El Dorado Park

This park is right off one of the Long Beach bike paths.  I found the trees and plants there to be the most "Canadian" I'd seen here in California so far.  Of course, considering it's mid-February, I'm guessing they aren't actually very Canadian at all:

 

There are several nature trails, although most were closed for maintenance work.  Here's the wheelchair-accessible one:

  

Turtles seem to be the main claim to fame of this park.  Here are some of the guys hanging out at the turtle pond:

  

  

  

I don't know what this tree is called, but I liked the shaggy bark:

 

Long Beach bike ride

For a change of biking scenery, a bike-club friend and I drove down to Long Beach on Friday and did some biking on some of the pathways they have there.  Long Beach is at the south end of the city of Los Angeles.  They have quite a few bike paths down there.

This is taken from a bridge over one of the many marina areas:

 

In Los Angeles, I find bike paths are often located along flood spillways (is that the right word?), in industrial areas.  This is the Haynes steam plant, run by the L.A. Dept. of Water and Power:

  

Here's where two of the spillways converge, with the bike path running right alongside of it.  The photo doesn't do justice to how deadly a fall over that bank into the spillway would be- it's steep and deep, and would be very easy to fall in off the path if distracted.

  

There's a handy ramp for access down into the spillway, we went down and had a look:

  

Not much water in it right now, but there is some as it's been raining this month:

  

Looking the other way:

  

Alongside the spillway is a power corridor, and underneath it they've used the land for a plant nursery:

  

There are functioning oil wells along the bike path too (I know, it's not quite the nature experience one gets on an Ottawa bike path!  Interesting though!):

  

On our way from that bike path to the one that follows the ocean, we passed this tranquil (and deserted) little beach in an inlet, I think in the area called Naples:

  

Here's the big beach.  It's one of those huge wide beaches like the one that follows the west coast of Los Angeles:

  

Here's an island that's just offshore, there are a few of them out there.  Not sure what the structures on the island are:

  

Condos and buildings along the beach, close to the Long Beach downtown:

  

Here's part of the Long Beach port, looking into the setting sun so the photo isn't the greatest.  The port there is huge:

  

We also hiked a short nature trail at El Dorado park, stay tuned and I'll put up the photos from that in a separate post.

Coniferous cellphone tower

This one's along the 110 highway south of downtown, there are a couple like this down that way.  Spindly, but still, hides the tower pretty well.

When pink flamingos just won't cut it

I've biked by this house at Clifton Way and Doheny Drive in Beverly Hills several times, but must have been distracted by traffic each time.  There are life-size sculptures of African animals peering out from behind the fence.  Not just a token one of each, either.  I counted at least 3 giraffes, 3 elephants and I think five lions.

The fence gives an interesting impression of containing them... I'm sure it helps deter frat boys from lugging them away too.

 

  

 

The Getty museum

Not to be confused with the Getty Villa, the Getty museum (same rich dude benefactor, same type of art) is on top of the mountains that overlook west Los Angeles.

I'd been meaning to go for a while, but every time I had a plan to go it rained, and since it has gardens I preferred to wait for a dry day.  True to habit, it rained again last Friday, but since I only have a couple of weeks left in L.A., I figured I'd better go.

The rain and fog made for interesting conditions for seeing the buildings themselves- usually they are surrounded by a spectacular view (so they say, I couldn't verify), but today the landscape dropped away at the edges of the complex, disappearing into rain and thin fog.  It was kind of surreal.  The architecture is beautiful, so here are some photos of the buildings.  They're very well laid out so that you catch interesting little views of the buildings and of the scenery (on days it's visible) at every window and passage.

You park part way down the mountain (it would be very hard to get to this museum by bike or on foot), and then this trolley takes you the rest of the way up the mountain to the museum:

 

Here are some photos of the various pavilions of the museum.  The curves on the entrance pavilion remind me of the museum of Civilization in Ottawa:

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

I would have loved to have had lunch at the cafe below- if it hadn't been raining!

