Joshua Tree

One of the things I did to kill time during the heart of the pandemic (and no, I'm not thinking it's over or anything silly like that...I did say HEART of the pandemic) was to create little trip plans all over the United States that I might be able to take at a moment's notice if the opportunity ever came up. This did a couple of things for me: (1) it kept my sense of wanderlust alive by giving me some travel planning to do and (2) it kept me ready to go just in case something crazy happened like a sudden drop in COVID cases. And just maybe it kept me sane overall.

I spent a lot of time doing this in the long winter and spring months of 2020 and 2021. I now have a long, long list of three and four and five day domestic excursions in my head and on spreadsheets and in emails that I've sent to myself. We've managed to do one or two of the ideas I came up with while sitting at home all that time, but most remain ideas to be carried out sometime in the future. Or never, maybe.

One destination that kept cropping up again and again on these mini-excursions was Joshua Tree National Park. Arizona to Los Angeles. Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Las Vegas to San Francisco. Los Angeles to Palm Springs and back. There may have been others but all of those ideas included a stop at Joshua Tree. And as it turned out, the time for the Los Angeles to Palm Springs and back trip turned out to be March of 2022. And of course, there was a stop at Joshua Tree as a day trip from Palm Springs with retro cocktails at a culturally appropriated tiki bar as a reward for a day of hiking. That last part has really nothing to do with Joshua Tree but it did happen. And we will come back to it.

Honestly, I had no idea what to expect of Joshua Tree National Park. In my imagination, I pictured a lot of Joshua trees, which I pretty much saw as a palm tree wishing it was a cactus, spread out among a sort of desert landscape. Why is this appealing enough to find its way onto a handful of getaway trips created during a global pandemic? I have no idea, but there was some kind of irresistible appeal for me about strange trees in the desert. So they had to be seen, as much to see them as to reveal what else there was to find. So we went.

Before we left on this trip by the way, my mom asked me why it's called a Joshua tree. I had no idea. According to the Park's website, there's a legend about the trees appearing to westward-headed Mormons as resembling the biblical figure Joshua, with arms outspread in a request for God to aid the Israelites in their passage across the Jordan River, perhaps. Or for assistance in battle against the Israelites' enemies, maybe. It's a type of yucca, and a member of the agave family, which to me is most notable as the main ingredient in tequila, not that I drink much tequila outside of the odd margarita. Like that pivot from Mormons to margaritas? It's the tiki bar maybe. 

We went to Joshua Tree with a plan. Why wouldn't we, after all? We always have some sort of plan. It's what we do.

Usually, our plan for a day of hiking in the desert would have included an early start to get out into the Park before it got anything approaching hot. But since we were staying about an hour's drive from Joshua Tree, we figured we'd go with a bunch of small, straightforward treks rather than doing anything super complicated and committed.  Now, I know late March sounds like a not hot time of year, but we saw weather forecasts in the 90s in the high desert of southern California so we stuck with hikes in the "Easy" category on Joshua Tree's website with what sounded like interesting things to see. Why hike a long way when you don't have to?

Our plan included five short hikes. Specifically and in alphabetical order...Barker Dam, Cap Rock, Cottonwood Spring, Keys View and Skull Rock. Total length of 3.55 miles and total elevation change of 280 feet, with 1.7 miles of length and 160 feet of elevation change concentrated at Skull Rock. These five hikes would get us (according the Park's website) good looks at bighorn sheep, Joshua trees (duh...), birds, the San Andreas Fault and a huge rock shaped like...wait for it...a skull. We didn't really believe the bighorn sheep part of the promise, by the way. We've been looking for these things enough with relatively little success to keep our expectations super low.

First stop: the Park's Oasis Visitor Center. Our plans instantly changed during a five minute chat with the Park Ranger on duty. Cottonwood Spring is about an hour's drive or maybe a little more so maybe a little remote. Take the birding spot off the list. Oh well...the other four still sounded good, although still skeptical about those bighorns.

Skull Rock. I guess it looks like a skull just maybe not a human skull.

So let's get the disappointments out of the way. So, sure, we came up empty on the bighorn sheep front. We knew we wouldn't really stand much of a chance of seeing any, especially not a few hours after sunrise, so no surprise there. We also didn't think much of Skull Rock. That was our longest planned hike but the trail seemed to us very confusing. We couldn't find any signs pointing us to the rock that resembled a skull and actually went down two separate paths before turning back only to find that the actual Skull Rock was at the end of the trail right by the road where we had started. We had parked maybe 50 feet away before walking right past it. Maybe we are dummies or maybe it didn't look much like a skull to us.

But the biggest disappointment was at Keys View, where we were supposed to be able to see the San Andreas Fault. Now, I would have thought that having a place where you could see one of the most famous tectonic joints between the Earth's crust would be an absolute showstopper. I don't know quite what I expected here, maybe a giant crack in the landscape that looked like it might open up wider at any moment or something. Honestly, we could not tell where it was. Moreover, there were signs pointing out notable points of interest about the view and not a single one of them showed us where the Fault might be. Mount San Jacinto? Check. San Gorgonio Mountain. Also check. San Andreas Fault? Nothing. Nada.

 

But Joshua Tree was far from a disappointment overall. It actually excelled as a National Park in two very significant ways. First, and I know this is stupid to say, there were the Joshua trees themselves. These things are fascinating. Sometimes they look like cacti, with a couple of limbs pointing skyward and not much more (and by cacti I of course mean the saguaro, which I realize is not all cacti). Sometimes they look like regular trees with some sort of generic branch structure. And sometimes they look like no tree known to regular man and just grow wherever and in whatever direction they feel like.

There's the crazy bark, the equally if not more crazy flower pods (that were not in bloom when we were there but are shown above) and the spiny thick leaves that altogether against the background of the Sonoran Desert seem like they are just in the perfect place. Of course, the reason why they don't look like any trees out there is that they are not really trees at all, but yucca (I realize I already said that) in very much more vertical form than any other yucca plant that I've ever seen.

I think it's the variety that kept me fascinated with these things at every stop we made. There's no typical Joshua tree. One is as unlike its neighbor as it wants to be. So what we saw at Cap Rock was as different as what we saw at Barker Dam. For that matter, two trees right next to each other at either stop might be totally different too. There's a reason why there are so many pictures of these plants on this post. They were completely the star of the show. Stood in front of one of the innumerable rock piles in the Park, they are as photogenic a non-tree as they can be. I get the appeal now for real. It's the different shapes and the variety is endless.

The second significant way that Joshua Tree excelled as a National Park was in the quality of its birdlife, although honestly, I'm not sure we even scratched the surface much.

So first of all, I know I already wrote about having to ditch Cottonwood Spring. And no, we didn't end up going down there after all. We didn't even consider it, because we'd already completed my big picture birdlife goal for the Park before we even got into the Visitor Center and had our chat with the Ranger.

We got to Joshua Tree early the day we visited. And by early here, I mean before the Oasis Visitor Center was open by about 15 to 30 minutes. While we were waiting for the building to open, I noticed what turned out to be a mockingbird sitting right in front of me on a treetop so I headed back to the car to grab the camera to take a picture or two. Now, mockingbirds may not be that exciting to you and truly, we have had some in our back yard in Virginia this weekend that I've finished this post, but it's always exciting to me to see wild birds out in an open space the likes of Joshua Tree National Park. 

There's a small walking trail adjacent to the Visitor Center where we saw a different mockingbird (presumably male) engaged in what looked like some mating dance to attract the attention of a lady mockingbird. We watched him for a few minutes chirping away in between throwing himself into the air and landing on the same branch he launched from over and over. In between launching and landing, he showed off pretty much all his feathers in a series of non-flying contortions that were incredible to see. I've tried to capture that sequence in the photographs below.

No, our bird goal for Joshua Tree was not to see a mockingbird.

For the last few months, I've been a little obsessed with roadrunners. We saw one years ago running across the road (appropriately enough) in New Mexico on our way from Silver City to Las Cruces and we were teased with the possibility of a repeat sighting when we went back to New Mexico in December last year. Ultimately, we came up empty just before Christmas but I thought it would be great to see a roadrunner out in Joshua Tree.

That first mockingbird sighting at Joshua Tree that sent me back to the car to get the camera was great timing. Because when I came back to photograph the mockingbird, there was a roadrunner standing on palm tree right in front of me.

If there's a luckier bird sighting I've had in my life, I don't know what it is. This is the closest I've ever been to a mostly stationary roadrunner and considering it was my goal to see one in a Park that I hadn't even entered yet, I felt super fortunate. It didn't stick around long. It quickly exited the palm, crossed the path we were about to walk down and ran away. They are fast. I got a couple of great pictures. I love the coloration of the bird against the palm and the eye looks just incredible. You can see the dinosaur resemblance, but maybe because I've been sold a bill of goods in Jurassic Park and I'm all in.

Considering this encounter, I was OK skipping Cottonwood Spring.

Joshua Tree wasn't what we thought it would be. No giant cracks in the Earth, no bighorn sheep and no great variety of birdlife. It was awesome just the same. Even without the variety of bird sightings, and honestly until I get better looks at roadrunners I'm cherishing those couple of minutes every minute of my life, the place was amazing. I understand the pull of the Joshua trees now. I knew I had it on tons and tons of mini-itineraries for a reason. I just needed to go to understand the actual reason.

Our journey to Joshua Tree took about a half a day or so. We left Palm Springs before 7:30 in the morning and were back in town before 3, just in time for the Tonga Hut to open so we could enjoy a cocktail or two on their balcony and think back on our morning and early afternoon in the Park. I can't recommend enough going to Joshua Tree and I also can't recommend enough going for a cocktail after you are done roaming around the desert looking at crazy trees and rocks and maybe the occasional roadrunner. I'd advise you get something a little crazy if you do opt to hit the Tonga Hut if you are staying in Palm Springs. I can definitely suggest the Tabu Tabu Grog. Never had a drink with allspice and a rock candy stick in it before. There's apparently a first time for everything. I appreciated the double maraschino cherries. 

One last look at the Joshua trees and an oh-so-good Tabu Tabu Grog.

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How We Did It

Joshua Tree National Park is open 24/7 every week of the year. There are three points of access to the Park and a Visitor Center at each one. The main Visitor Center, which we drove right past on our way to the Oasis Visitor Center, seems to have the longest hours, followed by Oasis and then Cottonwood. The hours for each are on the Park's website.

There are no restaurants in the Park, nor did we find any sources of water. We took our Yeti lunch bag and water bottles with and packed our own food (Thanks, Ralph's!) and picnicked for lunch. There are picnic areas all over the Park. We found a shady spot near Cap Rock.

If you are staying in Palm Springs, I can definitely recommend the cocktails and the balcony at the Tonga Hut. Yes, I know there's a certain amount of appropriation and stereotyping of Polynesian culture here and ultimately we probably should avoid that sort of stuff, but the place serves good drinks and I appreciated the maps near our table mapping out all the places the Polynesians traveled in tiny craft that people from supposedly more sophisticated places like Europe never could have made it to. As of this writing, they are open Thursday through Sunday from 5 p.m. on weekdays and 3 p.m. on weekends. 

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Animal Style

I generally believe in the value of traditions. Ritual and habit are important in my life. I've had a lot of success by hanging on to the things that work well while discarding others that lead me astray. I value process and results achieved by practicing and doing the same things over and over. This is true for my work and my personal life and just everything in general. Call it a credo, if you will.

While this philosophy has worked in many areas of my life, it has unfortunately not worked well in travel, primarily because my range of interests are so broad that I rarely visit the same place twice. Other than some continually refined packing habits, my choice of destinations has limited real travel traditions. There have been some notable exceptions to my generally observed never-visit-the-same-place-twice rule of thumb: New York City, Las Vegas and California come to mind here, although honestly California is so big that it's not exactly the same experience every time out.

But there has been one travel tradition I've tried to observe about every time I head to the western part of the United States. And by "the western part" I generally mean those old standbys of Las Vegas and California along with places like Utah. The tradition? A trip to the best fast food hamburger chain out there: In-N-Out Burger. 

Although In-N-Out may dispute the fast food part of that label. 

I don't know when exactly love at first bite turned into a tradition. I first headed to In-N-Out I believe with my friend Jim somewhere in the vicinity of San Diego between the mid-1990s or early 2000s. There was no social media back then to preserve my first experience with this wonderfulness. I'm not sure it really matters but I am most definitely in love.

I should say that I don't generally eat fast food, although if it was healthy I have to tell you I'd be eating Big Macs and Taco Bell on a weekly basis (I can't remember the last McDonald's trip I've taken although I have made a run for the border this calendar year). But there is no way I am missing some In-N-Out on a trip to the west coast.

What's so great about In-N-Out, you may ask? Quite simply (and I don't mean to be stupid here), it's the taste and that's it. Fresh, never frozen beef cooked to order on fresh baked bread with all the fixings accompanied by made-to-order fries using potatoes peeled on site and run through the fry making press (or whatever the gadget is called that In-N-Out associates push whole potatoes into fry form is called) right in front of your eyes. No microwaves, no heat lamps, no constant cooking of burgers and fries so you can get served maybe a freshly cooked hamburger with fries in seconds. You order, they cook, you wait, you eat, you love.

The bread by the way...same bakery since they founded the restaurant chain in the 1940s.

My In-N-Out order will always be the same: Combo #1. Double Double meal. Double hamburger with cheese, lettuce, tomato and spread (their word, not mine) and fries on the side. And add onions. Always add the onions. Those onions make the whole thing sing. The sandwich is so good. So juicy. So perfect. It's the best fast food out there. 

Why am I so stuck in my ways with my order? Why no chicken sandwich or fish sandwich or pork-pressed-into-a-rack-of-ribs shaped sandwich or a salad or kids meal or a wrap or something else? Simple. There is none of that. There never has been. In-N-Out has four things on their menu (not counting shakes or drinks): hamburger, cheeseburger, Double Double and fries. That's it. That's the way it's always been. Quality you can taste. You are selling burgers and fries. That's why.

So of course a stop at In-N-Out was a part of our four-day L.A. and Palm Springs itinerary. Had to be. The only question was where. 

We figured why not get right to it. We had an early morning flight with a 9:30 a.m. or so landing at LAX. That would be 12:30 p.m. Eastern time. By the time we de-planed, got the rental car and started driving to Palm Springs, I figured we'd be good and ready for some lunch. That schedule seemed to be perfectly timed with In-N-Out's 10:30 in the morning opening time. We figured that would give us enough time to clear the city and pull off the highway somewhere around...say...Baldwin Park.

Now as luck would have it (OK, so it wasn't exactly just luck), Baldwin Park was the site of the very first In-N-Out Burger ever. It was opened in 1948 by Harry and Esther Snyder in the same town where they decided to settle after meeting and marrying. It was in Baldwin Park that the single drive-in location under Harry and Esther's care grew into a legend. Their fame spread through southern California surf and car culture and celebrities like Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope and Dinah Shore stopping in for a burger on their way to Palm Springs. Just like us.

By the way, In-N-Out is STILL family owned, despite many over the decades looking to buy in. 

The original store is long gone, demolished in 1954 in an eminent domain land grab to construct the I-10 freeway, but Baldwin Park is still In-N-Out ground zero with not only a restaurant where you can pick up a delicious Double Double combo, but also the official company store and In-N-Out University right on the same property.

But the real treat for In-N-Out lovers like me is on the north side of the freeway. Walk under the underpass and lo and behold...a replica of the original drive-in. And yes, it's staffed and open for visitors. It's just glorious.

How incredible is it that this burger chain did this? There's absolutely no business reason that I can fathom for them to build a replica of their original joint and then pay someone to open it up and stay there for hours to talk to fast food tourists, but it's amazing to see. This is an historical reconstruction and nothing more and they treat it like a shrine.

The original stand was literally just a single kitchen room with about enough space for a couple of employees to cook food, grab a soft drink from the cooler and hand the whole meal through the window to the customer's car. There are no spots to eat, no tables inside or out. Just a driveway with a two-way speaker connected to the kitchen. Order. Drive up. Get food. Drive out. There's not a whole lot more than that to look at. It's that simple. And simple here is good.

There are a couple of great details in the reconstructed restaurant. First, and thank God this is gone from most places now, a cigarette machine where you could grab a pack of smokes for a penny while you wait for your food. I'm not kidding. Mounted on the pole advertising the restaurant is a cigarette machine. I'm assuming it's no longer working although honestly, I didn't check. I can't think of much worse than a little tobacco and tar with my Double Double or fries.

Second, walk around back and you'll find one of the company's original potato washers. That's right: potato washers. Back in the day, after the potatoes were hand peeled, they were washed. The left-hand side of the contraption does the washing and the right side has a basket to allow the clean taters to be hand-spun dry. Anybody who's ever put any sort of wet vegetable in hot oil (guilty, by the way, with artichokes!) knows that's a recipe for overflowing oil and just general disaster. The potato washer is way cooler than the cigarette machine.

I realize my love of In-N-Out is a bit of an obsession but since honestly it affects my behavior maybe once every three years or so, I think it's an acceptable obsession. It is shared to some degree by my wonderful wife, who as my girlfriend years ago having been dragged to a fast food restaurant in Las Vegas with tales of this amazing burger must have thought I was a little loopy or at best had my priorities a little wrong. I'm happy she's seen the light. It's the onions, I swear. Always get the onions.

The title of this post is a reference to In-N-Out's secret menu, which is now published on their website and so really isn't that secret after all. Call me a purist or just boring but we've ordered off the secret menu and we now pass. The Double Double is the thing. I realize that the standard regular lunch isn't for everyone so if you feel like walking on the wild side a bit at In-N-Out, order off the secret menu or just get some animal style fries, which is regular fries covered with their signature spread and somehow not on the secret menu on the website. I'll join you for a Combo #1.

Quality you can taste. I'm telling you.

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How We Did It

The In-N-Out Burger in Baldwin Park is open daily from 10:30 a.m. to 1 a.m. with an extra half hour tacked on to closing time on Fridays and Saturdays. Go here or any other still family owned store whenever you are close to one in California, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Texas, Nevada or Oregon. I will for sure later this year when we get back to Cali for another long weekend.

The Company Store is located right across the parking lot from the restaurant and is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. We visited and bought nothing. As much as I love the Double Doubles, the quality of branded merch that In-N-Out makes and sells leaves a little to be desired for me. Love the food. Not wearing the swag, as much as I want to.

If you really want to visit the replica of the original drive-in In-N-Out Burger, you'll have to be a bit more selective about your visiting time. It's open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday through Sunday only. You can still visit and take pictures from beyond the fence at other times, but you'll miss the potato washer if you do.

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Hooray For Hollywood

I can imagine that a good number of people who visit Los Angeles for vacation do so because of Hollywood. Maybe they want to get close to where the movies or their favorite television shows are made. Or hop on a bus tour of movie star homes in Beverly Hills or Malibu or wherever those kinds of things take tourists to. Or maybe even spot some celebrities (OMG it's a celebrity!!!) doing whatever celebrities do in their average day, if it's even that much different than what you or I do in a typical day.

I've never particularly thought of Los Angeles equaling Hollywood, probably because I'd maintain that I'm not overly interested in the movie and TV industry that much. Or at least that's the way it seems to me most days. Give me a choice between watching something and listening to something, and I'll go with music over a film or show most any day. If Hollywood were packed with musicians it might be a different story for me.

Having said that, in my prior trips to the City of Angels, I have had my brushes with Hollywood and stars and some of it I guess was deliberate. I've been on the TMZ Celebrity Tour and it was truly awesome; we've eaten at Spago and spotted Jeffrey Katzenberg (one of the founders of DreamWorks along with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen) a couple of tables away from us; and yes, I have a celebrity encounter story with Keanu Reeves which I won't relate here but suffice it to say Keanu deals very, very well with complete strangers who don't necessarily know how to maintain personal space boundaries. He's as awesome as the TMZ Celebrity Tour in my book. 

It had been about six years since we'd been to Los Angeles and on this trip we decided to devote a bit more time to movies, television and all that stuff than I have in the past on trips to the left coast. Diversification of experiences is good, folks! We looked into a motion picture studio tour; some kind of museum experience; a Hollywood food spot sometimes visited by celebrities; and the crown jewel for us: attending a taping of some sort of show. We were pretty sure based on an initial look that we could get to the first three by just paying admission somewhere; getting to the last one would rely a little bit on someone else saying "yes" to a request.

The weekend we arrived in town was Oscars weekend. We had no idea. If we had, we might have stayed in town. Instead, our itinerary took us to Palm Springs for a couple of nights before heading back to L.A. the day after Will Smith slapped Chris Rock. We drove straight from Palm Springs to Burbank, home of Warner Brothers Studios. And home of the Warner Brothers Studio Tour.

There are a number of studio tours available to the public in the Los Angeles area. We looked into Paramount (closed because of COVID), Universal (accessible only with a visit to the theme park), Sony and Warner Brothers. Warner won out because of their catalog. Sony has Spider-Man, Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune and The Goldbergs; Warner has DC Comics, Friends, The Big Bang Theory, Harry Potter and a lot of current shows we watch. OK, maybe not me, but our household in general. Despite our preference for Marvel over DC, Warner's shows and movies won out.

