Road Trip, vol. 9

This is the diary kept by Uncle Alvin and his friends during a trip from Minnesota to California.

January 17, 1933 The next morning we drove out there (to San Diego) again and went through their zoo which is the largest I have ever seen. The admission charge was twenty-five cents, but it was well worth it. There were seals, polar bears, elephants, deer and antelope, bison, mountain goats, lions, wolves, panthers, monkeys, fowls of all kinds as well as a large snake exhibit, which we were unable to see because it was feeding day for them. We wandered around in it for two hours, walking very fast, and even then we had not seen everything to be seen.

We then packed up and left for Los Angeles. The road took us along the ocean for a considerable distance, and we could see it very well. The days we were in San Diego had been slightly stormy, or at least windy and the waves were quite big. The road in places was so close to the sea that at high tide spray often splashes on it.

Shortly after noon we arrived at Tustin and stopped for a visit with Billy Ulm. They gave us a very good dinner, which was the first home cooked meal we had after we left home. It certainly was very good, too.

That afternoon we went sightseeing through the surrounding country. The county is really the center of the orange-growing industry in California. In fact about all we saw around there were orange groves. It was largely an irrigated country and so we went up to the irrigation dam in the hills. It was quite a large earth and concrete structure perhaps a thousand feet long with a concrete face towards the water and a concrete sluiceway as well. The water level was quite low at the time but rain arrived shortly after, so undoubtedly it was then quite full. They had been having quite a dry spell around there up to that time, in fact, so much so that some of the farmers had started to irrigate in the winter time which is a most unusual thing. The lake created by this dam is surrounded by quite high hills which are but scantily vegetated. As a result they are called watersheds for the rain runs off them just as it falls, for they absorb very little of it.

We then drove around in the country a little and saw all different kinds of orchards, especially along the hillsides. We also drove through a park and walked around a little too. We again reached Ulms about three o’clock when we were treated to oranges and walnuts, both his own products. We were in a sort of a hurry to get to Los Angeles yet that evening, so we could not stay there as long as we might have wished.

We arrived in Los Angeles about 6:30 that evening and started hunting for an apartment. Most of the managers just wanted to rent by the month though, so we had to hunt around for quite a while to find one that we could get by the week and that would not be too expensive. We finally found one quite near the downtown district that would cost us six and a half dollars a week and the gas and light bill. It was a second floor apartment, but it was quite nice and really gave us a home while we were there.