  

 Here's one of the gardens as seen from a terrace:

 

The art is mostly European stuff.  They have some furniture on display too, set up to look like rooms from a European palace.  I liked the piece below, it looks like it has it's own movers built right into it:

  

This is a reproduction of a tomb cover from somewhere in Germany, it shows the dead woman and her baby breaking out of the tomb for resurrection... weird, but cool!

  

Here's one of the interesting beds they have on display- huge, yet quite short in the lying-down direction.  People were littler back then.  It's wired to the ceiling too, I guess in case of earthquakes:

  

They had interesting displays on manuscripts, and on how bronze statues are cast, among other stuff.  I really enjoyed it- I'm usually lukewarm on the European stuff, but this museum has short, readable write-ups posted beside each painting or artifact, so you don't need a degree in art history or any sense of pretension to know what you're looking at, and what's interesting about it.

Yesterday's rain clouds at sunset

 

I never tire of the view from my apartment.  Yesterday was another rainy day, and the clouds at sunset, as the rain was clearing, were beautiful and dramatic.

 

This is where I spend my time

There's a reason why I don't do as much hiking and biking as I thought I would when I came to Los Angeles for the winter.  In two words:  outdoor pool.  I don't have that in Canada, so I feel I have to make use of every nice day here to swim, and as previously discussed, the days are mostly nice.

My apartment complex has a great pool.  You have to pay an extra $39 a month to use it, but I don't find that very annoying since I'm sure it helps to keep the crowds down.  During the week it's usually not too crowded, and weekend evenings are generally OK too.

It's heated, pretty much everything is in California.  It's half-olympic sized, so you can swim lengths.  Oh, and there are actually two large pools, one for laps and one for free swim.  It has a wonderful hot tub too, and one things about hot tubs down here... they're HOT!  I'm on the verge of slipping into unconsiousness within 5 minutes, but still, it's lovely for the first 4.5 minutes.

I find that with a heated pool, that as long as the air temperature is somewhere above 60F (15C) it's fine for swimming.  Which means most days are fine for swimming, if it's not raining.  I swam once here in the rain and found it a bit wet... I know, I know...

Here are some photos below, I didn't take these, I borrowed them from the apartment's website (shhh... don't tell!).

Below is the free swim pool, with the corner of the hot tub (they call them "spas" here) seen at the right.

 

Both pools have these little cabanas for shade, although most folks seem to lounge in the sun:

  

This is the lap pool, but without the lane dividers in (I guess they figured it makes a more aesthetic shot without them).  It has five lanes and a smaller undivided section too, where people can just bounce around and pool walk and stuff.

  

Another view of the free swim pool.  Not bad, eh?  I find it very resort-like by my standards.  It's heaven for a Canadian who likes to swim.

 

Clouds from the week of rain

 

This pic is actually from Jan. 22, I forgot to post it back then as I got distracted by San Luis Obispo.  This was taken on the morning of day 5 of our week of rain in January.  I liked those bright white clouds lurking at the base of the mountains.

Cool conifer

 

I'd never noticed this tree before at the Redondo beach pier.  It's a conifer, but gives the impression at first glance of being a palm crossed with a Christmas tree.  Then it reminded me of an artificial Christmas tree missing most of it's branches.   I don't know if they pruned it to look like that or if it got into that state by natural means.

Black Hill, Morro Bay

Before driving back to Los Angeles I did the short hike up Black hill, a volcanic peak in a State park on the outskirts of Morro Bay.  It has a great view of the town, the bay, the sandspit and estuary, and the morros that surround the town (morro means rounded hill, these are volcanic, maybe all morros are).  Everything is a lush green at this time of the year.

It was very overcast, so the photos aren't great.  Here's Morro rock on the way up:

A view of the estuary through the trees:

 

Here's the sand spit:

 

One of the lush green valleys in between the hills:

 

One of the morros is called Hollister peak, I'm not sure if this is it, but this is what the morros look like anyway:

 

The town from the summit of the hill.  Morro Bay is a cute beach town, not very big.