Watson's Road Trip 2008!: Days 15 and 16

Sorry for the delay. It has been a bit of a whirlwind. So, Monday the car check engine light lit up like I said. After the repair, Jennifer and I headed northwest up the coast to Malibu Creek State Park to camp out. The pictures above are from the park. The landscape was gorgeous like most of California. And we had some squirrel type creatures living in some rocks next to our tent, which Jennifer liked because they were cute.
So, we set up the tent and got to camping. I had foreseen a logistical difficulty that I had yet to figure out how to overcome. I had a tent, a ground cover in the form of a tent. But I only
had one sleeping bag and one foam pad. I set these out, and we tried to split them. Jennifer was on the inside, and I got whatever sleeping bag was left. I figured that I could at least keep her warm that way. That part worked a little too well. It probably got down to 50 degrees that night. But with a holo-fil sleeping bag, she kept getting out of the bag because she was hot. I, meanwhile, was cold. So, I put my zip up sweatshirt and black army jacket with liner on. That took care of my upper body. I was able to zip the bag halfway up and that took care of my legs. After a while, Jennifer was able to find some temperature equilibrium and stay in the bag. Goodnight, sleep tight, right? wrong. Being in California, the hippie quotient is slightly higher than the rest of the nation, and being in a campground only amplified that. In the campsite across the road were a group of about four Japanese young people. They had all bought some musical shakers on rope. These devices looked like two round wooden balls on about six inches of rope. They would hold one of the balls, and swing the other one out of their hand, off the back of their hand, and back to click on the ball they were holding. And they did this in a rhythm. for many hours. Well, since it was rhythmic, I was OK with it. I could sleep through it. What I couldn't sleep through was the other people in the campsite 50 yards away. Apparently they were not Japanese, but from some uncharted South Pacific island, because at about 9PM, they broke out many drums. like tribal conga drums. a bunch of them. And they quickly became friends with the Japanese people and began to have a jam session. Budda budda, budda budda, budda budda, smack! Budda budda, smack! on and on. We drifted in and out of sleep for about three hours, waiting for Kong to come and claim someone from the campsite. Around midnight, the drums stopped. Kong had made off with Fae Ray at last. Even so, the rest of the night passed pretty poorly. Camping with two people sharing one bag and one pad sucks. I guess we made out better than it sounds like. I cant' speak for Jennifer, but I probably got about 5 hours of sleep.

The next morning, Jennifer and I got up, showered (luckily there were coin operated showers), packed everything up, and headed back into town. First stop: the Getty. The Getty is a museum named for oil Wildcat tycoon John Paul Getty. He bought 700 acres of land in LA, got renowned architect Richard Meier to design a campus and poured about $1 billion into the project. And it turned out beautifully. Here are some pictures:

This one looks like some sort of side scrolling Space Invaders game to me:

Jennifer and I want this fountain as a swimming pool in out backyard, but the HOA would nix it. I was a total redneck about it too, "Man, we need that thing in our backyard."
"Yeah!"
"Make it about two feet deeper, get some floating lawn chairs and a floating cooler filled with beer..."
"Ha ha ha!":

While at the Getty, we saw an exhibit called, "Imagining Christ." It was an exhibition of art from bibles and prayer books that dated back as far as the 1100's. It was very interesting to see books that old.
After the Getty, we ventured into Hollywood. We did a driving tour of Hollywood Boulevard. That is the street with all the famous theaters and the walk of fame. Also on that street was the Whisky A Go-Go, for all you rockers. It was in a much nicer area of town from what I had expected it to be. Here are some of the pictures we took:

Graumann's Chinese Theater through the windshield. It was mobbed with people. This is the one that has all the hand prints of a bunch of famous actors:

don't know what this one is of. It was on Hollywood Blvd, though:

El Capitan, again through the windshield:

Scientology! Aaaaah! Stay away! tin foil hats!

more random Hollywood Blvd:

Capitol Records building:

And that was it.

And on to the Queen Mary. Jennifer found this somehow. And it was a really great addition to the trip. It was in service from 1936 to 1967. And it supposed haunted. We explored the ship after checking in and I took pictures down in the engine room, hoping to get a ghost on film. Evidently, ghosts can tell the difference between digital cameras and analog film cameras, because no ghosts made themselves known, either to the naked eye or on camera. There were a couple of spots that were roped off and had no lights on that were creepy. And the propeller box was creepy, but I was generally unimpressed. But the hallways did remind us of "The Shining." Thankfully, there were no twin little girls or a boy on a big wheel anywhere to be seen.

the spooky engine room:

supposedly, down this corridor, a ghost of a man has been seen looking for a wrench.

giant nuts!

this was probably the creepiest thing we saw, partly because it was so unexpected. They cut a hole in the side of the ship and boxed off the propeller for viewing. It is 18ft tall and weighs 35 tons. The perspective of walking into a room and looking over a rail into a pool of water and seeing that was very strange: