Hollywood

Today we went to Hollywood, a place I never expected to visit. Although we got there before noon, it was crowded with lots of tourists, strange looking characters, bums, and creepy people. One guy kind of sauntered along with us, and when we'd stop to take a picture, he'd stop, too. We ducked into a souvenir shop, and he came in but didn't stay around long. Thankfully he went elsewhere.

There were people everywhere trying to get us to buy tickets to Hollywood homes tours. We read on the internet that these were a ripoff, since most stars choose to live far, far away from Hollywood. Can't really blame them. We parked in a parking garage that was below the Kodak Theater, where the Academy Awards are held.

We saw Graumann's Chinese Theater, and the "walk of stars", and there wasn't much to either. Just some big concrete slabs with hand and foot prints and messages to the owner of Grauman's theater from the old timers, like Bette Davis or Bogie. Bogie wrote, "Sid, may you live until I kill you." Or something to that effect. We came home after wandering about for about an hour and a half, finding the freeways becoming increasingly crowded.

Of course, you can tell that I enjoy fiddling with the computer. We were sitting here, watching TV and relaxing a while, when suddenly the motor home began to shake. After making a quick mental note that I was not using the washing machine, I realized we were having an earthquake. The shaking was pretty strong and lasted about 10-15 seconds. When it was over, the MH seemed to sway gently for a while. We then heard on TV that we'd had a 6.9 magnitude earthquake, and later heard that the epicenter was down in Baja and was actually a 7.2 magnitude. We haven't noticed any aftershocks, but we went out and did about an hour's walk, so we may not have felt them. I don't know if there's any damage in Mexico; I hope not. I suppose it was a pretty strong one, about the same as the one in Haiti, which was 7.0.

Oh, back to the pictures...I took the one of the modernistic tower from the car and have no earthly idea what it is.

Well, that's about it for now...more later! We hope to go to Huntington Beach tomorrow, and explore Seal Beach a little more.