2014 - July 24th-28th - Kendall & Jordan Vacation

Our annual vacation time bringing the kids in to stay and have some fun was July 24th thru July 28th for Kendall & Jordan. This year, we had many new adventures that were selected from Auntie Carrie's book of 100 Things To Do In Los Angeles. We picked up Kendall and Jordan Thursday afternoon after Jordan completed her math final in summer school where she scored an A getting a jump on her new high school adventure this Fall! When we arrived in Los Angeles, our first adventure was stopping at the Time Travel Mart, #54 in the book. This is a retail store which is part of the non-profit organization that teaches children writing. During the summer the kids attend free and write creative stories and books that are published by the 826LA non-profit. All of the merchandise is quirky and all are from ideas that the students put forth in the workshops and from their creative writings. You never know what will be found representing the past, present or future. All profits from the store sales go to support the non-profit which then finance the fee to the students reading workshops. We had a great time!

Kendall & Jordan outside the Time Travel Mart's display window with the futuristic robotic man interacting with the past prehistoric caveman.
Some of the kid inspired merchandise .. elixirs for what ails you, the watch that always has the correct time (NOW), Dinosaur eggs and much more ...
                
                       
               
Grandma, Jordan and Kendall with some humor at The Time Travel Mart with glasses created by the students.

On the way to our next adventure we were at #34 in 100 Things To Do, the famous Los Angeles burger place, In 'N Out! Had to take a photo op here with the girls ...
            
On to the next adventure, #5 ... The Museum of Jurassic Technology! There are no pictures allowed inside the museum, so you have to take our word for it .. or better yet, go visit yourself! There are many displays from the unicornish hairied horn that grew out of a woman's forehead to all of the wife's tales of cures and beliefs passed through the ages. There is a beautiful garden on the second floor that opens up in a arboretum with plants and flying white doves. An hour and a half was spent reading and exploring the exhibits. We really bought into these bizarre displays. Not until talking to Auntie Carrie did we find out the truth of this museum. Just what is Jurassic Technology? We suggest you Google it and find out how we were spoofed and punked by this museum. What a trip ... probably as much as those that use very powerful mind alternating drugs that must have established this museum! Wow!
              
Our next stop driving through Los Angeles was to get to the El Compadre Restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Auntie Carrie had suggested this as a great place to have dinner. We arrived at this terrific Mexican restaurant where a lot of the hip people and stars dine. We sat in front of the piano mariachi players so had excellent listening to great music while we ate. The ambiance was wonderful and the food superb!

    
                        
                       
            
Our final stop for the day before heading for Lakewood was at the Chandelier Tree, #25 in the Silverlake District of LA. We wanted to see it lit-up. Unfortunately the owners did not turn them on. Well at least the girls saw the tree and the chandeliers in it. I imported these photos from the web to show what it looks like at night with the lights on.

Friday morning after a breakfast at home, we drove to Malibu to go on our hike at Solstice Canyon Park, #91 in the book. It is nestled in the Malibu Hills not too far off of PCH. We had a wonderful hike taking in the beauty of nature, the ruins of old homes of years gone by, and the waterfall that is a trickle right now due to the California drought. It was gorgeous and great exercise.
              
        
                  
             
We enjoyed the ride down Pacific Coast Highway and took a few pictures of the Malibu Beach.

We returned home to drop off Grandma to stay and watch Ruby and to pick up Auntie Carrie to head to Griffith Park and our horseback riding experience at #79, The Sunset Ranch Hollywood. This ranch is nestled high above Griffith Park and houses over 100 horses. We had two guides who took our group up to the top of Mt. Hollywood taking in the beautiful views of Los Angeles skyline and the nature of the area. There are over 65 miles of trails in the park. Our guides were excellent pointing out many things and giving us many insightful stories and facts. It was a two hour ride that we began at 5:30 so was not overbearingly hot at all, just the right temperature! We all were required to wear helmets for safety. Can't they make cowboy hat helmets??? What a fun time we had!

                 
                      
             
          
          
At the bottom of Beachwood Drive coming down from the ranch we spotted this decorated "art" car ... where else but LA?!?

We stopped at one of Auntie Carrie's favorite spots, the Fred 62 Diner on Vermont Avenue in the Los Felix District for something to eat. Great place, great food!
Saturday morning we started in full gear, visiting #70 The LA Flower Mart for our first stop. We walked around for quite awhile taking in all of the beautiful flowers. The aromas of the flowers weren't bad either!
            
