Ryan and Debi Cragun’s Blog

I got up very early, around 5:30, to hit the road for Flagstaff, where I was to meet up with Tom and Mark, my hiking buddies, in preparation for our hike of Humphrey’s Peak the next day. I left around 7:00 and managed to avoid the worst of the LA traffic, which, by this point, all of the non LA residents had fully realized must be the worst traffic in the world (imagine pulling into a parking lot, parking, then having the parking lot move about 2 mph for the next, well, forever, and you’ve got the feeling; better yet, just watch the Gridlock episode from the new Doctor Who).

I made pretty good time, setting my cruise control to about 85 most of the way (don’t tell Avis). Note: Don’t ever stop in Needles, CA for gas - they are a total rip off. Plan to drive straight from LA to Flagstaff, if possible, as gas is cheaper in both locations.

Anyway, I arrived a bit early, as I intended, as Brent, Debi’s brother-in-law, suggested I visit the Barringer Meteor Crater while in Flagstaff. On a space/science kick after Griffith Observatory, I planned to fit it in. I swung through Flagstaff around 3:00 and made it to the crater visitor’s center around 3:45. As I was driving I began noticing signs for the crater that looked like, well, commercial signs. I was kind of surprised by this as I figured a crater would most likely be part of a national park or something. Nope, it’s privately owned and run like a business. Entry to see the crater costs $15 and there is a Subway inside the visitor’s center. I was particularly impressed/disturbed by the uniforms of the people working there. They looked identical to those of national park rangers except for a patch on the arm that said “Meteor Crater.” As for the science and museum exhibits, after seeing Griffith Observatory, I was a bit disappointed. Even the brochure they gave me (for my $15) was cheaply made (a tri-folded 8.5 x 11 piece of paper printed on a cheap printer). Anyway, enough about the visitor’s center…

The crater itself is amazing. It’s huge and shocking to see the damage something from space can do. Granted it was a big something, but it wasn’t really that big (see the Wikipedia link above). I just missed a crater rim tour/hike, but probably couldn’t have done it anyway as I had to get back to Flagstaff to meet Tom and Mark (at least, so I thought).

Here’s a pretty cool panorama of the crater (in Quicktime format).

Thinking I had to be at our meeting location in downtown Flagstaff at 5:00, I didn’t spend a lot of time at the visitor’s center. We agreed to meet at a vegetarian friendly restaurant in Flagstaff called Mountain Oasis. It had good reviews on Yahoo and we all needed dinner, so we decided to give it a whirl. On my way back into Flagstaff Mark called to inform me that Tom was not feeling well and that they were making frequent stops at restrooms all the way from Salt Lake to Flagstaff. As a result, they were running almost 2 hours late. Not sure what to do, I headed back to Flagstaff and looked for an internet connection to pass the time.

I first tried the Barnes & Noble, but they no longer have free wi-fi. I pulled out my trusty handheld with wi-fi-fo-fum and did a little wardriving. Downtown Flagstaff has dozens of wi-fi networks, many of them not protected. I took my laptop to the town square, just across from Mountain Oasis, and borrowed someone’s connection for about an hour to check my email and get some more information about campsites in the area. Whoever’s connection I borrowed, thanks! Tom and Mark arrived around 6:30 or so. After finding a parking spot we headed to Mountain Oasis.

Tom was really suffering, so much so that all he could do is nibble on some crackers. Mark and I, however, really liked the food. After catching up for a while over dinner, we headed to Albertson’s to get our foodstuffs for the hike the next day. We were then planning on heading up to a campground, but Tom suggested he might be more comfortable in a hotel. Considering the circumstances, that made sense. So, we stopped at a nasty Travelodge on the eastern edge of town and booked a room (2610 E. Rt. 66; Flagstaff, AZ 86004 - don’t stay here, it’s nasty!). After a few chess matches (Tom won them all, even in his delirious state), we crashed for the night. Well, sort of… Tom continued to need to use the bathroom frequently, switching from rear exit to vomiting about half way through the night. It was pretty rough.

