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

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

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)

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

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.

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

end 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.

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.

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)

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

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!

1 minute ago,figuerres wrote

*snip*

 

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!

Hmm geez I was lied to!

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.

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.

if you got more, just keep 'em coming!

And while attending an GTUG is too much geeky, all other are fantastic! visiting Endor? I'm totally in, I'm a Star Wars fan!!!

Thanxx a lot!

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

There are plenty of things in San Francisco besides Chinatown and the Golden Gate bridge.

I blame the ellipsis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_about_California WTF?

1 day ago,raptor3676 wrote

Wow guy lot of great suggestions!

if you got more, just keep 'em coming!

And while attending an GTUG is too much geeky, all other are fantastic! visiting Endor? I'm totally in, I'm a Star Wars fan!!!

 

Thanxx a lot!

if you were doing this in june i would also mention the Klamath river Salmon run.

near the park that Endor was filmed.

if you do go there then also see Redwood Creek, and the worlds tallest redwood tree on record.

also fern canyon, it looks a *LOT* like a sceen from one of the Jurrasic park movies, long narrow canyon with a creek running down the bottom and a ton of ferns hanging off the sides.

I lived and worked up there for about 2 years in the late 80's like 89-90 i forget which years it was.

was on old air force base that was used by the state of CA and the National Park Service at that time.  Requa Hill and Klamath Glen if you look them up on a map.

Jed Smith State park is near Crecent City

also on the way up there along the coast stop at Agate Beach / Trinidad another great place

if you look and are luck you might find some good rocks on the beach, some of them look amazing.

if you go to the north east corner of CA  then there are some places i did not go to but heard about, an area that has a volcanic past but now has lakes that are amazingly pure and clean, motoerized boats are not allowed it's that protected,  take a canoe out to the middle of the lake and you can see to the bottom! and it's not shallow, it's deep and clean.

if you go to Sacramento look for the Leland Stanford Mansion, he was one of the govenors and was a railroad tycoon.  before it was sold to the state it was owned by a catholic order and i used to have sunday brunch there as a teenager.  amazing old building and you have to look at the furniture from the side, it's all made to look like trains. also the old gold history sutters mill and the old fort etc...

2 hours ago,figuerres wrote

if you do go there then also see Redwood Creek, and the worlds tallest redwood tree on record.

That's not a tree.

Now, THAT'S a tree.

8 hours ago,Sven Groot wrote

Does anybody else keep reading the name of this thread in the voice of that kid from "The Wizard"?

I blame the ellipsis.

I have Arnold's voice stuck in my head.

1 hour ago,cbae wrote

*snip*

That's not a tree.

Now, THAT'S a tree.

Yeah i have seen that one also,  Sequoia's tend to have trunks that are a lot thicker at the base than redwoods, redwoods tend to be taller.  in any case we have some really big trees in the state of California!

for tall the redwoods hold the "Tallest plant on earth" record. every few years some one finds one that is a bit taller than the last one...  they are all around 369 feet so far.

3 minutes ago,figuerres wrote

*snip*

Yeah i have seen that one also,  Sequoia's tend to have trunks that are a lot thicker at the base than redwoods, redwoods tend to be taller.  in any case we have some really big trees in the state of California!

Yes, we do. I'm surprised that you left out Yosemite National Park from your list of places to visit. It's closer than either Sequoia National Park or JSRSP.

Edit: I see that somebody else already mentioned it.

for tall the redwoods hold the "Tallest plant on earth" record. every few years some one finds one that is a bit taller than the last one...  they are all around 369 feet so far.

The last few they've tended to keep the location secret to keep all the tourists away.

1 day ago,MasterPie wrote

*snip*

I have Arnold's voice stuck in my head.

I kept adding either "knows how to part" or "uber alles" to the title in my head.

Aug 03, 2011 at 1:02 AM,MasterPie wrote

 You should even check out the recently renovated Intel Museum.

Just a plug for the Intel Museum...really awesome renovation. Worth visiting.