From Sea to Sand

To our dismay, we had to leave Los Angeles (okay, Pasadena, actually).  We had a decent hotel located less than 1/2 hour from downtown Hollywood, and we really enjoyed ourselves there!  We also decided to skip San Diego when we found out that Comic Con was starting the day we would be there....way too many nerds all in one spot, we'd be sure to get lost in the crowds.  Instead, we headed to Laguna Beach, to check out the Pacific Ocean.  What a beautiful spot!

Then, we headed to Riverside, to find the church used as a location in a campaign in the computer game Left 4 Dead.  Interestingly enough, our dear Navi took us to a "churk", as she pronounced it.  In fact, it was the First Christian Church of Christ Scientist, which was pronounced as the "First Christian Churk of Christ Scienti" - a tongue-twister indeed!!

From Riverside, we headed to Las Vegas.  It was quite the dramatic change in the landscape.  In the morning, we left the Pacific Ocean, and then we drove into the desert.

Las Vegas was its usual colourful and entertaining self, a surprise of colour and lights after the drab sameness of the desert sands.  It was incredibly hot, something like 108 degrees, but the humidity was a whopping 2% - something virtually unheard of back in Winnipeg.

From Vegas, the next morning we headed to the Hoover Dam, which was quite a spectacular sight.

Surprisingly, equally as spectacular was the bridge that was built over the dam.  At first, I missed the turnoff to the dam itself & we had to drive a couple of miles before we could turn around, which resulted in me crossing the bridge twice.  I can tell you, if I had seen beforehand what type of bridge I was actually crossing, you wouldn't have gotten me across it even once!  Here is a look from below:

After that, desert, desert and more desert.  I guess the only thing that will grow down here is the electrical transmission tower, we did see a big field of those.  Other than that, not much vegetation was apparent.

 

We spent our afternoon in Oatman, Arizona, a lovely little spot in the midst of some rather unfriendly looking mountains.  I heard about this little town from Pat, where the wild burros roamed the town freely, so we just had to see it.  Indeed, they do have the run of the town, and you really have to watch out when you are driving down the main street - they go where they want.  They are pretty smart, too, as soon as they hear your car door, they head over in your direction, to see if you have any food for them.

By the way, for a good part of our trip today, we followed the historic Route 66 (anyone remember the show)?  At one point, we stopped for gas and we were trying to decide whether to have lunch.  But, when we saw the name of the nearest restaurant, we decided we would just wait until the next town!

Hurray for Hollywood

Today was another busy day for us.  Once again, we headed in to Hollywood, where we took a 2-hour celebrity homes tour.  It was really exciting, I got to see Johnny Depp .............................................
's fence and Al Pacino ..................................................................................................................................
's house.  Hmmm, perhaps it wasn't as exciting as it could have been.  But it was certainly interesting to tour through those areas - the Hollywood Hills, Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, and Sunset Boulevard - with someone else driving.  At least that way I could look around and take in the sights.  But I must admit, even in its natural habitat, the celebrity is an elusive creature.

We also took in the Hollywood Museum,
http://www.thehollywoodmuseum.com/ which is located in the historic old Max Factor building.  The museum itself has a lot of interesting costumes and displays, but it isn't really that well done.  The layout is a bit confusing, and it devotes much more space to some guy's admittedly incredibly extensive collection of autographs than to anything else. That was after we finished lunch at Mel's Diner, the home of "American Graffiti". http://originalmelsdiner.com/ Actually, the movie was filmed in the diner in San Francisco, but whatever!

Then, we decided that the best way to enjoy the finale to the Harry Potter series, a series we have enjoyed for many years, would be to see it in 3D in the famed Graumann's Chinese Theater.  http://www.chinesetheatres.com/history.html  So, we walked across the handprints and messages, and through the doors and sat down in Hollywood luxury to enjoy what turned out to be a wonderful movie.

Awesome pic!

As Jessica was uploading some of her trip pictures, she came across this one, which I absolutely had to post here, too.  We were just driving along somewhere south of Mount St. Helens when he passed us.  Her comment: "Now, this guy is badass":

Crazy Ladies

We left San Francisco on Monday morning, and not a moment too soon.  It has to be the most expensive place that we have been so far - and that includes our stops in Washington, D.C. and New Orleans last year!  We saw the perfect coffee cup - a cup cut in half with the words "San Francisco is so expensive that all I could afford was half a cup", but we were too broke to buy one!  We should have known something was up when we found out that it was free to leave the city, but there was a $6 toll to enter it when coming across either the Oakland-Bay bridge or the Golden Gate bridge.

Yesterday, we found that Jeremiah DID know the way to San Jose!  I also found out that I can use the lyrics from a great many old songs to describe parts of our trip....so, be prepared!  We stopped at the Winchester Mystery House, http://winchestermysteryhouse.com/.  What an incredibly beautiful and bizarre place!  It was a home built (and built and built for 38 years) by Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester Rifles fortune.  She was a bit of an eccentric type (that would be the politically correct way to describe it), who apparently believed that she had to keep building and building, to appease the spirits of people killed by Winchester rifles.  It is amazing, there is an incredibly beautiful and intricate stained glass window that will never see the light, because a wall was built right behind it.  There were doors to nowhere - if you stepped through them, you might drop 12 feet into the gardens, or 8 feet into the kitchen.

Then, yes, Dad, I got the oil changed!  And how lucky, we managed to be waiting right beside an army surplus store, where we found a cool German camo shirt for my army-obsessed son!  From there, we headed to Pasadena.  We were going to try stop at Hearst Castle, as it is between San Francisco and Los Angeles, but it was getting too late & we wouldn't have made it to Pasadena until midnight!  As it was, we made it to the LA metro area after dark, & my first experience driving the LA freeways was interesting, to say the least. Let's just say that this little old lady in Pasadena was probably a terror on Colorado Boulevard - to the other drivers!  And I do have to admit, it is way, way, way cheaper here than in San Fran.  Our hotel for 3 nights here is less than 1/2 the price for 3 nights there, and we are able to eat for less than $30 - gotta love it!

For our first day in LA, we took a 75-minute guided walking tour of Hollywood, which was really neat.  The guide explained everything to us and gave us a great deal of the history of Hollywood.  We found from our tour of Alcatraz that it really makes it more meaningful to have an explanation about the hows and whys while you are touring around, so we opted for the guided tour.  Actually, we picked up a citypass, which gives us access to 4 different attractions.  Then, we entered the world of Madame Tussaud. http://www.madametussauds.com/hollywood/  It was spectacular!  Some of the wax figures were so incredibly life-like that you just expected them to turn and say something like  "Hey, you, take a hike" when you got too close to them.

 

As our parkade was 1/2 block away from the El Capitan Theatre where the world premiere of "Captain America" is happening this evening, I opted to get out of the area before everyone came in, so we packed it in early for tonight.