There is a city by the sea...
09/21/2009 at 22:34 from (34.058953, -118.23276)
On our final morning in Ventura, we got up early and started leisurely packing. Scooter had to go back to school to work some more on his portfolio before graduation, so we were without a ride to the train station in Santa Barbara. Too cheap to take a cab, we opted instead to call Amtrak and beg to have our tickets changed. As it turned out, it's a painless and simple process, and the agent on the other end of the line took care of Marijana's request in under two minutes. She changed our point of departure from Santa Barbara to Ventura and even explained how we could claim a refund for the difference in ticket price, something we've never encountered in our previous travels.
Our transportation settled, we all hugged and said our "seeyasoons". And these truly were of the "soon" variety, since Scotty had informed us the day prior that he was planning on joining us after his graduation. We were, to say the least, ecstatic at the news, and we all made stupid promises about how much fun we would have together and how we wouldn't get on each others' nerves, not at all.
After we finished saying goodbye to Scooter, we returned to packing with a purpose: we would have to walk to the train station, and with all of our stuff and the hot morning sun, we were in for a grumpy hike. We packed in record time, loaded up on water, and bade farewell to the house. We strolled along the beachfront road for a few miles up toward the tiny train depot at Ventura, waiting across from a combination swap meet/horse track/raceway.
The fog that had clung so relentlessly to Ventura's shores lifted, giving us our first good view of the sky, the beach, and the sea that surrounded us. Marijana hopped down onto the tracks and snapped a few brave photos of the palm trees arching over the railway, and, before we knew it, our train to LA was thundering toward us. We boarded quickly and took up residence near the rear of the train in seats by the bulkhead, with enough legroom to practically qualify as a cabin. We flashed through the progressively uglier exurbs and outer suburbs of Los Angeles before coming to rest just west of the Los Angeles River, which was by this time a muddy slick of trickling water only a few inches deep, meandering through heavily tagged canals.
We jumped off at LA's Union Station, taking a few minutes to get our bearings before getting in line for reserved seating to Flagstaff. The station was a bizarre amalgam of the old and the new, with hipster couriers walking their fixies down the long hallway beside commuters and aging tour groups. A modern and massive glass archway dominated the newer atrium, while on the opposite end of the station, dim chandeliers hung from lofty, paneled ceilings over rows of stuffed leather chairs.
We spent a little under an hour at the station, waiting and relaxing, before we boarded our eastbound train to Flagstaff. Already tired from the hiking and the general stress of travel, we collapsed in our seats and were soon rocked to sleep by the comforting sway of the car on the tracks.
