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         xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss"><docs>This is a RSS file. Copy the URL into your aggregator of choice. If you don't know what this means and want to learn more, please see: <span>http://platial.typepad.com/news/2006/04/really_simple_t.html</span> for more info.</docs>
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<link>http://platial.com</link>
<title>The Big Trip On Platial.com</title>
<description>A geo-blogged roadtrip from California to the Grand Canyon and back, with a two year old and a dog in the car.</description>
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<rdf:li resource="http://platial.com/post/2930210"/>
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<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/2922146">
<link>http://platial.com/post/2922146</link>
<title>Day 2: 360 miles from home</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        A shorter drive today, along the coast the whole way. We awoke in a thick fog and drove through what felt like middle-earth as a result. 

As we rounded the corner towards Santa Barbara, however the fog lifted and suddenly we were clearly in Southern California! We had lunch on the beach in Santa Barbara, with the sun beating down but a cool breeze blowing, before heading about 20 miles back north to our campsite at El Capitan Beach State Park.

Perched on a hill overlooking a calm Pacific, while nestled in a little grove of trees, our campsite was pretty much perfect. The sun had warmed the air enough that we left the top down on the tent for the first part of the evening, watching the sunset over the ocean from within the tent itself. 

We taught Roosevelt to play Go Fish, then settled in for a less-cold sleep. <br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/2922146">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>34.4603219128 -120.027351379</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:sinker</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2008-03-20 17:45:45.667974+00:00</dc:date>
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<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/2922161">
<link>http://platial.com/post/2922161</link>
<title>day 3: a million miles from home</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        It's entirely expected and cliche to say, but LA is insane. Two hours of traffic to travel just a few miles, fake breasts and broken dreams as far as the eye can see. But it's also incredibly sunny and nice to be on a bed again.

The drive in (before reaching the hell that is LA traffic) was unforgettable: beautiful surf and hills and a break at a park in Malibu that would have been perfect had it not corresponded exactly with when the two-year-old needed to have a breakdown. <br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/2922161">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>34.165732 -118.324705</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:sinker</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2008-03-20 17:52:29.651434+00:00</dc:date>
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<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/2924981">
<link>http://platial.com/post/2924981</link>
<title>Day 4: 565 miles from home</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        What a difference a day makes. Today LA was... Great? Surprising? Amazing? All three? 

Yes! 

And more! The day started with a hike up Runyon Canyon with the dog and the kid, both game for a pretty hard climb up to a vista that overlooked the entire LA basin, with the Hollywood sign looming in the distance and the smog hovering over everything. It was, truth be told, glorious. And while we almost got lost on the walk back, and somehow managed to find actual horses on the side of a cliff in the middle of LA, every held up pretty well. Roosevelt actually walked the entire way, and wanted to do more. But we had to move on to...

LACMA. The LA County Museum of Art which has in its newly opened BCMA wing (people seriously need to tone down the acronyms around here), hands down, the most mind-blowing collection of big-name contemporary artists I've ever seen. It was visually exhausting, taking in so much in such a short amount of time. From a giant Koons balloon sculpture, to a Hirst sheep, to Therrien’s giant table and chairs. It was unbelievable.

Then you step outside and you're in the surreal landscape of the La Brea Tar Pits, which you've read about in school or if you were a dinosaur nut when you were a kid but you never really understood: These are STILL pits of tar. Who knew? Not me! And it's everywhere. You have to watch where you step in the grass because suddenly they'll be a little fissure of tar bubbling up. There are tiny fences all over the parkland cordoning off these little tar patches. It's truly bizarre. 

After a little downtime we headed to LA's Chinatown (as seen in the movie, well, Chinatown) which was equally as surreal since many of the buildings have been converted into hip little art galleries while retaining their old-Chinatown fronts. Dinner with friends followed, followed by a dog parade to a local dog park for some late-night running around. 

For a city that seems to embrace its stereotypes on many levels, it's also a place that seems to have surprises hiding under its surface. Might I suggest a new ad campaign for the city:

LA: Who Knew?<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/2924981">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>34.062812 -118.355877</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:sinker</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2008-03-21 21:55:28.999209+00:00</dc:date>
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<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/2911933">
<link>http://platial.com/post/2911933</link>
<title>Our Starting Point</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        Menlo Park CA: Where it all begins. We've got our stuff strapped to the roof, a kid and a dog in the backseat the two of us up front. Thousands of miles before we return. <br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/2911933">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>37.4166635449 -122.19045639</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:sinker</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2008-03-17 14:28:12.933809+00:00</dc:date>
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<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/2922137">
<link>http://platial.com/post/2922137</link>
<title>Day 1: 219 miles from home</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        A few hours of driving through the farming valleys that line highway 101 south of San Jose and we found ourselves driving through the prison valleys of San Louis Obispo. Seriously, there's an entire stretch of highway that's lined with prisons on both sides. Needless to say, bail bonds seem to be a major billboard advertiser here. 

We continued north from there to Morro Bay, a fudge-shoppe town on the coast. The park ranger at the campsite recommended, "if you want to tent camp, head nine miles south," and since the campsite was full of RVs, we decided to take her advice. Good thing we did because the site we ended up at, in Montana de Oro state park, was breathtaking. 

