Flexible Planning or Planning On Being Flexible

Rain, Rain, go away! Warm and rainy is still better than icy, and blizzardy, which according to the news is what Salt Lake is facing. Blech. No, thanks! Since the rain chased away our bike ride for the day (plan A), we thought we would head to Griffith Park in L.A. for some hiking and playing and generally just trying to be outside as much as the weather would allow (our plan B).


We made it to Griffith-- A coyote looking for a mid-morning snack greeted us, and the sun miraculously peaked out of the clouds for about 30 minutes. Long enough for the boys to get some good playground time in. Our hikes were a no-go today. Between the rain today, plus the previous week's downpour, the trails were awash in mudslide mud and closed to the public.


Mud is not a problem for my guys, closed trails are. We found a playground and after a long car ride up north, they were begging us to get out of the car and play around. We got the brilliant idea to use the sun to hike to the Hollywood sign (Plan C). Not wanting to miss our window of sunshine opportunity, we took off up the hill to the "trail head" only to find it was "Under heavy 24 hour surveillance." and also "closed to the public". A quick google search would have solved that problem in the first place, with an alternative hiking route, but alas, we didn't stop to look first and by the time we would have made it to the other trail, our window would be closed. No biggie-- we had another alternative plan. The Griffith Park Observatory (Plan D).


Since it was raining anyway, we thought we would take in the view from Mulholland Dr. for a minute, and then head to the observatory (modification of Plan D). The view was taken in, a short mud walk was enjoyed and back into the car for more L.A. driving. (Back to Griffith Park). We got to the observatory. The parking lot was full, the cars were lined up down the hill for 1/2 a mile and we decided--Ok, we came, we saw, we got crowded out. Next stop LUNCH! (onto plan E)


Using my handy-dandy iphone Vegout app, we found a place a few miles away on La Brea that looked promising. Not very many dollar signs and lots of stars next to the name is how we pick our restaurants. Not very scientific, but it seems to usually work for us. This time, we were a bit disappointed. It was healthy Japanese (promising, right?) with all kinds of sea vegetables, sprouted brown rice and Kabocha pumpkin. Sounded delicious, however it was bland and needed another dollar sign next to it's name. (Back to Native Foods for dinner.) The store next door to the restaurant was an iron working store, with neat things to buy like metal medieval helmets and armor. Romney was perfectly willing to drop 50 bones on a set of iron clad gloves and a 10 pound, snap -your- tiny -little- neck-helmet. Luckily, after a long discussion about whether or not he should get them, he came up with the solution to have the man (who gave Romney his business card) send Romney photos of the gear, so he wouldn't have to pay for the armor, but could still look at it when he wanted. He is a pretty smart kiddo.

As the sun started poking through the clouds again, yet another brilliant idea came to us. . . (plan F) Venice Beach for roller skating and then the Santa Monica pier for the arcade. Drove out to the beach to find strong winds that chilled to the bone. We nixed the roller skating (modification of plan F). The pier was next. The boys were both excited to test their "passion" levels by putting a quarter in the old machines. They both came out on top. William is "hot-stuff" and Romney is "Uncontrollable" for the record. (As if we didn't know that.)


Cold, but indoors, the arcade got a quick walk through, straight to the place that sold Hot Chocolate (plan G). The boys grabbed a warm treat and asked if we could go home yet. We could. We did. We met Anne and Q at the hotel and headed straight back out for food (always a good plan). The hungry pack of us went to a mall (I feel funny using that word. It doesn't seem fair to use the same word to describe the place we went -to the kind of places we have in Utah. If it has Rolex, Louis Vitton, Gucci, Harry Winston and Cartier in it, it doesn't seem like "mall" works. That word just conjures up horrible images of Sears and JC Penny in our neck of the woods.) Dinner was eaten and the hotel was calling us to our beds. Here is hoping we don't need to come up with as many "ingenious" plans (A, B, C and D, E, F and G like today) tomorrow. Bill Barber Park (Yes, it does exist here within biking distance from the hotel) is calling our names (Well, Bill's anyway.)