Our first stop out of Pahrump NV was Victorville California about 175 miles of travel. We stayed 2 nights at the Shady Oasis on the east side of town. We got another great deal here with Passport America at just $20 a day.
 |
| Victorville CA in the distance surrounded by sand and small brush |
 |
| Entrance to our campground in Victorville CA |
 |
| Our site in Shady Oasis |
This area is called the high desert and it looks it. The area here is basically all sand. We took the time here to just chill out a bit. I took the time here to get a haircut and to take an interval walk.
 |
| Ok, this funny bird, a Yellow Throated Warbler, saw its reflection in our window and would keep flying into it. This went on for hours! |
 |
| Sort of looks mad in this picture |
 |
| Flying into the window! |
 |
| First time seeing these solar panel shade parking lots. This one was at the the Walmart in Victorville |
 |
| Coming out of the campground and deciding where to walk |
 |
| I found this nice sandy path that went on for miles, perfect! |
 |
| While walking in the campground we saw this homemade camper. Looks like a gypsy wagon. |
On Wednesday the 4th we headed another 127 miles to the Thousand Oaks area north of Los Angeles. The actual town is Newbury Park. We are here to visit our friends Marshall and his partner Bill. Patty worked for Marshall back 15 years ago at a Pharmaceutical Company in New Jersey. It has been 12 years since we last visited them.
 |
| Coming around the San Gabriel Mountains into Pasadena CA |
We traveled I 15 to CA 101 through Pasadena to get to their house. We were traveling around noon and the traffic was still very heavy! Marshall and Bill graciously offered us their driveway to store our rig while we took a tour up the PCH to Monterey.
 |
| Where we finally parked after a lengthy K turn. |
 |
| Our rig next to Marshall and Bills house |
 |
| They have a very nice house here |
 |
| I liked these pictures of our rig early in the morning before my walk |
Seems we arrived a day early! We had told our hosts we were arriving on Thursday and we arrived on Wednesday. No idea why or how that happened but here we are early.
 |
| This was waiting for us when we arrived! |
 |
| Patty, Marshall, and Bill working on dinner. Bill is a great cook! |
Friday was the big LA tour event for us. The taping was at 6:30pm but we needed to be at Universal Studios by 5:15pm to get to our reserved seats. Due to the traffic around the area we decided to go into LA just before noon and have lunch and then see a few sights before heading over to the studio.
Patty’s nephew Brian Schoemcher’s wife Ina has a sister Caroline who is being considered for best chef in LA. She is the chef at the restaurant Beelman’s near the studio. Marshall drove us all into the city and we had lunch at Beelman’s and met Caroline. The food is all vegan and it was very, very good!
 |
| Bill on the left and Marshall on the right having lunch in LA |
 |
| I got a pcture of Caroline working in her kitchen at Beelman's |
 |
| Me, Patty, and Caroline |
 |
| Sign at Beelman's I thought was funny |
After the great lunch we walked it off by walking a few blocks to the OUE Skyspace.
 |
| Very unique building art. This was etched concrete from the original brick |
 |
| Don't know the building but a very cool roof on it |
The OUE is 70 floors above the city of LA. Marshall and Bill live there and were not interested in going up so they waited for us while we went up. The cost to go up was $26 each! If we wanted to do the slide it would be $8 more each. We thought it was way too much but it is what it is so we paid and went up. We, however, didn’t do the slide. The slide is a Plexiglas square channel you can slide down one floor on the outside of the building 70 floors up. It is sort of a cool idea but it is way too short, mostly for kids.
 |
| Steps up to the entrance to the Skyspace |
 |
| Pictures from the top |
 |
| The Hollywood sign is way in the background of this picture |
 |
| The $8 slide |
After the OUE Skyscape we headed to Burbank and the Universal Studios. Universal was just 12 miles but it took us about an hour to get there. All was good though because we were about 30 minutes early. And we were really about an hour and a half early we found out later.
 |
| Mom sign on the outside of Universal studios |
Since we were invited by one of the stars of the show we had front row seats right in the center! We were in the first wave of people coming in so we were sitting in our seats just a little after 5pm and the taping didn’t start till 6:30pm. We could have arrived as late as 5:45pm and still got our reserved seats. It was all good though because we weren’t sitting in traffic stressing about getting there.
We couldn’t take cameras or cell phones in so we have no pictures inside the studio. We thought it would take maybe an hour to tape the 20 minutes that make up the half hour show. Boy we were wrong! It took about 2 and half hours to do the taping. And we were sitting from 5 pm so we sat for 4 hours!
Now after seeing this I think everyone should see a series taping. I had no idea how many people and time it took to do this. Oh yeah, these actors are amazing to watch live! It was a great experience.
 |
| Marshall and Bill at the Smoke House in Burbank |
After the show Bill invited us to join him at the Smoke House just a block away. As he said, this place is old school Hollywood. It had deep red carpets and open booth seating with a lot of wood paneling and such. We all had a great time talking about the show, Buffalo, and old times in high school. Thank you Bill Fichtner!!
 |
| Patty caught Bill with glasses |
What a day, we arrived back at Marshall and Bill`s place just after midnight! We were up early the next morning and getting ready for our tour of the PCH, Monterey, Carmel by the Sea, and then Yosemite National Park.
We had great time catching up with Marshall and Bill. Bill cooked the best food while we were there. Many thank you both Marshall and Bill for putting us up and allowing us to park in their driveway.
Stay Tuned!
3 comments:
What a fun time! So much to see and do. I don't think I would've done that slide even if it were free! How nice to have friends with a big enough place that you could park in.
Wow! Looks like such a fun trip! I LOVE that pic with the wings, so cool!!!
That was pretty cool! As I was reading through the post, though, I thought the bearded Bill was the one in the show and I could not figure out who he was (and we watch it pretty regularly)! I figured it out at the end, though, when I saw you with the actor Bill!
Back to another post, too bad you didn't get to see the sea lions -- when we were there in 2014, there was a place right by the Hearst Castle called Seal Beach, or Sea Lion Beach . . . something like that, and we saw TONS of them there!
Glad Patty got her replacement pump and is feeling better!
Post a Comment