I lived in NJ for a while and now live in Socal - about 45 minutes from Burbank. When you come out, don’t look me up.
Take the more southern route - in April, some of those mountains you’ll driving through (uh, the Rocky Mountains!) will still get snow. Plus pulling that load, try the less mountainous route.
Hopefully you found a place nearby to work, because traffic here is more like NYC than NJ. Except that here some things are 70 miles away, and you drive through nasty traffic the whole time.
But seriously, limit the distance you need to drive and you’ll have 2-3 more hours per day and less stress.
LA is huge, but each city within LA is on top of each other. Its just a huge mess of cities and people and places. Endless things to do, though still easy to find nothing to do (too far, too expensive, too fancy, too crowded, etc)
Music scene... I dunno. Its tough. There’s SO many people and SO many musicians and only so many places to play. I’ve done it, so it can definitely be done.
LA is kinda fake. You’ll meet a lot of non-genuine people. Lots of flakes. People will seem friendly to your face. In NJ people have more attitude and sarcasm. In LA its more smiles and back stabbing. You get used to it, but you miss the East Coast style interactions.
You’ll love the weather in LA though! You rarely get weather to complain about, and when you do its so mild that people in NJ will scoff. “Oh, were you a little cold when you went outside in a t-shirt and sandals at 8am in the middle of January?”
Drive safe. Enjoy the trip. Hopefully your car passes CA smog test so you can register it here. (A Camry of any year should...)