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We spent most of the morning picking up Debi’s sister, Suzy, and her husband and baby, Brent and Ethan, respectively, along with picking up cars and arranging transportation. Debi’s parents rented a mini-van, which I drove most of the time. But with Suzy et al. there, we didn’t have enough room in the mini-van. And since I needed a car to drive to Arizona anyway (see next post), we ended up renting a second car, giving Brent the wheel of the mini-van and I drove the car. After getting all the transportation arranged we headed to the Getty Villa, in Malibu. I had heard of the Getty Museum, but not of the Getty Villa. For those who don’t know what it is, it’s an amazing recreation of a Roman Villa. It’s enormous, beautiful, and remarkable. It is filled with all sorts of Classical artifacts, mostly from Rome (most are between 1800 and 2600 years old), but also from a few other places. Here are a couple pictures to illustrate just how beautiful it is:

We spent a few hours here learning about Roman architecture and history. We then headed back to the hotel then out to dinner at a Persian restaurant called Javan. It was okay, but different. I think I would have liked a different dish than what I ordered, but so it goes. The dessert I had, a coconut mango ice cream, was awesome. That about wrapped things up for Day 3.

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This was our second full day in LA. We stayed in a nice two bedroom, two bath condo in downtown Santa Monica that could sleep 8 (though a little awkwardly). At this point it was still only Debi’s parents, Gary and Rosemary, Steve, Debi, and me. We had tickets to the Griffith Observatory in the afternoon. I didn’t know much about the observatory but I’m always interested in all things science, so was excited to go. We actually hiked up above it the day before (see the previous post on hiking the Hollywood Sign), so I knew it was in Griffith Park (that makes sense, doesn’t it?), but the road up there is closed and you now have to catch a bus from the LA Zoo to get to the Observatory. So, we headed to the Zoo and caught our bus.

The Observatory is perched high up above downtown LA and has great views of the city (well, kind of; it’s more like “great views of smog”). But the observatory itself is very cool and well done. It has a number of great exhibits and they are all very nice. Based on the non-expert opinions of a PhD in Physics, a PhD in Sociology, and two individuals with Master’s degrees (Debi and her Mom), the science was very accurate. It was apparent that they had consulted with actual scientists on their presentations. I particularly liked the “Centered in the Universe” show in the Samuel Oschin Planetarium, which discussed the origins of the universe and illustrated just how small this little rocky planet is in relation to everything else. It was awesome!

Unfortunately, we didn’t have a lot of time to spend at the observatory as I scheduled dinner with my extended family later that evening. My well-known uncle and his almost as well known family members found time in their extremely busy schedule to have dinner with Debi and me. They live in Malibu and took us to a great little Italian place where we met up with my cousins and their kids. We had a wonderful dinner with great conversation, even though my cousin, Matt, was suffering from an extremely swollen hand from a bee sting. That was really the only downer to a wonderful night.

(Note: I’m not one for star sightings as I believe they are just regular people, like you and me, but I have to mention who ate dinner next to us and stopped by our table for any Star Trek fans out there. Rick Berman stopped by to congratulate my cousin on his role in a new TV series. Rick Berman was the god of all things Star Trek for decades. After he sat back down at his table, Brent Spiner stopped by and had dinner with him. Brent Spiner is better known as “Data” in the Star Trek universe. Again, if it had been any other stars, I probably would not have cared, but these were Star Trek actors. Paparazzi even chased some star later that night; I have no idea who that person was and don’t care.)

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Now playing: U2 - Gone [New Mix]
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I was reading the local paper Monday morning when I happened upon a notice that Mitt Romney was holding an “Ask Mitt Anything” meeting in Tampa that same day at 5:30 (like 5 minutes from our house). We’ve been swamped getting all of our stuff moved into our house in Tampa, getting ready for the classes we’ll be teaching soon, and getting ready for a short trip to California. But we didn’t want to pass up on a chance to see Mitt Romney spout his anti-working class ideas in person. Even though I knew there was absolutely no way I’d ever vote for him before I went (e.g., he opposes civil liberties for people he doesn’t like - like habeas corpus - and is anti-choice), if there was even a smidgen of truth to the idea that you could literally ask him anything I had a few questions I thought would be fun to ask. So, we headed to La Teresina Restaurant in Tampa around 5:00 pm to see if we could get a seat. It was pretty full, and the local media were there in full force, but we got a decent seat. I came with three questions prepared:
-Why does Mitt think atheists and agnostics are unfit to be President of the US? (see his quote here)
-Why does he not value civil liberties like habeas corpus? (he wants to double the size of Guantanamo Bay Cuba, where habeas corpus is not a right and people are unethically, immorally, and unjustly imprisoned without the right to challenge their imprisonment)
-And how would he reconcile his law of consecration temple covenant (which basically says that he will put Mormonism first, always) with his duty to uphold the Constitution if elected President? (this is the question the media doesn’t seem knowledgeable enough to ask him)

