Sunday Drive

We went a' motoring this Sunday. It was a beautiful day for a drive, and, as if it were the 1920s and autos were novelties, we took to ours and hit the road.

We drove the Mulholland Scenic Corridor, the route along a mountain ridge in the northern section of Los Angeles. Named for an early water commissioner, Mulholland Drive is an iconic street that connects the mountains to the beaches. Well, that was the plan anyway, but today there's construction and dirt sections, and it disappears in Bel Air somewhere.

We drove from our place in Long Beach up the 710 to downtown LA, switched to the 101, got off at the Hollywood Bowl and picked up Mulholland. We proceeded to follow it all the way west past the 405, got stuck in Bel Air, then found our way to Ventura Blvd, and followed it to Topanga Canyon, and came down to the PCH, and weaved our way home.

It started out strange, though. The past few days have been loud with non-commercial air traffic, and today was no different, with these two loud helicopters roaring overhead as we first entered the freeway:

There are some cool lookouts to which we plan on taking our next set of visitors. I've got some pictures.

This is from the first lookout west of 101 along Mulholland Drive. It's a pretty clear shot of downtown LA, with the Hollywood Bowl mostly cropped out of this picture. It's in the lower right-hand quadrant, and you could hear musicians practicing. It soudned pretty cool, ethereal classical music instead of Hwy 101 prominently in the picture.

This lookout was crawling with tourists, tourists buses, a limo, and a gang of German bikers. It was wacky. Also visible from here is Griffith Observatory, off to the left (not pictured).

Here's that same shot with a little more magnification. Easier to see is the iconic Capital Records building in Hollywood in the foreground.

The next stop on our voyage was the Universal City overlook. This was less than a mile away, but looking the other way from the Hollywood hills we were driving along. If you can see close enough, you'll see the NBC studios, Universal Studios amusement park, and the Disney Burbank animation studios, all planted in the same few square miles on this side of these mountains. Just a few short miles along 101 and you're heading straight into downtown LA

Those weren't the only crazy things we saw. When there was a wild traffic jam at 1:25 on a Sunday afternoon, we thought it was just that particularly shitty stretch of highway. Turns out:

There was no blood or gore, just some nervous looking folks.

Then, as we passed right through the heart of LA on the 101, there's this cool structure across the highway from the LA Cathedral. Corrie said it's part of a high school, and that inside is a cool viewing spot. I'll say. I was kind of impressed with this shot, taken right from the speeding car:

While driving along Topanga Canyon Road, there's a moment where the air noticeably changes; it becomes more crisp, and the dense hotness has vanished. To us that made sense. "On the beach side now," Corrie said when at one point. In no less than two more turns, the canyon that had surrounded us opened up to this view:

We turned left down the PCH at that point and say this crazy building sitting up on a hill:

That turns out to be the Getty Villa, part of the Getty's various museum properties in the Santa Monica mountains.

This was a trip I'd been wanting to take for some time, and I'm glad we got to go today. I'm thinking it would be best on the first clear day after a rain, when the air's been cleaned and you might be able to see all the way out to Long Beach.

And, lastly, poking out on center, the Observatory: