{"id":911,"date":"2012-06-06T23:13:11","date_gmt":"2012-06-07T04:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/?p=911"},"modified":"2012-06-06T23:13:11","modified_gmt":"2012-06-07T04:13:11","slug":"vacation-day-13-l-a-lifestyle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/?p=911","title":{"rendered":"Vacation Day 13: L.A. Lifestyle"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve started this blog early, so Rich isn’t awake yet.\u00a0 I’m sure he will be in a half an hour.<\/p>\n

For those who don’t know, Rich told me that the most important event every day has been that he woke up on the right side of the grass.<\/p>\n

I woke up early today for some reason.\u00a0 I didn’t hear anything in particular.\u00a0 This is my usual time back home so I might just be getting back into the mindset.\u00a0 I put on my robe and grabbed some things to go set out on the porch.\u00a0 I figured I would moisturize and read.\u00a0 I get on the porch and what do I see?\u00a0 There is a small herd of deer feeding right in front of the lodge.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I dashed back into the room to grab my camera.\u00a0 Who knew there was a photo op this early in the morning.\u00a0 I started taking pictures when I realized there was a stupid woman with a camera chasing them down the hillside.\u00a0 Doesn’t she know to take pictures, but not to disturb the wildlife?\u00a0 She kept walking toward them trying to get closer.\u00a0 I guess she doesn’t understand the danger of an attacking deer.\u00a0 Too bad she didn’t find out either.\u00a0 The deer finally gave up on breakfast and took off down the hill.<\/p>\n

As I sat reading on the porch, a Japanese family came out of their room talking at the top of their voices.\u00a0 I shushed them and they nodded and went right back to talking loud!\u00a0 It was 6:00 AM here!\u00a0 They proceeded to the parking lot and were yelling back and forth.\u00a0 I’m amazed at the number of rude people in the world who don’t stop to think about those around them.\u00a0 Hotels seem to be the worst place.\u00a0 I guess we all have our moments though, don’t we?<\/p>\n

Today, we leave the wilderness for another type of wilderness.\u00a0 We are headed to Santa Monica.\u00a0 First, we are going to the LeBrea Tar Pits and the museum there.\u00a0 Then we are going to the Santa Monica pier.\u00a0 You see this so much in the movies and TV shows.\u00a0 It’s cheesy, but memorable.\u00a0 Rick has to go to the Naughty Dog offices to get a picture.\u00a0 They make one of his favorite games.\u00a0 We are meeting Claudine for dinner tonight as well.\u00a0 Claudine is Rich’s cousin and she lives in the area.\u00a0 We’ve not seen her for a while, so we have some catching up to do.<\/p>\n

Alright, time for Rich to finally get up.\u00a0 It’ll be another good day!<\/p>\n

Much later….\u00a0<\/p>\n

We had breakfast and packed up our room to leave.\u00a0 I’d like to have spent more time at the lodge and see more of the park.\u00a0 I like Sequoia.\u00a0 It is less overwhelming with things to see and do than Yosemite.\u00a0 At least we had phone service if not WiFi here!<\/p>\n

My plan was to head through the south gate of the park.\u00a0 This was going to tack on more time, but I felt like it might be worth it.\u00a0 Unfortunately, there was major construction on the downhill slope leaving the park.\u00a0 We had approximately 5 or 6 miles of one lane road.\u00a0 Crews were installing retaining walls on the roadside.\u00a0 It was cool that they had dug out the side of the mountain getting a solid footing for the wall and then was backfilling the dirt and rock back in.\u00a0 It’ll be a nice safety feature.<\/p>\n

To get out of the park, we continued downhill until we hit the flat land of the fruit and vegetable farms in the area.\u00a0 From here, we took a smaller highway down to Bakersfield so we could hit The 5.\u00a0 Rich notes that Bakersfield is the home of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens.\u00a0 That’s nice, that’s real nice.<\/p>\n

In the LA area anyway, most of the major highways are referred to as The.\u00a0 Or least they had been when I was here.\u00a0 So you say The 5, The 10, The 405.\u00a0 Maybe it’s to emphasis their importance in the scheme of transportation out here.\u00a0 Anyway, we get on The 5 and head up the mountains towards LA.<\/p>\n

Not much to say about the drive.\u00a0 The mountains are pretty cool.\u00a0 I was looking for cell sites where I had worked in the area.\u00a0 A few of them are actually still standing, just maybe not used anymore.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As we climbed the mountains, the clouds were coming over the top and spreading out into the valley below it.\u00a0 We could see this from a distance and it looked kind of strange to watch this white stuff spread out and cover the face of the mountain from view. \u00a0There was a front earlier in the day in Santa Monica that was supposed to bring rain.\u00a0 Figured these were the clouds that were part of the front as it moved north.<\/p>\n

