The clerk at the rental car desk asked, as they always do, whether I wanted GPS for my car. For a small fee.

“Where’s the adventure in that?” I said.

So my whole time in a mostly unfamiliar part of the country last week, I didn’t have GPS. I had a better trip for it.

Before visiting Texas recently – I got home today – I went slightly out of the way to spend a few days in Southern California, flying from the chill of metro Chicago to the mild warmth of Los Angeles on February 21, though basking in better weather wasn’t the main consideration. I wanted a new sampling of Los Angeles, which I hadn’t visited since 2001, and to take a trip out to Palm Springs, where I’d never been.

Like any vast urban area, Los Angeles is visually rich. Plenty to see at eye level, but also above your head.

Also beneath your feet.

Arriving late that Friday afternoon, and after leaving LAX behind in my rental car, I went Ladera Heights, a little-known but well-to-do neighborhood in Los Angeles where I’d rented a room through a peer-to-peer hospitality platform, as they say in the real estate biz. The room was part of an exceptionally pleasant condo unit: clean, well appointed, quiet at night, and not particularly expensive for short-term renters. Everything you need in an arrangement like that. Also, there was free parking on a side street that actually had available parking even late in the evening.

On Saturday, I drove to a Los Angeles Metro station on the Blue Line, parked – at a reasonable $3 for the day; you start paying close attention to parking right away in LA – rode downtown and took a walking tour offered by the Los Angeles Conservancy. That included a look at many fine downtown structures, but especially the Bradbury Building and the Angel Flight.

After lunch at Grand Central Market, I did a self-guided tour of Walt Disney Concert Hall, and then wandered down to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels for a look. A wedding was in progress during my visit, but the place is so large non-guests could easily sit way back. I needed the rest anyway. Downtown LA isn’t that large, but on foot the distance adds up. Still, I had enough energy to visit Union Station after the cathedral, take a walk through Olvera Street, and then return (via subway) to The Broad, LA’s most recent major museum, opening only in 2015.

Sunday was a driving day. By mid-morning, I’d made it to the lush, picturesque Hollywood Forever Cemetery in, of course, Hollywood, spending longer than I’d planned there. Then I drove all the way down Santa Monica Boulevard, famed in song and maybe story, to Santa Monica itself, then up the Pacific Coast Highway a short distance to the Getty Villa, an astonishing place the likes of which I’d never seen before, except in Pompeii — where, as Getty pointed out, everything is old. I returned to Santa Monica in the evening for dinner near the Third Street Promenade.

The next day, February 24, I drove into San Gabriel National Monument a few miles, but the roads were blocked further in – lingering piles of snow at higher elevations, I guess. So I made my way via the Foothill towns to Palm Springs, where I stayed with old friends Steve and Jack for two nights. I spent the first day in town, including a stop at Shields Date Garden. I played no golf.

After leaving Palm Springs on February 26, I drove through and walked around the high and dry Joshua Tree National Park, where you see two kinds of desert for a single entry fee. Which, at $30, I object to. Especially since you pay only $25 to get into Big Bend NP. Sure, the JTNP landscape is remarkable, but that fee just means that Congress is underfunding the National Park Service. Ah, well. If I ever want to see Joshua tree forests again, the Mojave National Preserve is also a good place for it, I’ve read, less crowded and with no admission fee.

The next day I flew to San Antonio, where I had a pleasant visit with family and friends, and even met a few new people, the cherry on the sundae of the trip.