santa monica beach on the 4th, originally uploaded by lynnith.

On Sunday, I met up with my friend Joyce, who I worked with back in the day at Cannes Lions in London.  I can always count on her for an interesting collection of LA sights & food, and Sunday was no exception.  We started the day with brunch, and then headed over to the Museum of Jurassic Technology.  I heartily recommend the museum for anybody who enjoys the extremely weird – it’s devoted to the fringe and features such exhibits as Garden of Eden on Wheels: Collections from Los Angeles mobile home and trailer parks.  We also learned that eating two mice on toast, fur and all, will cure incontinence.  After we conquered the museum, we walked up one of LA’s foothills for a view of the city and lots of off-leash dogs.  None of them were in the same class as Seattle dogs though!  Shameful.  We finished off the day with shaved ices from Milk & some excellent Thai food.

Then it was Monday, and time for Steffi and I to take our classiest roadtrip ever – a pilgrimmage to the Salton Sea and more importantly, Salvation Mountain.  The mountain is built around a hill about 3 miles outside of Niland, a dusty little town with delicious Mexican food.  It’s actually still a work in progress – Leonard Knight, its creator, works and lives there and has done so for the past 25+ years.  Here he is at the mountain:

the man & his mountain, originally uploaded by lynnith.

The whole thing was pretty surreal, and after our little tour we both decided we’d been saved.  And what better way to celebrate being saved than to head up to Palm Springs and gamble for Jesus?  Turns out, Steffi’s in much better spiritual shape than me – she netted out $150 while I only won $25…

Later today I’m headed to the airport – hopefully my pilot isn’t one of the Michael Jackson funeral lottery winners and I’ll be Australia-bound at 9:30 tonight.  I land at 9:30 in the AM on Thursday; the next time I blog, I shall be in the FUTURE!