All work and no fun

We’ve been in California now for a little while and haven’t been out of our immediate area much. Weekends have been spent doing the necessary business of unpacking and getting things sorted out in our new (rental) home. Needless to say, this hasn’t been much fun for the kids. They’ve made the best of it though by running around in the backyard and by playing games or watching movies. But  not the kinds of things we would necessarily choose to do all things being equal.

Here comes the fun

But not this weekend. We decided it was time to get out and have some fun. The kids got out of school early on Thursday (actually, every Thursday is early release) so Chris and kids picked me up from work around 2:30 and we hit the 101-South heading straight for Disneyland! We thought it would be a good idea to take advantage of one of the benefits of living in Southern California. But before getting to the Magic Kingdom, we all got to experience first-hand the traffic that is LA.

Wow. Being from Oregon, we’ve never really experienced anything like this. Five lanes in each direction. Completely packed. It took us an hour to go about 6 miles. But in the end, there were no accidents and we arrived in Anaheim early enough so we could grab a bite to eat and still hit a few rides at Disneyland that evening. I’ve got more pictures coming of Disneyland soon, so stay tuned!

“That sign isn’t as big as it looks”

One of the things that Devyn has been asking about lately is to see the Hollywood sign. So I quickly Googled where to take a picture of the Hollywood sign and we came up with the Griffith Observatory. Little did we know just how popular this place gets, but let me tell you…it gets crowded up there fast. We had to walk 3/4 of a mile to get back up there as parking is extremely limited. But it was totally worth it.

I think the kids were excited to actually see the Hollywood sign, but at the same time, they were a little disappointed. “It’s a lot smaller than I thought it would be” was heard several times–and not just from our kids. 🙂

But the kids each took pictures of it with their iOS devices and I snapped a few myself. Overall, the 2 hour visit to the Griffith Observatory was totally worth it and I highly recommend it. If nothing else, you can see a fully functional Tesla Coil in action once per hour! Highly recommended.

 

This place is big. No, make that huge.

In the past 6 weeks that we’ve been in California, we’ve spent all of our time in the Santa Barbara area. In our first trip to the Los Angeles area, it really struck me at just how big LA is. Coming from Portland where the most traffic we see is a three lane highway that moderately filled, seeing five lanes in both directions COMPLETELY PACKED is a bit of a shock. The traffic is absolutely insane. I couldn’t imagine driving in that traffic every day.

From the Griffith Observatory, you have an incredible view of Los Angeles. This is only one section of the city, but if you’re not from LA, it gives you an idea of just how big this place is. No, make that how huge this place is.