On the Golden Gate Bridge!

Oh hello, Cutie Pie.

The famous Lombard Street!  Well, the straight-down part, not the twisty-turny part. Yep, Alfred Hitchcock knew what he was talking about – Vertigo, indeed. Still waiting for the Top Gear guys to take this on (and I mean Jeremy, Hammond, and James May).

Another view of Lombard Street.

Salty’s (or Sally’s) Famous Fishwich on Fisherman’s Wharf. Oh. My. God. Heavenly. Skip the clam chowder (it’s not that good) because you’ll need room for the Fishwich. We split one, and were still too full to move afterwards. Watching these guys build our sandwich was total food porn.  And they hooked us up with some habanero peppers.  Delightful.

For the most part, the Fisherman’s Wharf is one big tourist trap. Once we got over our disappointment, we embraced its cheesiness and had a blast. The landmark itself, the boats, and the view of Alcatraz were worth the trip.

It’s a me, Mario! San Francisco is COLD. I mean, cold-to-the-bones chilly. Everyone warned us, and we scoffed.  I mean, it was JUNE.  And we’re from New York!  Yep, we ended up spending half the day finding sweatshirts in the tourist shops.

A lovely omage to the Edgar Allan Poe dream sequence in Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixt.

Someone told us that a man burned this building down to spite his estranged wife.

But they call us aliens.  Love it!

One of the historic street cars. I believe the one we rode was originally from Chicago. San Francisco’s Municipal Railway (MUNI) collects them from around the world and restores them.  Very cool.

Route 1 was the most fantastic, thrilling and beautiful drive we’ve ever taken.  The scenery was magnificent, mountains and ocean – it seemed like everywhere we turned, there was one spot that was more beautiful than the other. I ran out of superlatives.

This was taken from Route 1 overlooking the California Sea Otter Game Refuge.  There was a rocky, misty island off the coast – it looked very ominous with all the barbed wire and NO TRESPASSING signs.

Good thing there were so many stops for photo ops.  One sharp climb or descent after another, with sharp, narrow turns and blinding sun – I was getting more than a little nauseous.

Hello, handsome.  Ali on top of the Historic Santa Barbara Courthouse.

A sea of Spanish tile. The view from the courthouse in the American Riviera.

On lookout from Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara.

Looking for the yellow-brick-road!

No, not the Wizard of Oz. Solar artist, using the sun to engrave wood, freeform. Pretty cool.

This is my old-lady-beach-visor look. So darn sunny.  Everything here is so breathtaking – it’s exhausting.

Here’s the Old Mission Santa Barbara.  Those mountains didn’t look real.  Seriously. My head was starting to hurt from ogling everything.

Inside the mission.  We didn’t have time for the tour but we got a sneak peak at the gift shop.

The arches outside the Mission.

We were lucky enough to be there for the I Madonnari Italian Street Painting Festival, benefiting the Children’s Creative Project. This was our favorite.

Ah, the Hi Sahara Oasis. After a long day of open roads and hot sun, our vampire-like complexions were taking a serious beating. So we stopped here for sunscreen (which they didn’t have). What they DID have were fountains, photo ops, and flamingos.  Truly delightful. And you see those windmills there? All their power comes from wind and turbines. I think that’s worth paying a few pennies more for gas in the middle of nowhere.

Yep, just like the Isle of Sirens in the Odyssey. You know, if Odysseus was a cowboy and the sirens were little gold mermaids spewing water into a huge fountain protected by a No Trespassing sign.

Hammer time on Route 66! Clearly, the sun has gone to my head.

And here are some scenic mountain shots.

On our way to Arizona, we came across yet another iconic Route 66 sign: The Los Alamitos Motel in Grants, NM.

A shanty town!  A scene right out of the Grapes of Wrath.  Except in New Mexico, not the Dust Bowl – and dare I say it, beautiful?

I know what you’re thinking: the people who live here are poor, and its existence is a sad representation of America’s economic crisis.  At the same time, its an example of survival and ingenuity – and we were impressed by it.

Road to nowhere. Really.  The road runs right into the mesa. Onward to Flagstaff!

The Michael J. Fox Room at the Hotel Monte Vista in Flagstaff, AZ.

In the spirit of Monte Vista’s ghosts, with particular homage to the The Women of the Night, since Ali had trouble sleeping that night.  “In most instances, it is our male guests that report the feeling of having a hand placed over their mouth and throat, and awakening unable to breathe. After they awake, these guests say they found it very difficult to return to sleep.”

Los Flores Amarillos en Amarillo.  Lots of open road, sunny skies, and endless fields of anything and everything – including these sunflowers – made driving through Texas incredibly surreal.  We finally understood why so many of our alien conspiracy theories come from out West – really, we felt it entirely possible that we would fall upon crop circles in some random field.   Instead, we found a space ship!

The abandoned Starship Pegasus.  This place was fantastic.  We were tempted to just buy it and set up house.  I mean, how many people can say that they live in a spaceship?

Here’s a better view of the Pegasus in all its glory.  Vogue, where are you? This place screams high-fashion photo op.

And so our Route 66 journey begins. This is just one of many abandoned sites along the way. More to come!

Rhinestone Cowboy.  Yeah, he’s cool.

Oh yeah, we totally fit in with the polka crowd. Ali’s cowboy shirt and my 80′s prom dress just scream “polkamania.”  Really, we thought so. We get to the bar, grab our Czech beers, and hear: “Y’all aren’t from around here, are you?”  It was the Polka Festival’s director and his family.  He came up to us, introduced himself, and told us all about the history of the festival.  Awesome.

In the course of the evening, we got a lot of “New York City!” exclamations (yep, just like the salsa commercial). Despite our being Yankees, everybody was super-friendly and welcoming – in part, I suspect, because Ali was carrying his big camera and they thought he was Press. Either way we made a lot of friends and we had a blast.

Polka Dance Revolution! Don’t let this white-haired duo fool you….when we walked into the building behind them, it was like walking behind a couple of well, old people.  But when the polka music starts – WATCH OUT! – they’re sprightly as all get-out.  I’m talking lean-mean-moving-machines.  They kicked our polka-butts.  This couple was, in our opinion, the BEST in the Polka King and Queen dance competition and they should have won.  But the crowns went to a young couple from Ennis who were, I suppose,the favorites.  It was quite a competition. We’re thinking of taking lessons so we can enter next year.  Seriously – I want to WIN!

Of course, we owe our entire night to THE BAND. They call themselves Fritz Hodde & the Fabulous Six - although it was just the Fabulous Five the night we saw them.  They were fantastic!