In a perhaps surprising choice, Coco and I went on an honest-to-goodness hike on Friday. Not just our usual two-to-three mile walk around a neighborhood, but a drive out to Tahquitz Canyon and a two-mile loop through the desert terrain, up to the fall and back. Dang, you'd think we were from Bellingham or something.
Coco took the opportunity to play with her real camera.
The falls were almost totally dry this year, but still quite lovely.
This item from the visitor's guide caught my attention:
I mean, I may be a city boy, but even I know desert canyons don't have water fountains...
That evening we switched gears and went out to the Fantasy Springs Casino & Special Event Center to see the Brian Setzer Orchestra. It was great fun; I have no pics, just two observations:
- smoky casinos are pretty yucky
- rockabilly can be pretty damn great
On Saturday we got a little crazy, jumped in the car and sped/crawled down the San Bernadino Freeway to make a visit to L.A. The first stop was more of a pilgrimage: the L.A. City Hall building stood in for the Daily Planet in the old Adventures of Superman TV series, and I wanted to get a look at it in person.
Even though the area around it has gotten a it congested, it did not disappoint.
The next stop was the La Brea Tar Pits and Page Museum - I guess I have more of an affinity for the older, classic attractions than for new-fangled stuff. I really wanted to see the spot that appeared on the the movie The Two Jakes (which I cannot find a still of online!) but if my memory of that scene serves, it appears that spot actually never existed outside the film - at least I couldn't find anything remotely resembling it, except a utilities deck on the museum. It was a great visit nonetheless.
A favorite Pleistocene mammal, many of which met their end in La Brea
And since we were already in L.A., we decided to jaunt out to make sure the ocean was still there and dropped down to Ocean Park in Santa Monica. The tide was too far out for easy toe-wiggling, but we took a long walk down to Venice Beach and back. It was a great walk marred only by the poor air quality - an unhealthy 161!
We broke up the ride home with a stop in Claremont to have dinner with Coco's California cousins, and capped the activities for the sixth consecutive day with a dip in the hot tub that is mere steps from our room.
It's good to be back in the desert.
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