Driving in LA isn’t really any different than driving in any other large town.\u00a0 There are just more cars and a couple of other rules you have to remember.\u00a0 Motorcycles can legally drive between lanes on the expressway.\u00a0 I had forgotten about this when I got into traffic and one went whizzing by me.\u00a0 It’s great if you ride a bike, but the commuters didn’t like it much when there is gridlock or you change lanes.\u00a0 I remember being stuck in traffic once and everyone was opening their doors to block the lane.\u00a0 It was kind of like, we all go or no one goes.<\/p>\n

Getting to the LaBrea Tar Pits meant going into Hollywood.\u00a0 So we took the Hollywood Freeway.\u00a0 That’s The 101 in highway label speak.\u00a0 The 101 is really old and kind of narrow.\u00a0 It’s not the nice big 6 or 8 lanes.\u00a0 It has lanes, but they are narrow.\u00a0 The traffic also continues to move just as fast as the larger expressways, too.\u00a0 We found our exit and were in the heart of Hollywood.\u00a0 There were tourists everywhere!\u00a0 Luckily, we got through this part of town.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We found the museum district and the tar pits on Wilshire.\u00a0 This part of town was looking pretty worn these days.\u00a0 I remembered it being more upscale.\u00a0 But then the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and Rodeo Dr. were a little further down.\u00a0 We circled the complex and found the parking lot.\u00a0 Gathering up cameras, we prepared for the hunt in the tar pits and the adjacent Page Museum.<\/p>\n

The complex has several tar pits.\u00a0 We looked through the fence at the famous one that you see when they have anything on the pits.\u00a0 Sadly, they have to restraint people from diving into the black gooey waters.\u00a0 The pit bubbles as it releases gases still trapped in the tar.\u00a0 This pit is kind of cheesy with its statues of extinct animals that were found in the pit.<\/p>\n

The other pits are more interesting.\u00a0 These are working excavation sites, but no one was there today.\u00a0 You could see fossils protruding from hardened tar with tools ready to dig in and release them.\u00a0 Pit 91 had a nice enclosure with an observation deck.\u00a0 This is one of the few in ground pits they are still working.\u00a0 Pit 23 is a series of 23 crates containing cross sections of tar taken from other locations.\u00a0 Each crate is opened and the person works from the top down to clear away the tar and find the fossils inside.\u00a0 The Observation Pit was closed at this time of day, so we didn’t get to see what was in there.<\/p>\n

Now the Los Angeles County Art Museum is right next to the tar pit complex.\u00a0 Aunt Fran had asked us to be sure and see the large boulder that had been moved from San Bernardino to this location.\u00a0 Since it was so close, we walked over. The boulder was covered in a large parachute, so we couldn’t really see it.\u00a0 The rock is part of an art sculpture being installed called, Levitation.<\/p>\n

The sculpture consists of two concrete structures acting as rails for the rock and then you should be able to walk under it.\u00a0 Kind of a cool idea.\u00a0 I’ll have to get more info on the rock itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There were gardens all around the pits and museums.\u00a0 Everything seemed to be in bloom.\u00a0 I had a hard going from one thing to the next without looking at the flowers and trees.\u00a0 There appeared to be a locust tree with large blue or purple flowers.\u00a0 I found it fascinating that a rather large tree would have purple blooms.\u00a0 These are usually white or a pale color.\u00a0 It was beautiful.\u00a0 They had rather large agave plants around the property as well.\u00a0 Really cool to look at.<\/p>\n

