Road Trip 2012, Day 6: From LA to Arroyo Seco

This day started in a very untraditional vacation manner – with haircuts. I finally convinced Caroline that getting a haircut in Hollywood would be the ultimate of coolness so we walked up the street from our hotel to the Supercuts, which opened at 8am. We literally sat on the curb waiting for the doors to be unlocked so we wouldn’t have to wait – we wanted to get on the road!

Note that I’m sportin’ my new GAP jacket (and like 2 layers under it). Yeah, I don’t know what’s wrong with my family that they all wear little, teensy clothes when it’s frigid and only in the 60’s!

We once again packed up the Sequoia and hit the road. This time – and this is the only time it’s happened – we didn’t have quite the sense of how to get where we were going. The key is that we wanted to get to the Pacific Coast Highway but our GPS was all set on taking us on major interstates more inland. We finally pulled over and a nice police officer helped us get going to the right way.

At a suggestion from Paula & Bob, we drove up the coast to Piedras Blancas beach where there is a population of elephant seals that hang out in the sunshine. It was a great suggestion. We’ve now swum with harbor seals and mooed with elephant seals!

This is a crazy lone male who kept popping his head up and bellowing for 20 seconds or so.

After the beach we headed a good bit inland toward our campground, Arroyo Seco. I have no official idea what that means, but I think it’s something like “deep in the mountain, far from anything and cold.” It’s very difficult to reserve camping spots in California in the summer and this campground was between LA and SF so I figured it would work out. It could have been better, could have been worse. The drive there was a LOT like driving through west Texas: rolling hills of brown grasses dotted with trees. However, we did hit some farming areas and they looked kinda cool.

The night was freezing. Like totally, massively freezing. I think it hit around 42 degrees. Eeek.

Road Trip 2012, Day 5: Hollywood and around

We started off this beautiful day in LA with a trip right down the road, to the La Brea Tar Pits. Now this is my idea of fun! I love the smell of asphalt in the morning…

Seriously, the Pits were well worth checking out. They have made a beautiful garden around the whole area so you have no idea you’re about to step right into goo as you round the corner by the hydrangea or roll/get shoved down the grassy hill – you never feel it coming! The gardens are really nice and the life-sized elephant family on the shoreline of the stinky, black – and fenced – pit of tar is very explanatory.

 

The Page Museum is also right there. We didn’t go in the actual museum but did hit the store for several minutes and left more than several dollars poorer.

From there we headed up the hills to Burbank to the Warner Brothers Studio VIP tour. I took lots of pictures of houses and sets; I’ll probably never remember the importance of most – except I do remember the house from Gremlins, the steps where Ross played his keyboard waiting for Rachel at prom and the tree from The Last Samurai.

We were shown the full sets for Pretty Little Liars and The Big Bang Theory, which is filmed with a real audience. They also have the original Friends set exactly as it was the last day of filming. It was way cool to see how the filming is actually done. I’m not totally sure the kids got it, but maybe someday I can remind them. Warner Brothers is a good tour that I would definitely recommend for anyone traveling through LA.

An added bonus to the tour is that the studio is in Burbank, near the Griffith Park Observatory. We drove on up there and enjoyed views of the Hollywood sign and the whole valley. They have a cafeteria-style restaurant with yummy foods by Wolfgang Puck and an astronomy museum..

After getting all the good photos of the city and The Sign, we headed down to Hollywood to see some stars.

All the stars we saw were built into the sidewalk along Hollywood Boulevard, unfortunately, but it was pretty cool that they made one for us.

We also stopped in at an Army Surplus store and bought me wool socks and a huge wool blanket. I just know I’m going to die camping in the mountains and the canyons.And we got Grace some Converse sneakers just because they were a good deal.

After checking out the utter craziness in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater (the Tom Cruise lookalike was H.O.T.) we headed to The Grove, LA’s cool outdoor mall that’s supposed to the the hangout of the Hollywood Starlings. We got me a jacket at the GAP because I’m always cold and we walked around but we never did see anyone who was anyone except Shrek.

Back to the Beverly Laurel Motor Inn, which was a fun place to stay and in a really GREAT location to rest up for the next day’s trip. Right down the street we had a brand spanking new laundromat where we washed all the icky, dirty clothes. It had big screen TV’s and free wifi!