Photojournalist Betsy Parker, her friend Beth Rera, and Beth’s seven-year-old son John embarked some days ago on a cross-country horse-hauling odyssey—Virginia to California—to include a West Coast summer vacation tour. Since summer vacation appealed to us as well, and since Betsy can be counted on for compelling copy, FHL decided to go along for the virtual ride. Betsy’s earlier reports may be found under the Horse and Hound drop-down menu/Travel
I anticipated that today’s adventure at Universal Studios in Hollywood would be so…o…o different, and far less real than last week’s adventure in breathtaking Yosemite National Park. After all, how antipodean….
Yosemite: Natural splendor—one million-plus acres of untrammeled grandeur, the very definition of real.
Universal: Unnaturally gaudy—less than 100 acres, a crush of humanity, miles of pavement, cartoonish reality at the heart of a Hollywood facade.
Still, after you take a good, hard look, you end up with—surprisingly—plenty of the same thing. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Dan and Ali suggested a tour of Universal as answer for our Los Angeles/California/Hollywood wishes, one neat, commercial package. As an added bonus, a day at a movieland theme park could be construed as a day for John, our eight-year-old recording secretary. who’s been all but stripped of a say in our movements the past couple weeks. The route east to west was dictated by my responsibility to deliver Kit. The side trip to Yosemite was dictated by my desire (and Beth’s) to visit the nation’s best-known park when in the ’hood. The upcoming route west-east will be dictated by Katherine and her horses’ requirements. So today I relinquished all control, abdicating responsibility to John, and allowed him to choose.
He took little convincing as Dan described the fun rides, the life-sized 3D King Kong versus T-Rex, the theme park food, and the tram ride through a real movie set.
“The animal show is best,” Ali offered, saying that the animal trainers are terrific, a must-see.
Feeling particularly agreeable, I zipped up for a day of the best of America-the worst of America. Imagine if your views of visiting Virginia, for instance, had been shaped by a lovely relaxing stay in the Shenandoah National Park, a trek up White Oak Canyon, say, on a late summer Tuesday afternoon with hardly anybody on the trail, followed by lunch at the Thornton River Grille in Sperryville, a little antiquing in Warrenton all followed by dinner at the Inn at Little Washington. Now swap that vision of Virginia for the morning at Kings Dominion, lunch at the Subway in Dale City, an afternoon at Potomac Mills Mall and dinner at TGI Friday’s on the Manassas bypass.
Sort of jolts you upright, doesn’t it? I may have been in accord with the plan, but it was conceptual. I didn’t have to like it.
But as we got into the park and started checking out the studio sets and special effects, I had a sudden realization that, actually, the two are very similar. And, really, Universal was pretty neat.
Surprisingly, these are, without exception, the most un-real places I’ve ever seen.
Universal, of course, is un-real by design—the “cars” that “exploded” towards us on the Japanese movie set were made (I’m sure) of styrofoam. The “bullets” hitting the “pavement” were shots of air penetrating a papier-mache target. The “spinning subway car” feeling we got (ask my stomach and inner ear; they couldn’t agree) as we entered a dark tunnel on our tram ride was caused, of course, by a rotating set, not an out of control bus.
But Yosemite, too, is exceptionally un-real. As I reported earlier this week, the mountains of granite, glacier “bombs” and lacy waterfall torrents look like so much Hollywood backdrop. Perfect, so impossibly perfect, they appear fake. Even the self-portrait I made on top of Glacier Point with my much-despised new IPhone (its going right back to Costco the instant I get home next week) makes Half Dome look like a perfectly carved piece of cardboard, paint-by-numbers with just enough flakes to appear legit but not so much as to seem naturally sloppy.
Too, both places—understandably—attract crowds, particularly in the summertime, eager to experience the best of America. Just as our traveling band has done, they want to see what the U.S. has to offer. On the one hand, Yosemite has natural beauty. On the other, Universal has the greatest creative minds working to fashion entertainment into a believable story board. Ok, so there were a million people at Yosemite this week. There were a million others at Universal, too. It left them in a tie match.
Similar as well were the earnest park employees, eager to show off their fare. They were all smiles, filled with excellent information (thanks to the Universal gal who told us at the end of the day that, in her opinion, the studio tour was a must-see, far more so than Water World, our initial choice.) At Yosemite I particularly appreciated the older man who drove the shuttle bus who told me of a hidden spring halfway up Glacier Point, just in case I needed to refill a water bottle. (I did.) Still a tie.
The Ben and Jerry’s ice cream John selected for our dinner tonight has to give a swing vote to Universal.
Of course, I left a little piece of my heart in Yosemite; it is a powerful, spiritual place. Still, thanks to John’s childlike wonder (at the animal tricks and Who-ville set) and girl-like shrieks (at King Kong attacking our tram and the werewolf that grabbed him in the house of horrors), I found plenty to love about Universal, too.
Dan and Ali were up when we got home, so they were pleased to hear that their recommendation was so well received. Ali will be training and riding in the morning, so we may just hang around tomorrow instead of going to Venice Beach as we’d planned. I have a news story due (and am uncertain of Internet connections the next several days), so tomorrow I will work. Beth said she’s happy to lounge by the pool and maybe prowl the neighborhood. (We wanted to see the “miles and miles of trails” in this, what’s considered one of LA’s high end horsey neighborhoods.) John is pleased for another day at the pool. This way we’ll all get an afternoon nap and get our heads ready for a long push tomorrow night. We’re planning to go LA-to-Albuquerque and meet up with Mike Elmore to drop off his stuff that I’ve brought from Middleburg. Looking forward to catching up. Mike is supposed to come to Virginia to judge the North American Field Hunter Championships next month, so it will be fun to preview the competition.
To be Continued….
August 14, 2010