The Warner tour has basically three components to it: a tour of the lot on a sort of massive golf cart like vehicle past and through various outdoor filming locations and then driving by a bunch of sound stages; a sort of behind the scenes / how it's all done type exhibit; and a museum with DC and Harry Potter displays. 

I figured there would be one or two moments that I'd feel some real connection to works of cinema that I loved on this tour. I did at one time, after all, religiously watch Friends sometime in the middle of the series. I came in after the departure of Marcel the monkey and stopped watching right before Chandler and Monica got married. I've also read all the Harry Potter books and watched all the movies (although admittedly not a huge fan of the movies - or J.K. Rowling really any more) and I've dabbled in the DC Comics movies. There had to be something of value here that would strike a real nerve, I figured. 

I was wrong. It was actually way better than I possibly could have hoped. It wasn't all Friends and Big Bang Theory and Harry Potter. Which was really good.

In addition to being entertaining (I mean, why wouldn't it be?) there is a ton of useful information on the tour, from the history of the actual Warner brothers founding the company to all sorts of information about how movies are made and put together to general fan type stuff like original props and being able to sit on the couch at a reconstructed Central Perk and get your picture taken. I'm going to skip most of that, including the history, which actually shocks me because I've written about history of whatever it is we've seen everywhere we've been just about every opportunity I've had on this blog. I'll just say that I loved seeing the actual models of the X-1 and Liberty Bell 7 from the movie The Right Stuff (aka the greatest movie of all time); I appreciated the storyboard section of the museum because I think it's crazy that people actually do that still; and yes, I loved sitting on the Central Perk couch. We have a picture of us on the thing that I'm not posting here but I'm happy we have that picture. 

Central Perk. Or a facsimile of a coffee shop that actually never was.

The first reason I'm skipping most of the Warner Brothers Tour is because the golf cart on steroids portion of the tour absolutely blew every other part of this experience away. 

The Warner Brothers property in Burbank is literally just one big recording studio featuring outdoor spaces created to look like cities or towns to film outdoor scenes and then interior sound studios to capture all other non-outdoors scenes. There are a series of offices and animation studios and shops on the campus as well but if you want to film anything using those buildings, you can do that too (hence like zero signage on all the buildings and offices that look like houses). It's also not exclusive to Warner Brothers films. If you want to shoot a scene for any movie on Warner's property, you can. Just pay the fee and put it back the way you found it if you need to modify the set in any way. We were told a story about a setup for The Last Samurai movie that took three months to get the scene just right for what ended up being about two minutes in the actual movie. Crazy stuff. On some level, I'm sure, a complete waste of money.

The majority of the places we were driven to were just fake streets or fake houses or fake town squares (complete with gazebo). The buildings and houses that make up these neighborhoods or communities or whatever they purport to be are generally not occupy-able. Maybe you can walk in the front door, maybe there's a room or two behind the façade or maybe there's a catwalk inside where an actor can poke his or her head out the window to talk to someone outside. It is amazing how generic these places are and it's incredible how many shows and movies they have appeared in. How do we not notice that we are looking at the same street over and over and over again? I guess they don't appear for long enough in enough different movies and shows that we can actually recognize the same place. 

We were driven down a street called Hennesy Street that was used in Annie, Friends, The Big Bang Theory, Batman and Robin, Living Single, The Mask and National Lampoon's Vacation. We were also taken to a town square that was recycled from picture to picture to picture. I guess the generic-ness of both of these places makes them impossible to actually be distinguishable as unique places. It's pretty impressive. I mean, I know the people filming on these locations make small variations but it still seems like we should notice. I know any time I see a movie with a town square with a gazebo in it, I'm going to be checking to see if it's the place we visited on our tour.

Hennesy Street (top) and what could be any town in the United States (bottom), but isn't.

But we don't travel to places like this so we can see generic. We travel to places like this to recognize signature moments on film that touch us deeply. And sure enough, there were some spots that actually did that. And I know it's stupid, especially considering the ephemeral nature of the scenes that transported me to some of the films that I love. And that one of the movies was Jurassic Park. But I now know that I've been to some of the spots where a few minutes in a couple of my favorite movies ever were filmed. 