We went into the museum to see the fossils and working laboratory they have on site.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the lab wasn’t working.\u00a0 It was about 4:00 and probably time for them to leave for the day.\u00a0 They had several bones labeled for what they were working on.\u00a0 Zed was a Columbian mammoth that had been found.\u00a0 These were really large bones.\u00a0 The other animal was a saber tooth tiger named Fluffy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Time to go and find our hotel.\u00a0 The GPS got us onto The 10 and headed to Santa Monica.\u00a0 Our lanes were fairly clear, but the eastbound lanes were slowly crawling down the freeway.\u00a0 LA traffic at its finest.\u00a0 I’ve sat in a lot of that in my day.\u00a0 We managed to get off the freeway and find our hotel.\u00a0 I just had trouble finding out how to get into the parking lot!\u00a0 I got turned around and back to the front of hotel where you drive through the entrance and down to the parking lot underneath.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After resting for a bit, we headed out to meet Claudine for dinner at Casablanca.\u00a0 This was a cute little restaurant with characters and scenes from Casablanca the movie.\u00a0 It was great.\u00a0 We got inside and met Claudine right away.\u00a0 She had gotten a table already.\u00a0 Because no one was willing to drive in the area, I had to pass up the wonderful little margarita cart that they rolled up to the table.\u00a0 They made the most wonderful looking drinks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So we ordered food and talked and talked and talked.\u00a0 Gotta warn the family here, we did gossip about you all.\u00a0 We had to get Claudine caught up on where everyone was, who they were with, and what was going on.\u00a0 After all, she is family.\u00a0 We talked about Busia, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Claudine knew exactly what Rick wanted to do with his career.\u00a0 She apparently works with people who do UX.\u00a0 That’s User Experience.\u00a0 I never heard the acronym, but it fits.\u00a0 That was cool that she understood and knew something about what was going on.<\/p>\n

After dinner, we said good-bye to Claudine and went to see the Santa Monica pier.\u00a0 This part of town was really busy.\u00a0 It was hard to find parking, but I finally got to a lot within walking distance.\u00a0 We got out to Santa Monica Blvd and walked toward the ocean.\u00a0 At the Third Street Promenade, there was music, food, and people galore.\u00a0 It was really busy with everyone walking up and down the closed street.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We got down to the ocean and walked over to the pier.\u00a0 Duh, there was parking right at the pier and plenty of it.\u00a0 It was a little costly though.\u00a0 So Santa Monica pier is technically the end of Route 66.\u00a0 Now the guys can say that they have been at the start, some of the middle, and at the end of it. Things were closing up, but the crowds were still flowing in.\u00a0 We walked to the end and back.\u00a0 Along the way, Rich became fascinated with a bird on the side of the pier in danger of being washed away.<\/p>\n

There was some unusually high tide expected into the beach in the morning.\u00a0 The waves crashing in were really high and hitting the beach much higher up than expected.\u00a0 A lot of people were playing in the waves and trying to see where it would get them. Fortunately, the bird didn’t get taken out while we were down there.<\/p>\n

We walked back up to Santa Monica Blvd.\u00a0 The crowds were moving around us.\u00a0 You could get hear all kinds of languages as people walked by.\u00a0 It was almost like being in Yosemite again.\u00a0 Unfortunately, there was some guy peeing in the street.\u00a0 I think Rick and Rich got turned off by the grunge and feeling a little unsafe.\u00a0 We weren’t in the worst part of town though.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We made it back to the car in one piece and back to the hotel to settle in for the night.\u00a0 Tomorrow, we leave for Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

My camera was tired before we left to must Claudine.\u00a0 It kept telling me the battery was exhausted.\u00a0 So I let it rest up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Deer were feeding in front of the lodge this morning. I had to run back in to grab a camera.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

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Just to cheat a little bit, an older gentleman came down to the garage in the morning as we packed the car.\u00a0 Wearing a Route 66 camp shirt, he got into a vintage late 1970s style Corvette with a loud engine.\u00a0 He was beginning his trip down Route 66 to Chicago.\u00a0 We would too, but not exactly on the same route.<\/p>\n

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Deer were feeding in front of the lodge this morning. I had to run back in to grab a camera.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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This is an example of the porch where I was sitting this morning. Only mine had rocking chairs instead of gliders.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Rick and Rich standing in front of Pit 1 at the LaBrea Tar Pits in downtown Beverly Hills. I always wanted to see this place and now we are here.They use large Saber Tooth Tiger paw prints to lead you through the site. This is probably their most famous animal to date, besides Zed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Pit 91 is enclosed as they dig through the layers that are still in the ground. Flags indicate where fossils were dug out recently.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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This is one of the pits where the water has dried up but the primordial tar keeps oozing up expelling gases.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Pit 23 is actually a collection of 23 crates that contain sections for another site where they had to take them out of the ground to get them out of the way for construction to begin. The volunteer sits on top of the crate and works their way through the contents to find fossils. Not as glamourous as Pit 91, but the ventilation is better.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Sign at the LA County Art Museum describes the Levitation sculpture once it is completed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The mystery rock awaits unveiling to become part of the sculpture.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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I’ve started this blog early, so Rich isn’t awake yet.\u00a0 I’m sure he will be in a half an hour. For those who don’t know, Rich told me that the most important event every day has been that he woke up on the right side of the grass. I woke up early today for some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=911"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1127,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions\/1127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}