to tourists in Mexico.

Stay out of East LA and don't feed the crazy people on Hollywood boulevard when you go see the walk of fame. (I like the walk of fame at the harbor in HK way better than the one in Hollywood)

Thanx for the quick replies!

But I just realised I made a mistake.  Is not San Diego, is San Francisco!

Go here then!

http://www.computerhistory.org/visit/

They just did a huge renovation. Make sure you rent a car so you can drive out of the bay area and into Mountain view.

You can see the original computer called the Babbage machine:

You can also try to attend a GTUG meeting at the Googleplex if you are a developer.

There is a huge Chinatown in SF near union square and the GG Bridge, but all in all San Francisco is pretty lame.

@raptor3676: You probably don't want to heed the advice of somebody recommending that you attend a GTUG meeting when visiting SF. The last thing you'd want to do is to be holed up in a conference room with a bunch of dorks with all there is to see and do in SF.

I was just at the Computer History Museum this weekend and I will recommend it as well. Great exhibits. You should even check out the recently renovated Intel Museum.

Non techie stuff...check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Yosemite National Park.

8 hours ago,raptor3676 wrote

HI 9ers

In a couple of months I'll be traveling to California, mainly Los Angeles and San Diego, (maybe even Vegas).  Any suggestions for places to spot? Roadtripping route?

Thanx

if you go north.... and see SF then head east thru sacramento and up to Tahoe / Reno

lake Tahoe and the area around there is really great if you like to get outside, and reno has a lot of the vegas type stuff but smaller and you do not have to go thru death valley to see it.

also in SF  there are some great china town places to eat.

if you go to SF by car then take the costal route and stop off in Santa Barbara and Monterey

each has different history and things to see. Monterey is where a big / famous aquarium is and used to be "Cannery Row"

Santa Barbara has one of the old spanish missions and is just an amazing place with some great beaches.

i can go on as i grew up in a town called Stockton, home of the Mudville 9 - at least that's the story

If you get the chance go to the Grand Canyon - it's one of the few places that is hyped up so much you figure it is bound to be a dissapointment - but then it still manages to take your breath away!

I have also spent days just walking up and down the strip in Los Vegas seeing what crazy buildings we can create when we have the motivation/inclination.

I am a bit weird as I also enjoyed a walking tour around the old buildings of LA (see my web site, which I admit, could do with  refresh)

http://apps.webservicesuk.com/fromthemalverns/

(go into map view, zoom out then over to LA and zoom in)

+10000 for the Grand Canyon, although it's a bit of a drive from San Francisco, at least looking at the map (11 hours?). Photos and videos do not do it justice.

My parents had a great time in the California wine country, and driving along the Pacific Coast Highway. There's also the Redwood Forest.

+1 for the Santa Barbara area; aside of the beach, the Los Padres National Forest provides some amazing scenic routes.

If you make it to vegas you can take a helicopter tour from there to the grand canyon with Maverick Helicopters. My wife and I took their tour from the South Rim in 07 and it was well worth it.

4 hours ago,blowdart wrote

*snip*

Or go south a little to Muir Woods, which is where the Endor scenes were filmed for Return of the Jedi

Another vote for the Monterey Bay Aquarium from me too.

sorry but "Endor" was up north, I used to work up there for a while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endor_(Star_Wars)

Jed Smith State Park

but Muir is a great place also!

14 minutes ago,Blue Ink wrote

+1 for the Santa Barbara area; aside of the beach, the Los Padres National Forest provides some amazing scenic routes.

i always forget which one was the one but there are two roads one of them was much better

East Camino Cielo / West Camino Cielo

one is loaded with wikked Hair pin turns the other  is not.

one has amazing views and at the top some places you can day hike and climb rocks and you see the whole coast line and Santa Barbara below.

on the way out if you look back at this one rock it looks like a big stone face.

Movie location hunting can be great fun.  If you are a Dirty Harry fan then you are made up in SF (there is a great site that tells you where all the scenes were filmed - google it if interested).  Also if you are in LA / Hollywood there is a place you can visit to see the locations being used for filming that day (it can be a great waste of time). 

I also had fun driving round LA looking for places I knew from songs (I remember finding the Miracle Mile and 'Sunset & Vine').  I took this to extremes when spending some time in Flordia when I realised I was driving down "Ocean Boulevard", safe to say that the current occupents of 461 did not want to indulge me with the afformetioned web site (though they were extremely polite about it).

Of course not everyone is a geeky as me.

EDIT: http://dirtyharryfilminglocations.wordpress.com/

7 hours ago,Ian2 wrote

Movie location hunting can be great fun.  If you are a Dirty Harry fan then you are made up in SF (there is a great site that tells you where all the scenes were filmed - google it if interested).  Also if you are in LA / Hollywood there is a place you can visit to see the locations being used for filming that day (it can be a great waste of time). 

I also had fun driving round LA looking for places I knew from songs (I remember finding the Miracle Mile and 'Sunset & Vine').  I took this to extremes when spending some time in Flordia when I realised I was driving down "Ocean Boulevard", safe to say that the current occupents of 461 did not want to indulge me with the afformetioned web site (though they were extremely polite about it).

Of course not everyone is a geeky as me.

 

EDIT: http://dirtyharryfilminglocations.wordpress.com/

lots of stuff has been filmed all over CA

for example:  TV serise Tour of Duty, part was filmed in Hawaii and part was filmed around stockton and the delta - we have areas that have canals and rice paddies that can look like Nam.

Film: Coast to coast with Robert Blake and Dyan Cannon, Stockton was supposed to be Kansas CIty, it was downtown stockton, i had a walkthru in the background when i was about 19.

Film: Dirty Larry and Crazy Mary  filmed in part around Lockford CA me and my mom and some friends watched a sceen filmed and the setup for other parts of the film.

American Grafitii and AM G II where filmed near Bakersfield CA and another town in the valley.

Animal House was filmed in part on the campus of a private University in Stockton University Of the Pacific - very old and looks like some east coast location.