One of my favorite movies of the last ten years is Argo. I could watch (and have watched) that film over and over and over. I'm a sucker for movies based on reality and that movie is fantastically (in more ways than one) entertaining with a terrific cast (plus Ben Affleck, who is excellent in the film but is still...well...Ben Affleck). There's a scene in the film where Affleck's character, real life CIA star Tony Mendez, is sitting on some steps of a building talking with Alan Arkin's character, Lester Siegel. They are about to start making a fake film so Mendez can go rescue some Americans from Iran in 1980. We drove by that actual spot on our tour. We were right where that dialog between those two characters was filmed. I have to wonder how long it took them to film those 60 seconds for that scene. 

The Warner Brothers lot isn't all cities and towns, though. They actually have a little piece of jungle. And I mean that literally. It's so small, it's comical. There's a little cabin near a re-fillable or drainable (depending on what you need for your shot) lagoon of sorts that's been in all sorts of TV shows. There's also a little road circling that pool that's forested close to the road on both sides. It's maybe 25 feet long, if I'm remembering things correctly. And if I'm not, it's not that much longer than 25 feet.

It was used to film the iconic T Rex chase scene in Jurassic Park. Now, I know what you are thinking...that chase scene is way more than 25 feet long. It was. Apparently, the cast and crew got kicked out of Hawaii due to weather and needed to film that scene in a fake jungle in Burbank, no matter how long the set proved to be. So, they just filmed different parts of the scene in the same 25 feet of space over and over. Film. Back up the equipment. Film. Repeat. I looked at that scene when I got home. I can recognize the spot on the set where the T Rex bursts onto the path but the actual chase itself doesn't look like it was filmed in Burbank. These guys are good. That Spielberg guy.

Props from The Right Stuff. Goosebumps!!!

But that wasn't even the best part of the tour. And the best part isn't even from a film. It's from a still photograph. It was almost a side note on the tour while we were driving around the sound studios when our driver slipped something like "that's where the album cover of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here was photographed" into the narrative before he hit the accelerator and moved on. Hold up! What?!?! Camera out! A quick picture or two (both crooked but straightened with the edit function on iPhone Photos) and we were gone. 

But it's true. Check out the picture below. Now go pull Wish You Were Here out of your record or CD collection and match it up. It's right there. It's true. Why they would take that picture in that location is beyond me but it's totally where they shot it. Complete Easter egg. Never would have realized this if I hadn't taken this tour.

The second reason I am skipping the museum part of the Warner Brothers Tour is that if you want to do a museum experience, go to an actual museum. And the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures did museum-ing better than the Warner Brothers Tour. Much better.

So I'm a guy who claims (earlier in this very post) he doesn't care that much about movies or television and then goes gaga over seeing a model of an airplane and being near to where about 60 seconds of pretty well non-important to the whole movie plot footage from Argo was shot. So maybe I do love movies a little bit more than I claimed. Or being in Hollywood awakened something.

What happened on the Warner Brothers' lot kept going at the Academy Museum. There is so much stuff in that place for me to gawk at. I realized maybe a little bit just how many movies I love in this world. 

The Museum is organized around a multi-story exhibit called Stories of Cinema which basically describes how films come together. It spends time on the finished product, the actors, the directors, the costumes, visual effects, sound, makeup, modeling, animation, casting and pretty much everything else that goes into making a motion picture. Sprinkled in and around that main narrative exhibit are other smaller (and I suppose changing) displays which we probably found less valuable than the main exhibit.

The Academy Museum, Los Angeles.

I don't necessarily have a list of favorite movies beyond number one (The Right Stuff, in case you missed my worship of that three hour and 12 minute masterpiece earlier...) but if were to start to assemble one, I think I could get some ideas from my time in the Academy Museum. There are so many objects there related to pictures that have moved me. Storyboard from Grease. Storyboard from Escape From Alcatraz. Orc head from Peter Jackson's (awesome, amazing, fantastic) Lord of the Rings trilogy. The actual C-3PO and R2-D2 costumes used in the original three Star Wars movies (which, other than Solo - controversial take I know, are the only three really worth watching). Promotional models of the seven dwarfs to publicize Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The actual fake shark from Jaws (Richard Dreyfuss is one of my favorite actors ever).

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, by the way, was the first movie I ever remember seeing in the movie theater. It was probably 1972 or 1973 and I'm pretty sure it was actually the first one I ever did see. I can't imagine my parents taking me to the pictures when I was younger than four.