Secluded from any major roads and about a quarter mile from the crashing waves of the coast, you could hear the surf all night long. <br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/2922137">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>35.2750893961 -120.87952137</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:sinker</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2008-03-20 17:37:23.918633+00:00</dc:date>
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<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/2930210">
<link>http://platial.com/post/2930210</link>
<title>day 5: 820 miles from home</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        We had to call an audible today. The original plan was to camp in Joshua Tree national park. We drove over from LA, stopping for incredible date shakes at Hadley's Orchard Stand along the way. Pulled off in Palm Springs as well to look at the architecture  but were instead overwhelmed by the fact that the town is a giant tourist trap ringed by beautiful homes. And hot. blast-furnace hot. 

We left Palm Springs after stocking up on camp food and headed over to Joshua Tree, another 30 miles or so into the desert. Unfortunately, we didn't have reservations because the two reservable campgrounds were full. But there were hundreds of first-come-first-served sites, so we figured we'd be OK. We figured wrong. And suddenly, we found ourselves without a place to stay in the middle of nowhere. Whoops.

We stopped for bad pizza in Twentynine Palms (really! That's the town name, typo and all!) and laid out our options: Stay at the motel there and still have hours to drive tomorrow (after hours and hours in the car today), or push forward and cut the drive time tomorrow significantly. Considering that the towns around the national park could be marketed as "Come for the trees, stay for the meth!" we decided to move on. 

One long drive through the desert in the dark later and we found ourselves at a Motel 6 in Needles, California. It's never a good sign when the first room you're assigned has a naked person asleep in it, but the clerk at the desk gracefully recovered, and gave us a new room. And we would have all gotten a good night's sleep, had we not passed out all on the same bed crammed together being kicked by a two-year-old all night. Ouch. 

Vegas awaits. <br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/2930210">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>34.8387452121 -114.612636566</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:sinker</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2008-03-23 06:44:40.950113+00:00</dc:date>
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<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/2958156">
<link>http://platial.com/post/2958156</link>
<title>days 6, 7, 8: 1020 miles from home</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        For those that think Las Vegas is a depressing, depraved place, we've figured out the solution for you: Bring a three-year-old child. Gone immediately is any attempt to go gambling, go out at night, or do anything marginally adult. With that automatic filter in place, the town lights up in a way you'd never imagine: It's a little kid's paradise! 

Our first afternoon was spent watching the canal boats at the fake Venice, much of the discussion spent on the fake sky painted on the ceiling of each room. "Pops, is this the real sky or the pretend sky?" A pop quiz on the artifice of the town. The Venetian had been recommended by our Italian neighbor as being better than Venice because "There are no pigeons there!" And it's true: No pigeons. Also: lots of Italians. Go figure!

The second day was spent at the New York New York wandering the 1/2 scale streets of Greenwich Village being amazed at the miniature air conditioners rattling in the windows of the fake brownstones. The attention to detail is wonderful in the most hilarious way possible: Whoever thought that the dingy streets of New York would need miniaturization was a brilliant person, though I would have liked to have seen tiny piles of garbage out front of each storefront as well, just for reality's sake. Also: Lots of New Yorkers all proclaiming that the scale model was "better than New York." 

A quick trip to an empty lion habitat and a full aquarium and it was back to the hotel for some much-needed rest. Rest punctuated by a quick visit to hotels.com to add an additional night to our stay--after our disastrous time in Needles, we decided another night in Vegas was a better bet than at a Motel 6 in another meth town in the desert.

Dinner that evening was a buffet on the streets of fake-Paris. Much of the talk at dinner was hyping the dancing fountains across the street at the Bellagio. Fountains that, when confronted in person our three-year-old began screaming at the top of his lungs, "I WANT TO GO BACK TO THE HOTEL," which made the crowds assembled to watch the (truly pretty amazing) fountains love us to know end. Whoops.

Morning of the third day was a road trip to the Hoover Dam which would have been more impressive had a security checkpoint not created a 1/2 hour traffic jam in the desert. A hike around Lake Mead was quickly aborted after the destination we had chosen revealed itself to be a ghost trail thanks to the receding waters of the shrinking lake--nothing says "fun" like waking around in the desert in the heat of the day looking at a gravel bed that used to be water.

After a retreat to the darkened air conditioning of our hotel room, we emerged to have dinner at the Bellagio, a hotel that was definitely a billion dollars well spent, especially it's indoor conservatory which offers the best smelling air in all of Vegas. After the buffet (food, amazing! atmosphere, terrible!), we walked around Caesar's Palace, a place head-spinningly over-the-top. Roosevelt summed up the evening by doing a footie dance through the shops of Caesar's yelling "I LOVE LAS VEGAS" at the top of his lungs. It's true: When you're almost three, there's a lot to love.<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/2958156">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>36.1149621443 -115.166416168</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:sinker</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2008-03-30 16:30:45.015573+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/2958172">
<link>http://platial.com/post/2958172</link>
<title>day 9: 1270 miles from home</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        Day nine was mostly a driving day. A slow emergence from our hotel and a very hot drive through the desert (miscalculation of the trip: we had to take the same route as yesterday's Hoover Dam episode, but this time the traffic jam lasted over an hour in the mid-day sun). As we came closer to Flagstaff, Arizona, however, the heat of the desert gave way to cooler mountain air and, soon, snow was even visible clinging to the ground in the shadows of the evergreen trees. 

A few turns later and we found ourselves in front of a glowing fire in a stone-and-wood cabin, in the presence of friends who had been having their own road-trip adventure, all of us eager to tell the best stories of their trips (they won, however, having been stuck in the mud twice in Navajo land, towed out each time by the same kind-hearted Indian).

The Grand Canyon tomorrow, then a turn towards home.<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/2958172">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
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<dc:creator>platialUser:sinker</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2008-03-30 16:48:49.641747+00:00</dc:date>
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