January 15-29, 2017
We began our next journey north and on our way stopped to have lunch in Mission Viejo with a family that used to belong to our church group in Austin. We had a good lunch visit with James and Carol and Jordan made a fast new friend. She and Evie are only about 6 months apart but because we went to different service times, they never really knew each other before their move to California.
From there, we made it into Acton, which is about an hour outside of LA. I would be lying if I said that I had
an awesome time here. I found myself asking “Why are we here?!”
multiple times. It rained MANY days. The wind was often fierce. It
sleeted and it snowed once. And it was ALWAYS cold, even when the
sun decided to shine. Everyone was hibernating in their RVs so it
felt lonely and there was really not all that much to do nearby that
I found.
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| (My sweet girl all bundled up to paint a picture. Check out her apron "cape" flying in the wind!) |
But to be positive, our next location is supposed to be a bit warmer. That will help a
lot. And the campground here is actually pretty nice (and probably a lot
of fun during the peak season). They have a fun pool area for the
kids and I am sure more activities scheduled during warmer months. The best thing I can
say about this campground is the beauty that surrounds it. We could
easily see the mountains from our camp site and enjoyed seeing the
snow covering the caps some days.
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| (You'll have to zoom in or just trust me on this one) |
The cold and rain also made it
difficult to get out and do our family outings but we did our best. Our first outing was to the Ronald Reagan Presidential
Library.
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| (replica of the oval office) |
It was more entertaining than I expected. They had many
interactive displays that kept the kids interested and occupied and
it was enjoyable to learn a little more about Reagan.
We even got to take a tour of Air Force
One!! I have been so jealous of my Mom, Manuel, Aunt Judy and Uncle
Mike since they took a tour last year that I just couldn't let them
one-up me! Just kidding! We really did get to go on board but it
was the one used by Reagan and not the currently operating one. So,
while it was awesome, I am STILL of little jealous of them because
the one they went on sounded pretty great.
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| (President's quarters) |
Next, we went to the California Science
Center. It was a GREAT science museum and FREE to the public. We
paid $3 extra per person for tickets to the special exhibit of the
space shuttle Endeavour.
I'm always interested in how people live
their daily lives in environments different from my own and so I most
enjoyed the displays on eating and toileting. Haha. And it was also
very cool to watch the time lapse video of the shuttle when they
moved it through the city 12 miles from LAX to the science center.
It took 68 hours!! I am totally amazed at their ability to
maneuver this huge shuttle through the city streets.
The rest of the museum had plenty of
fun things as well. We viewed different ecosystems, identified
birds, recycled trash, watched a flash flood and the kids' favorite:
learned about rot and decay and how maggots can be used to treat
infected wounds. YUCK!
One evening, we made it to the Griffith Observatory. We saw the Hollywood sign,
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| (It's there. I promise!) |
watched the sunset,
saw the twinkling lights of the city
and toured the museum inside where we looked a various planetary displays and got to make our own family-sized "earthquake" and view it on a seismograph (which was really cool since we had just read about them).
The best news is that we did finally
have a day where we felt like we were really getting to experience
LA. The bad news is that it was our last day. But it was fun. We
started at the La Brea Tar Pits. Just by chance, we had just watched
a Dirty Jobs episode about the tar pits which really helped the kids
connect. They were like “Hey! This is the pit we saw on TV!” And
it was pretty interesting. It's asphalt, not really tar and they are
shallow pools rather than pits but they are totally full of fossils!
They have found over 3.5 million of them and they include columbian
mammoths, dire wolves, short faced bears, saber-toothed tigers,
mastodons, bison, camels, ground sloths, teratorns, vultures and so
much more from the Ice Age! The majority were carnivores. The
suspected reason was that the carnivores would attempt to take
advantage of the situation when an herbivore or omnivore became
entrapped in the asphalt that had been covered by dirt and leaves.
And since many of the carnivores traveled in groups, that would also
explain the higher numbers.
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| (This is Pit 91 from Dirty Jobs. The flags are hard to see but are marking fossils waiting to be excavated. Red is a Western horse, blue a ground sloth and green a saber-toothed cat) |
even getting the chance to try and free one of our limbs (a handle) from the asphalt. It was pretty impossible.
In addition to exploring the museum and
the asphalt pools, we watched a little program in the Encounters
Theater. It was only about 15 minutes but pretty informative and had
this person dressed up in a saber-tooth costume with a robotic head
that looked and acted quite real. Fun but also a little scary!
After that, we had lunch at local
restaurant. After sitting there a few minutes, I realized that one
of the persons sitting in front of me was an ACTOR! I just couldn't
remember what movie or show he had acted in. So I sneaked a picture
of him just so I could use it later to help me look it up. But I
finally remembered while we were still there. Greg says I should be
totally embarassed. Ha Ha But I will tell you anyway. He is Scott
Clifton from..... the Bold & the Beautiful soap opera! Hahahaha. I don't typically watch daytime soaps so I can only surmise that I saw him on the show when I was in college or when I was on maternity leave with Jacob and didn't have cable or streaming.
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| (There he is to the right of Jordan in the black shirt. He is looking down at his phone and probably thinking "Woman, please don't take my picture!" Hee hee) |
Then we made our way over to Venice Beach. We had our bike so we took them off the truck and went for a ride. It was so fun to just watch all of the different people out there having a great time. There was shopping along the strip and so many opportunities for people watching. We watched the skateboarders and basketball players and then played around on some of the exercise equipment over at Muscle Beach. Then we headed back to the area where the truck was parked so that the kids could play on the beach, we could watch the surfers and see the sun go down.
After that, we went to a local ale
house for dinner. It had a fun vibe and was a great way to end our
LA adventure.