Not surprisingly, I was not afforded the opportunity to grill him. The meeting was supposed to start at 5:30. He arrived around 6:00. There were four or five questions asked in the short 45 minute meeting, all of which seemed basically canned. One guy even asked, “How can my wife and I help you in your campaign?” It was pretty pathetic, frankly. Everything he said, regardless of how inane, was accompanied by waves of applause and people waving signs. They even tried to put a sticker on me as I arrived to indicate I supported Mitt – that didn’t last. I took it off before I even got inside the main room to find my seat.

So, why don’t I support Mitt? It’s not that he isn’t a personable guy. To get this far in a presidential campaign you have to be personable. He seems nice enough. He’s also good looking and looks very healthy for a 60 year-old. What do I have against him?

Here are a few of the positions Mitt staked out:
-He wants to increase the size of the military by 100,000 troops and increase military funding, claiming there are lots of “bad people” out there. He didn’t say where the money would come from nor why we need that many troops, but he insisted on this (probably because Tampa is a military town; MacDill AFB is just south of the city)
-He wants to make George W. Bush’s tax cuts permanent, get rid of taxes paid by the middle-class on investment income, and abolish the estate tax (which he, of course, referred to as the “death tax”).
-He wants any convicted sex offender to serve a very harsh sentence and then be tagged with a GPS tracking system for life (honestly, I’m not making that up).
-He wants to continue the war in Iraq indefinitely.
-He has no idea what to do about Israel and Palestine (someone asked him that), but he knows the words ‘Hamas,’ ‘Fatah,’ and ‘independent state.’
-He wants to strengthen families by magically reversing the growing trend of women having children outside of wedlock (little statistical tidbit for you – about 30% of births in the U.S. today are to unmarried women, but many of them are cohabiting with essentially permanent partners; this pales in comparison to the percentages in Western Europe, and I and most other demographers don’t really see it as a problem).
-He wants to “give people control” over their social security retirement by instituting personal retirement accounts. This one is pretty obvious for someone like Mitt who made his millions running an investment firm – investment companies would make trillions of dollars off such a deal, while leaving the average American hung out to dry making poor investments while the wealthy get wealthier.

Basically, I don’t agree with pretty much anything he said. His positions are so contrary to the needs of everyone but the upper middle class and the wealthy that it would be a terrible shame for the working class and the poor to have this man as President. He didn’t mention the poor once. Not once. He didn’t suggest anything that would help the poor. Another fascinating element of this meeting was the fact that there were virtually no racial or ethnic minorities there. I know there was one Hispanic person there because he was a “dignitary,” a current state representative, Trey Traviesa. But I don’t recall seeing a single black person nor another Hispanic person (and virtually no Asians, either). That’s pretty remarkable considering the meeting was in a Mexican restaurant in Tampa, where the Hispanic population is increasing by leaps and bounds. You can’t throw a wiffle ball into the wind in Tampa without someone saying “Hola!” to you and offering you authentic Hispanic cuisine (both of my neighbors are Hispanic and and the person who lives across the street is Asian). Yet, no minorities. Hmmm… I wonder why? Maybe because Mitt Romney is the perfect presidential candidate for the super rich and, like George W. Bush, doesn’t care about poor people.

Mitt also didn’t have anything nice to say about the Democratic Presidential candidates. He verbally insulted Hillary, Obama, and John Edwards on multiple occasions, resorting to ad hominems and insults rather than reasoned and intelligent commentary on their positions and ideas. I was appalled.

In short, here’s my current take on Mitt Romney for President: Mitt is slick and attractive and wealthy. His policies would favor white, wealthy people. If that sounds like something that interests you, go for it. But if you are interested in equality, opportunity, and new ideas (see Debi’s comments below), Mitt’s not your man.

