Queue up in California

In Britain they queue up. In the US we line up. Whichever way you look at it, when you come to southern California on a holiday weekend, you will find crowds everywhere. Here is a rundown of the rest of our visit to the coast, and the many people with which we queued up.



If anyone has traveled with us, they know we seldom leave on time on a road trip. But this time the planets were all aligned and we left Gilbert at 8:00 am as planned. The traffic was light and we made great time reaching the Embassy Suites in Glendale, CA around 3 pm. Dan remarked that he didn't think we had ever checked in that early.



We unloaded and then headed to nearby Pasadena so Bryce and Adam could see all the people camping out for a prime spot for the parade. When we had come to the Rose Parade 11 years ago, we had picked up dessert at the Cheesecake Factory on Colorado Blvd. It was our first experience with this delicious restaurant, so we returned to where it all began. This time since we were ahead of the New Years Eve rush, we had dinner and took our leftovers and cheesecake back to the hotel for later consumption. (That's the Cheesecake Factory in the top picture.)


Dan took this hazy picture of the moon because it is a "blue moon". You know the phrase "once in a blue moon"? Well, a blue moon is the "extra" full moon in years that have thirteen full moons. This doesn't happen very often, which is why the phrase "once in a blue moon" means something rarely happening. If you yearn for a more detailed explanation, look it up on http://www.wikipedia.com/ - our source of all truth (just kidding).


The next morning began our "standing in line" experience. Line 1 - First we stood in line for breakfast at the hotel. Actually it was only a short line because we were at breakfast at 6:30 am, and most of the rest of the hotel was there for the Rose Bowl not the Rose Parade.

Line 2 - Getting into the parking garage. Thankfully our tickets included parking passes closeby. So we parked and walked to our grandstand where we stood in ...

Line 3 - To get into the bleachers and to our seats where we watched the fabulous Rose Parade!

Line 4 - Getting out of the grandstands and walking in a continuous line to the parking garage where we were in ...

Line 5 - for almost an hour mostly sitting in our vehicle and then slowly winding our way out of the parking garage to the street, merging with other traffic and finally breaking free!

We headed back to the hotel for some down time, ate some leftovers and relaxed for a while before we headed back out.

We decided to visit Griffith Observatory which was not far from our hotel. We located it on the GPS, plugged it in as our destination and ventured forth blissfully unaware of more queues in our future.

We headed into Griffith Park and there it was...

Line 6 - a procession of cars heading for the observatory to catch the sunset. We realized halfway up the hill that we would probably just circle the parking lot, catch a quick glimpse of the skyline and head back down the hill, but we spotted handicapped parking available and slipped into a spot just steps from the observatory (see - there are silver linings in every cloud). We arrived in time for some lovely sunset photos.


Can you see the Hollywood sign in the background above Adam's head?

Dan and Adam in front of the Griffith Observatory as the sun slowly sets.

It was a spectacular sunset - and that's saying something since we live in Arizona where we see awesome sunsets on a regular basis. We enjoyed the sunset and then went inside to see an exhibit on meteorites. (We need to take the boys to Meteor Crater.) Then we headed back down the hill - surprise - no line, found some dinner and went back to the hotel for some relaxation and sleep.

The next day, Saturday, our plan was to see the floats up close. We already had tickets to the floats, but you have to take a shuttle to the viewing venue. We headed down to breakfast at a reasonable 8:30 am, and behold...

Line 7 - major lines in the breakfast area. We opted for the buffet line, got lucky in finding a table and ate our breakfast. We hopped in the truck and set out for the park and ride location where we found...

Line 8 - from the freeway to the parking lot. When we got to the lot, it was full and they sent us back to the parking garage where we had been for the parade (Oh, no, said Bryce & Adam in horror). But we snaked our way back (thank goodness for GPS) and found...

Line 9 - to get in the parking garage. We finally got in, parked and walked out to find the buses. What we found was...

Line 10 - about a 45 minute line to buy tickets to get on the shuttle, even though we already had tickets for the float viewing. Luckily, while Dan was asking a question about which line we were supposed to stand in, he was able to get our shuttle tickets, so we didn't have to be there the entire 45 minutes. But now that we had our tickets we were on to...

Line 11 - to get on the shuttle. Picture about 500 people weaving their way Disneyland-style around barriers to get on a continuous line of shuttle buses. Picture us with ever-patient Adam waiting about 45 minutes to get on said bus. This was the line from h-e-double hockey sticks! We played every game we know, talked about which floats we wanted to see up close, and generally endured to the end. On the up side, it was a lovely day with beautiful blue skies and no smog. We finally got on the bus and drove to the floats only to find ourselves in...

Line 12 - a long line of buses. So we waited to disembark. Once we got off the bus we walked down the road to the float viewing area to find a mass of humanity.

Can you believe the people? We couldn't either. But we decided we wanted to see the Boy Scout float up close. Armed with frozen lemonade and kettle corn popcorn (Line 13 & Line 14), we made our way past the floats, stopping to hear interesting tidbits about this one and that one. The fur on the teddy bear was brushed palm tree bark. It looked just like fur. The texture on the acorns on another float were pieces of pinecones. The wings on the airplane pictured below are covered in poppyseeds. Bryce decided there were enough poppyseeds on that airplane to make his favorite muffins (lemon poppyseed) for his entire lifetime.

We finally reached the BSA float. It was amazing up close. The detail is so precise. The scout insignia was incredible in its detail.

The float had a bicycle on it - a real bicycle - but it was covered in natural materials - seeweed, grass, moss, etc. Even the spokes were covered.

Here is a shot of Bryce under the eagle on the scout float. You can see the zip line at the top of the picture. As the float moved down the parade route, scouts were going down the zip line.

After viewing a few more floats, we were ready to head home. Back to...

Line 15 - to get back on the buses to go the parking garage where we got in...

Line 16 - to leave the garage and merge into traffic. We decided if we go back to the Rose Parade again, we will leave the post-parade viewing to others and try going to the pre-parade viewing when they are assembling the floats. At least 11 years ago, it wasn't crowded. Has anyone else had experience with that recently?

It was late in the afternoon, so we decided to combine lunch and dinner with a stop at Tito's Tacos in Culver City. Dan had been here with Dave Robinson many moons ago. We had eaten here on a couple of our trips to LA, and they have great food, but they also had...

Line 17 - evidence of their great food. The service was quick, but tables were scarce so we had a picnic in our truck.


From there we drove towards Santa Monica Pier with the intention of seeing the sunset and getting our feet sandy on the beach. But about a mile from the beach we encountered...


Line 18 - a long back up of cars filled with people with the same idea. We tried this road and that road, but we were met with traffic at each turn. Not to be deterred we continued to head west. We arrived just after sunset, but Dan, Bryce and Adam were still able to have a game of frisbee in the twilight with our glow-in-the-dark frisbee.




At this point we were ready for the comfort of our hotel room. So we pointed the GPS towards "home" but took a little side trip to see the Los Angeles Temple illuminated for the holidays.

Check out the red lights on this tree. The tree was enormous and it was covered with a netting of red lights.

After a good night's sleep, we went down for our last cooked to order breakfast (no line!) and then drove to church which was conveniently one-half mile down the road. Then back to the hotel to pack and hit the road for home.

Here are Adam and Bryce after church standing on cement squares in the middle of the fountain in the lobby of our hotel. Check out the fish.

We loaded up the truck, pressed HOME on the GPS and set sail for Arizona. We only ran into two more lines...

Line 19 - traffic back up on the freeway due to an accident, but not too bad. And ...

Line 20 - at In N Out Burger between Indio and Blythe. They did not live up to their name on this day. But we did a little experiment to pass the time. We answered the question - Is it faster to go through the drive thru or go inside? Choose the drive thru! We will next time too!

It was a lot of queueing up, but it was a fun time. The weather was gorgeous. The air was clear and the mountains were lovely. It's always fun to go to California. But next time we will try to choose an "off-season" time.