Los Angeles, Hollywood, and area (first of multiple posts)

We just left the Los Angeles area.  We arrived last Saturday.  Our RV camp was north of town, in an area called Santa Clarita and Valencia.  It's about 30 minutes (depending on traffic) north of LA.  Beth's sister Lynn lives with a friend (Ronda) in the town of Glendale, which is on the outskirts of Hollywood and squeezed between Burbank and Pasadena.

Aunt Lynn and Ronda were our local contacts and they were excellent tour guides.  It rained all day Sunday so that gave us some much-needed down time in the RV.  On Monday we hit the tourist trail, starting with downtown Hollywood and the Kodak Theatre, where a number of red carpet movie premieres have been held over the years.  We saw the famous Walk of Fame (Sidewalk of Stars) and Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

We were impressed that the celebrities didn't have to be human to get their signatures outside of Grauman's.  Here's Sylvester Stallone (from Rocky fame).

 Here are the main characters from Harry Potter.

 Roy Rogers, his horse and gun!

 Some of the Star Wars characters.

 There were lots of "celebrities" available to have their picture taken (for a tip).  Matthew's favorite, from the video game.

Here's another celebrity we found.  We didn't have to give him a tip to have our picture taken with him!

We had a great lunch at Canter's Deli on Fairfax.  As an example of LA fusion, in addition to pastrami sandwiches they were pushing a book about the band Guns and Roses.  During their fame, the band used to hang out at Canter's (open 24 hours) and there were many pictures of Slash (lead guitar) and the band in their favorite booth.

Lynn gave us the full tour - we drove on Sunset Strip. through Bel Air and Beverly Hills.  And we saw the famous Hollywood sign, from multiple angles.  The first is from the Kodak Theatre.

 This is with some Hollywood starlets (Beth from "Happy Housewives from Ohio" and Lynn from "Fresh Tourguide from Glendale").

 

Of  course our tour was not all flash and glamor. We visited the La Brea tar pits, an area close to the downtown where hundreds of thousands of bones have been found from the ice age and more recently.

This is an active pit and we saw bubbles of gas coming up.  The display contains a wall of 400 wolf skulls, less than half of all the wolf skulls that have been found here.

We ended the day by visiting the pier at Santa Monica.  This is the place where the historic Route 66 ends, so it was a fitting wrap up to our stops at Holbrook, Winslow, and Barstow.

 Check out the police cruiser (pick up truck, actually) that was parked at the end of the pier.  Where else but in Southern California would a police car carry a surfboard?

San Diego and surrounding area

It's Saturday evening. We've spent the last few days in Escondido, about half an hour north of San Diego.  We've had wonderful, sunny days, but it's been cool, about 20 degrees cooler than home.  But we've had good weather to tour around in and here's a quick summary.

Our drive from Death Valley to Escondido was quite an experience.  We got our first real taste of California traffic, through the mountains in the rain and snow!  We had been on the dry side of the mountains before this (Joshua Tree  NP and Death Valley NP are both deserts because the mountains prevent rain from falling there) but as we drove toward the south west, we drove through the mountains.  This is in the area of San Bernadino, which is located at the foot of the mountains.

You can see the mountains on the left of us.  To the right were deep valleys.  We don't have pictures of those because perhaps Beth was not willing to look in that direction!


On Monday we spent the day recuperating from our time at Death Valley!  We thoroughly cleaned the inside of the RV and changed the oil and air filter on the Jeep.  It was really needed after all the dust and sand at Death Valley.

On Tuesday we went to the first mission in California.  This was built in the same time frame as the missions we saw in San Antonio (the Alamo).

We also visited the San Diego Zoo.  They claim to be one of the largest in the US and they also have an active program to breed threatened species and re-introduce them to the wild.  We had a great time both on a tour bus and also walking around the park.

They also have a lot of information about ice-age mammals from North America.  Matthew got to experience first-hand a lion from that era.

To avoid the traffic leaving town, we stayed in the down town area and went to Old San Diego, a very lively area with lots of shops and restaurants.  We had some great Mexican  food in the open air (near a fire and under heaters).

 On Wednesday we once again drove to San Diego, this time to travel along the coast.  We started with Cabrillo National Monument on Point Loma, just across the bay from the down town.  Cabrillo was the Spanish explorer who first arrived in this area.  He was about 50 years after Columbus.  Beth commented that out that since they didn't find gold, the Spanish didn't return for 200 years (when they built the missions).  There are number of military areas all along the peninsula.

After this we drove north, along Mission Beach, to La Jolla, stopping along the way to see the activities on the beaches.

We saw quite a bit of wildlife in La Jolla...  cormorants and seals.

We ended up at Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve.  This is an area of dramatic cliffs, wind erosion and wind-blown trees.  It was a great place to walk the beach and explore tide pools.

Thursday was our "fun" day - LEGOLAND!  Matthew had been looking forward to this from the start of the trip.

That's Harry Potter and Hagrid, if you didn't know.

Now, what is it, pi r squared or m c squared?

There were amazing creations, all of legos, of course.

This elephant could move its trunk and squirt water!

There were also fun rides and Matthew and Bill made the most of.

Tomorrow we head to Los Angeles, which promises to be a very different set of experiences.