Mike Elmore

John makes a sign for the truck window: East Coast or Bust

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 Betsy can be counted on for compelling copy and excellent photography, FHL decided to go along for the ride. Betsy’s earlier reports may be found under the Horse and Hound drop-down menu/Travel.

Beth was the one who first noticed.

Since Utah on the way out, we’ve been in high desert sierra or rocky mountain morraine. It is beautiful out west, but verdant and lush it isn’t.

Yesterday we stopped over at a horse hotel just west of Albuquerque, New Mexico. We’ve grown accustomed to the western horse-keeping style: outdoor covered stall attached to a twelve-by-twelve-square-foot paddock. And that’s all. No communal pastures, not a blade of grass, no group turnout. It’s not wrong or bad, just different.

Betsy Parker

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.