Author: rcragun

My Uncle, Stan Winston, offered to let my extended family take a tour of his studio while we were out there. I’m always hesitant to ask, as I know Stan is extremely busy. But most of my family was interested, so we took him up on his offer. What’s more, my cousin, Matt, offered to…

We thought we might be touring my Uncle’s studio today, so we got kind of a late start. Also, Ethan seemed to be coming down with something – he had a temperature and was crying for much of the night. We ended up scheduling the tour for Tuesday, but with everything else going on we…

Mark and I woke up around 5:45 to get ready for the hike. Tom, well, Tom had been up all night anyway and was semi-awake when we got up. For those who don’t know the intimate details of our trio, Tom may not do the most hiking of the bunch (Mark and I probably hike…

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,…

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…

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…

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…