Spring Break in LA

The highlight of our Spring Break was visiting Max and Morgan in LA! This was an overwhelmingly delightful trip. These guys are great planners and very gifted at knowing people well enough to suggest what activities to do. They planned a visit that was tailor made for our family, complete with a slide deck  to get us hyped before we came. 

We made great time on our drive and got to their house earlier than expected, which meant we had time to go to a nearby park after dinner. 

 

Felix loooooves Morgan!

Somi Somi ice cream in Koreatown was so creamy and good, especially the Ube flavor! They are famous for their fish waffle cones. 

Isaac refused to hold anyone's hand except for Max's for 90% of this trip. 

Annie requested that we pop into this ultra pink store. I didn't think much of it, but she asked if we had time to go back to Koreatown to "look at more cool stores... also can you show me what anime is?" several times. 

The next morning, Max took people to his rock climbing gym while I failed to get Felix to take a nap. The gym is built in an old brewery with cool old brick everywhere. 

Isaac had qualms, but ended up having a good time!

Annie had no qualms, but ended up bruising her butt!

Elliot did ok with both qualms and butts. 

Lunch was at a Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown. This was one of my favorite meals -although everywhere they took us to eat was delicious! They also did a great job of picking hole in the wall type places where we wouldn't have to be too worried about our kids being the heathens that they occasionally are.

Zoom in on Aaron for some comic relief, because we couldn't snap a picture of me mispronouncing "pho" a bajillion times.

Oh, Isaac. 

The next stop was some cool tidepools. Getting there was a bit of an adventure- we were on the highway when I noticed that one of our tires had pressure down to 14psi. We took the next exit and put some air in at the first gas station we came to, then looked for a tire shop. There was a super well reviewed one only 3 minutes away. The guy pulled the nail out and patched it in 20 minutes for $20 and sent us on our way! It could have been a far bigger disaster than it was- luck was on our side this trip!

Rocks and water will always be my happy place. It was a perfect day to check out the tidepools. 

Aaron gets a shout out for carrying a squirmy Felix the whole time without busting an ankle on the loose rocks. 

Check out the colors of that anemone!

We hiked all the way to the far distant rocky outcropping. We had very disparate paces but all made it there and back in one piece. It was probably good for my 6 month pregnant self to have to go at a slow Isaac pace. 

Annie happily joined Max and Morgan's family picture

Look closely! Literally every crack in the rocks had a wee little crab hiding in it. They were so cute!

It turns out we couldn't get the wee crabs and Annie in focus at the same time, but I do love her face here, so it gets to be immortalized. 

Dinner that night was Aunty Mailie's Hawaiian food. We slept well that night!

Friday morning was spent at Griffith Park, which is HUGE! First we checked out what used to be the Griffith Zoo. It was a small zoo in operation from the late 1800's through the 1960's, when they built a bigger and better zoo nearby. They moved all the animals over, but decided to turn the nicely landscaped zoo exhibits into a park accessible by the public. They took down the fences so that you can walk straight into the old exhibits. Some even have picnic tables in them! 

"Rar, mom is making us take pictures in an abandoned zoo"

Here we are channeling the energy of the ancient polar bear that used to live here.

I think I win the monkey contest

My wild ones <3

Elliot was delighted to point out that I lied to them. I had promised there would be no animals there anymore, but there was a big, black stick bug living there (much to Felix's delight). I'll never live it down. 

Max took the big kids climbing up behind the exhibits to check out the zookeeper access staircases. Some police came up to talk to me and Morgan right after they started climbing, and we thought we were going to get in trouble. It turned out that the police were using the park for some bike training. They very politely asked us to move so that we wouldn't be hit by the very fresh recruits. Next time we will seek to be rebellious enough to have a more exciting police encounter. 

This is a good time to highlight some of the slides that Max made before the trip. They crack me up.

PS- the sandwiches were yummy.

After our abandoned zoo picnic, we drove to another corner of Griffiths park to see the observatory. There was a great view of the Hollywood sign and all of LA spread before us from this awesome vantage point!

I feel like we don't build pretty buildings like this anymore.

The entrance to the observatory had an elaborate mural painted on the dome ceiling. It features characters from celestial mythology. Aaron looked up at Saturn, the Titan who eats his lil' god children in Roman mythology, and decided it is a pretty accurate representation of Isaac at dinnertime grimacing at whatever torture we put into his bowl. 

The planetarium was refreshingly cool on a hot day! Felix wouldn't stay still though, and he fell while climbing lap to lap. I had to take him out partway through. I hear the rest of the show was inspirational. 

We headed home for some rest and naps, featuring the movie "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" to fill Annie's anime desires. It was actually super good. 

Note the taco related fun fact. Tacos Al Cabron had the most delicious potato-based Mexican food I have ever tasted, and I am bitterly disappointed that I can't find any recipes for what I ate there on the internet. 

Saturday morning featured the La Brea Tar Pits. This place is an active paleontology site with Ice Age fossils still being pulled from natural asphalt pits. There were multiple pits that we could stroll through, and the active excavation pit had a tally board with how many specimens they had excavated, broken down by species. 

Tar pits: the perfect mix of icky and fascinating. 

Snuggling up with the flat faced bear

This might look like a display you would see in a Foot Locker store, but it is actually a wall of dire wolf skulls from the pits!

This exhibit was a highlight of the museum. We all love a good feat of strength. 

I'm glad I don't live in the Ice Age with all the megafauna. The dioramas make mammoth hunting look quite daunting. 

Elliot is pretty sure he could hang with the saber toothed cats. 

Sorting some micro-fossils

There's an impressive greenhouse in the middle of the museum that is meant to be a Pleistocene Garden, representing plants some of the plants that have been found in the pits. The kids soon gathered up some unusual seed pods and flowers that had fallen on the path. 

Elliot with his Pleistocene plant collection

After a rest back at the house, we headed to Isaac's favorite part of the whole trip- Galcos! This is an old grocery store that was converted to be filled entirely with sodas and old fashioned candy. Max treated us to a soda each. 

Aaron was sad about Leninade, and about the sugar content consumed.

After our fizzy delights, we headed over to the Bob Baker Marionette Theater to watch a production called "Hooray LA." This ended up being a highlight of the trip! It was cool having it at the end and seeing many of the sites we had visited highlighted in the marionette show. It was a high quality show that both the adults and kids got a kick out of. 

These oil rig puppets were literally kicking. I was quite amused. Felix was obsessed with the birthday dog puppets and the bears that drove the little cars and kept asking for them to come back. 

Annie got her cheek stroked by the tail of the black cat

There were ghost puppets playing on bone xylophones as a shout-out to the La Brea Tar Pits.

There was an awesome playground with a snake slide right across the street from the theater that we had time to play at before heading over to our novel-flavored pizza dinner. 

Max is known for his love of ranking things, so he collected some data on our last night there. It was interesting seeing how split we were on lots of the activities! The La Brea Tar Pits was the most divisive stop- it was very highly ranked by me, Elliot, and Aaron, but at the very bottom of Max, Annie, and Isaac's rankings. The Marionette show was the the highest overall rated, followed by the Observatory and Tide Pools. 

We will surely be back again!