Day 5: Las Vegas to Avila Beach

We actually planned on the fifth day of our trip being long, but I miscalculated a little, so it turned out LONG. We left Vegas around 11AM and headed west towards LA. We did manage to spot a Fazoli's for lunch, a rare treat for us since moving away from Kentucky.

The bad part was that we hit Los Angeles right around 4, just in time for rush hour. Ouch. We crawled up the coast towards Santa Barbara, and got to our hotel in Avila Beach about two hours later than we'd hoped. This didn't leave any daylight to explore the area as we'd wanted to, which was fine, since we weren't really in the mood to get back in the car. We had dinner at Fat Cat's Cafe, down on the pier at the beach; good food + low prices x silly pictures of cats on the walls = feeling better.

One of the amazing and infuriating parts of the drive was what I will call the Accordian Effect: that weird traffic anomaly whereby traffic comes to a complete standstill for absolutely no reason at all. My guess is that, like the proverbial butterfly in China, one guy taps his brakes (rather than just laying off the gas...I hate brakes on the highway about as much as I hate anything in life), which causes the guy behind him to tap his, causing the next guy to lay on his a little more, and so on, until traffic is coming to a complete stop back down the highway, and then will continue to speed up and slow down as people break free, speed up, and then have to slam on their brakes again. Annoying to say the least.