              
              
                          
                                    
              
                      
We continued our journey to The Grand Central Market and The Central Library picked from #93 of the book. We explored the Market and found our lunch at one of the many booths. We found and claimed a table in the busy crowd to sit and enjoy our lunch.
                
               
              
Continuing on over to the Central Library where Carrie had a book promotion and signing event was only a few blocks walk from the Grand Market. We explored the beautiful library with wall murals, exquisite ceilings and unique chandelier lighting, books for Grandma to read to Ruby, and the great turn out for Carrie's event.
            
                  
            
            
On the walk from The Central Library to our car park, we passed the famous historic red line "Angel's Flight" cable car that was used to transport pedestrians up the hill in downtown LA.
                
Carrie and Ruby joined us in Culver City for an afternoon treat of home-made and unique ice cream sandwiches at The Coolhaus Ice Cream Store, one of the ice cream shops listed in #66 of 100 Thing To Do. Carrie was the most daring getting her ice cream sandwich made of chicken & waffles ice cream!
After this full day we ended it by renting Disney's "Saving Mr. Banks" and just sort of vegged out!

Sunday morning we attended church and then started the day's wonderings throughout LA. Our first stop was at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum where we had 2PM reservations for the Butterfly Pavilion which is listed in #30. Arriving early enough, we explored parts of the Natural History Museum before our reserved time to experience the butterflies.
                 
             
             
             
And for great insight, you can even buy the book and T-shirt expounding the foundation of LA at the museum gift store!
            
The Butterfly Pavilion is so much fun with the many varieties of butterflies flying all around you. It is great to see them all up close and so many in one location. They are just gorgeous. Kendall made a collage picture of some of the shots she photographed, which is just wonderful!
                

                                     
                                                                           
We wandered out back of the museum to see the spectacular LA Rose Garden too.
For a mid-afternoon lunch we headed to downtown to eat at the famous Cole's Original French Dip Restaurant. We took the face-off challenge of the 100 Things To Do In LA's #1 post, the challenge between Philippe's (which we ate at a few weeks ago) and Cole's. The atmosphere's are quite different. Cole's is a sit-down and be served restaurant. Both have been in LA since 1908. The French Dips were great! Cole's won for us in the taste test. If you go, try the Mac and Cheese too as Kendall did ... it's really good and in my opinion beats Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles mac and cheese claim as the best in LA.
 
Finishing lunch, we headed to Abbot Kinney and Venice Beach, #71 of the adventures. We had a marvelous time exploring all of the shops and vendors at the boardwalk.
            
After a full afternoon, we drove on to Watts to see the Watts Towers #16 up-close and personal. Seeing them from a distance is much different than being there up-close! The towers are made of junk pipes and other junk metal then covered in cement with mosaic chips of plates and other tiles along with sea shells. Totally amazing. It has been declared a historic site and state park. A few of the neighbors facing the towers have added their own art in mosaic front yard walls along with the park's art center activity buildings.
            
                
                  

                     
                                  
                                             
We really had great adventures and great times accomplishing so many things. We topped the night off by introducing the girls to the 1950's "Sunset Boulevard" on DVD. One of our favorite classic movies.

Monday morning, Auntie Carrie & Ruby joined us to go to Santa Monica on the pier for Kendall & Jordan to take a trapeze lesson there ... #33 if you are checking out the book! Grandma stayed at home for her volunteer work with Meals On Wheels. Auntie Carrie wanted to see her nieces do it as Carrie says it's one thing in the book that she will not be doing! After watching the girls, they may bend my arm a little and I'll do it with them if they do it again! It really was fun and a great way to end their vacation of doing things out of the 100 Things To Do In LA.
            
           
           
            
         
         
         
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Finishing the lesson, Carrie suggested Swingers Diner in Santa Monica for lunch. It pays to have her along with all of the places she has haunted in LA! We had a great lunch before heading home.

It was a wonderful vacation time with Kendall and Jordan, one that none of us will forget. We were able to see and do lots of things ... but the best was simply having the girls spend time with Grandma and Papaw. There are several more pictures of all of these events in the photo album that shouldn't be missed. Click on this link to go there! Really, don't pass it up .. click on the link ... all of the pictures are even captioned!