In the interest of offering a slightly different take on the meeting, I grilled Debi about her experience. Here are her thoughts:

What do cabbage, cauliflower, Mitt Romney, and George W. Bush have in common? According to Mark Twain, “a cauliflower is nothing but a cabbage with a college education” (meaning it has been cultivated). The same is true of Mitt Romney and George W. Bush – Mitt Romney basically thinks everything that George W. Bush does (i.e., he has the same DNA, like the cauliflower), but Mitt Romney can string these terrible ideas together in a way that makes them sound slick and well-rehearsed, unlike George Bush’s broken, stuttering sentences. In short, Mitt Romney is a cultivated George W. Bush.

One of the first things he said was, “I’ll get rid of the death tax.” At that minute I knew where his priorities lay… Mitt Romney is a multi-millionaire who wants to pass his money to his kids. He repeated this assertion a number of times. Make no bones about it, Mitt Romney is a big-money Republican.

Additionally, Mitt wants to implement the same social security personal retirement accounts as George W. Bush. It really is the same ideas with just slightly prettier and more eloquent packaging.

Update 9/17/2007:
I forgot to include the pictures I took with my crappy cellphone camera. This first one is of the setting before Mitt arrived. It turned out clear, so I thought I’d post it.

This one is of Mitt. Like I said, my cellphone camera sucks.

We flew in to LA the day before, August 7th, flying out of Orlando (flights were very cheap from Orlando). We spent the evening visiting with Scott, Shalynn, and their new baby boy, Anderson. We then picked up Steve later that night. So, the 8th was our first full day.

And there we were, in Los Angeles, looking for fun stuff to do when I noticed on Frommer’s website that you can hike up to the Hollywood sign. I haven’t spent that much time in LA as an adult and haven’t done much in the area. In fact, I had never even taken a picture of the Hollywood sign. But I, like pretty much everyone else in the world, recognized it. Since I enjoy hiking, I figured hiking to the actual sign would be fun… or at least memorable. Debi and her younger brother Steve agreed, so we decided to give it a go.

Frommer’s website includes some directions, but I wanted to be sure, so I searched around for a couple more guides with Steve’s help. We came up with a few possible locations for the trailhead, which was a disturbing sign in and of itself as it seemed there wasn’t a consensus as to where the trail actually began. We should have realized that was foreshadowing the experience, but in our excitement we pressed on.

We first headed to Griffith park as one website claimed the trailhead was just opposite Red Oak
Dr. Just opposite Red Oak Dr. in Griffith Park there are a number of trail heads, but none of them gave any indication that they went to the Hollywood Sign and they all seemed to head the wrong direction. This option was a bust. We asked a few people around there if they knew where a trailhead was for the Hollywood Sign, but to no avail. Apparently LA natives don’t climb to the sign, which I should have recognized as clue number two that this probably wasn’t a great idea.

Steve called Scott at this point to see if he could find some better directions online. Meanwhile, I remembered the set of directions on the Frommer’s website. That one suggested we follow Canyon Drive to the end and then follow Brush Canyon Trail. We were using a GPS system for navigation and weren’t sure where Canyon Drive was, but I headed back down to Franklin Ave and followed that west until I found it. We followed Canyon Drive all the way up to the end only to find a private camp called Camp Hollywoodland. That seemed like it might hold some potential as a place to start hiking at it was the right direction and the sign originally said “Hollywoodland,” but the entrance was guarded by a number of ‘no trespassing’ signs, which would soon become a common sight.

We did see one, unmarked, trailhead but were a little skeptical as it also seemed to head in the opposite direction of the Hollywood sign. Before we set out on the path we saw a couple walking down. Debi asked them where it led and they said to a cave. Last time I checked
the Hollywood sign wasn’t in a cave. At this point I was beginning to think that Frommer’s just asked someone where they thought the trailhead was without verifying it. I was getting frustrated by the whole experience.

Without any other options, we asked that same couple if they knew where the trailhead was to get to the Hollywood Sign. One of them seemed to actually have a clue and suggested we follow N Beachwood Dr. until it ends and then go from there. One source Scott consulted suggested that might be where the trailhead was, so we gave it a try. Without any other options, we dropped back down to Franklin Ave and headed west to Beachwood - attempt #3.

The third time was, in fact, the charm (kind of; turns out you could probably hike this from a lot of places, if you still think it’s worth it after you finish reading this). We were still skeptical that this was the place as there were a number of signs indicating that the road at the end of Beachwood led to a private horse ranch. We drove up past the end of Beachwood Dr. anyway and found a small sign indicating this was a location where you could join the Hollyridge Trail. There was parking there for about ten cars. The trail sounded right and there were a lot of tourist-types there, so we figured we may be on the right track. We coated ourselves with sunscreen then headed up the trail.

About 200 yards in there was a pretty good view of the Hollywood Sign and this was, in fact, as far as most people seemed to be hiking. There were a lot of people there taking pictures like this one of Steve:

We snapped a few photos then continued up the trail. Steve read somewhere the trail split, so we were watching for that, and came to a few forks. Here’s basically what we found. There is a horse ranch just a bit further up the road from the trail head. The horse ranch has a small side trail that leads up to the Hollyridge Trail and they use it too. The Hollyridge trail intersects with Mulholland Hwy, which is a bizarre, narrow dirt road at times and also a paved road at times. We followed Mulholland Hwy, as this map indicates, until it intersected with Mt. Lee Dr. We didn’t know it at the time, but Mt. Lee Dr. actually goes all the way up to the cellphone towers above the Hollywood sign, which you can see in the photo of Steve above.

We continued on Mulholland Hwy, which was paved from here until we ran into the houses. Yes, you read that right, houses. We hiked past a water tower and turned a corner to run into a guy talking on his cell phone next to some fairly nice houses. We were confused. Here we were hiking to see what was supposed to be an amazing view and there were houses here… Lots of them!!! Just then, the mailman pulled up and delivered the mail to these homes. That basically ruined the whole hike for us - there was a mailman delivering mail where we had just spent the last hour hiking to reach. Confused, we followed Mulholland Hwy into the yards of the houses (I’m really not making this up, see the next picture) and followed it until we hit some more signs.

Here are the yards:

Here are Debi and Steve walking through them:

In the above photo you can see the cars. We literally were walking right past houses. We eventually got to these signs:

In case you can’t read it, they say “RESTRICTED ENTRY; MOUNTAIN FIRE DISTRICT; NO HIKING ALLOWED TO THE HOLLYWOOD SIGN; VIOLATORS SUBJECT TO ARREST AND $103 FINE; LAMC. 57.25.21 (B); TRESPASSING & LOITERING FORBIDDEN BY LAW.”

We couldn’t quite figure out why the fine was exactly $103, but so be it. This is as far as you can hike. And here is the view from this spot:

Yep, those are houses and vehicles not 50 feet from the end of the hike. LAME!!!! As luck would have it, we also found some used paraphernalia next to the sign, including a used tampon. That was a fitting cap to a bizarre hike. Frommer’s should actually send someone on this hike before they recommend it. Yes, you get a nice view of the sign and even some good views of downtown LA and the Griffith Observatory, but you can’t actually hike to the Hollywood Sign. In fact, in a short side trip we found nine video cameras that are accompanied by a loudspeaker that seem poised to tell people hiking to the sign to get the hell off the mountain:

These are right next to the water tower and the loudspeaker is pointed right at the sign. Not all was lost on this hike, though, as we did get some decent pictures by the sign:

The benefit to getting this close, I guess, is that you can stand in front of all the cellphone towers right next to the sign and block them out. Otherwise, this hike is pretty stupid, as the picture below symbolically illustrates:

Looking at things with the help of the hybrid view on Google Maps I now see that you could hike Brush Canyon Trail, which begins at the end of Canyon Dr., up to Mulholland Hwy, but it looked like it was blocked off when we were there. And if you were really interested in punishment you could probably start from the trail head near Red Oak Dr., follow that up to Mt. Hollywood Dr (which leads to the Griffith Observatory), then follow that to Mulholland Fire Rd., which connects back up with Mulholland Hwy. That would result in probably a 10 to 15 mile hike just to see the view from the back of someone’s house, which you can probably drive to anyway. In short, don’t waste your time - this is a pretty lame hike (though the company was good).

Later that night we hooked up with Scott and headed to the Hollywood Bowl (taking a bus, as parking was insane) to see a Jazz concert. I’m not a huge fan of Jazz, but I recognized some of the names being thrown around and the ambiance of the enormous Hollywood Bowl amphitheater was cool. We saw a tribute to Benny Carter, hosted by Quincy Jones. It was very good, even if I didn’t recognize all of the assuredly famous people playing. We took Subway sandwiches and blankets and had a good time - I even got some guy kicked out for smoking like a chimney. Anyway, it was a nice way to cap off our first day in LA.

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Now playing: U2 - Stay (Faraway, So Close!)
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