We got some other great nuggets about the Oscars out of the Academy Museum. I mean, why wouldn't we? The first Academy Awards were presented in 1929 and covered the period from August 1, 1927 through July 21, 1928. It Happened One Night was the first film to win the "Big Five" (who knew there was such a thing?) awards of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Actress and writing. In 1940, the cinematography category was split into films made in color and those made in black and white (wonder how long that lasted...).

Storyboards for The Matrix (Warner Bros. Studio Tour) and Grease (Academy Museum).

Of course, what we wanted to know more than anything else is why the heck is it called an Oscar? We didn't get a definitive answer to this question. Instead we got a legend. Apparently, Academy librarian Margaret Herrick said, when she saw one of the statuettes for the first time, that the trophy looked like her uncle Oscar. Can this really be true? I mean, really? That's what the museum says. That's all I can say there.

Our Academy Museum visit was a morning event. We finished up just after noon. I get hungry about that time of day and was in no mood to kill my Hollywood buzz so we picked a lunch place with a Hollywood vibe: Pink's Hot Dogs. Not going to spend a ton of time on this one but Pink's is quite simply a Hollywood institution. They have been serving up hot dogs day and night since 1939. That's an awfully long time. They must be doing something right. 

So why Pink's on a celebrity fueled Los Angeles binge? Well because sometimes the rich and famous (or just famous, maybe) go to Pink's for some food, although not when we were there on this trip. No Keanu Reeves, no Nicole Kidman, no Mario Lopez, no James Corden, no Quentin Tarantino. Although signed pics from most of these stars and more are on the wall of the restaurant. I have to say this was not my first visit to Pink's. I went there years ago at night and waited three hours in line to grab a couple of dogs. A Tuesday afternoon was a bit quicker - less than an hour from parking to moving on. I'd hazard a guess that star-spotting at Pink's is more productive at night than during the day. But the Mulholland Drive Dog with jalapenos tastes just as good in the afternoon as it does at night. Although check that...maybe not after a few beers. Definitely would taste better then.

Pink's. And their wall of fame. A younger Jimmy Kimmel on the second row.

We needed Pink's. The wall of signed celebrity pics actually did keep our Hollywood buzz going. We didn't really expect to be chowing down on a hot dog and fries with Drew Barrymore or Patti LaBelle but hey...you never know. Pink's was a way stop on a drive to the main event for us on this trip: a live taping of a show. Yes, we made a request and yes, someone said yes.

Actually we made several requests. And someone said yes to one of them. American Song Contest? No response. Call Me Kat? Also no response. The Late, Late Show with James Corden? Also also no response. Jimmy Kimmel Live! YES!!! In all honesty, we probably got an affirmative response to the best option we requested. Actually, there's no "probably" about it. We got the best.

Two things about these in studio experiences. First, attending one of these takes a significant chunk of time out of your day. Not saying it isn't worth it because it totally is. But between traveling to Hollywood; being early because with L.A. traffic you never know; waiting in line; having the line be moved closer to the door; waiting in line more; clearing security and being admitted to the studio; waiting while everyone behind you is admitted; settling in; getting a bathroom break; and then the taping of the actual show itself, it can take hours.

Second, they are free. And that's honestly unbelievable. Here's something that people would likely pay a significant amount of money to do and it's totally free. You just have to be picked. And obviously since we got no response on three of the four requests we made to participate, that's not an automatic. There are many, many ways to part with your hard earned cash in Hollywood; attending the taping of a show ain't one of them. They even validate parking. That's actually kind of refreshing.

No pics inside the Kimmel Show so this is it for pics of this part of our Hollywood pilgrimage.

We made our own luck with the quality of our Kimmel experience. We got there early before any of the signs for the audience line were in place and asked some people hanging around there how it worked and although they were apparently unaffiliated with the actual attending the show thing, they steered us absolutely right about where to go and wait. That effort translated into a number one spot in line and being one of the first to be seated which as it happened was in the second row of the studio audience with nobody in the front row in the two seats before us.

When we sat down we noticed a star on the floor of the studio about 10 feet away from us and a giant camera just to our left. The star had to be Kimmel's monolog spot, right? Turns out it was, so we pretty much got the best seat in the house. Despite our proximity to the host for the opening segment, we actually didn't hear a bunch of the words he said because of the applause in the audience, which drowned out parts of the jokes. Didn't come through that way when we watched the show when we got home. It wouldn't be the only thing different about the broadcast from our in studio experience.

One thing about going to see a show like this is that the quality of the experience can sometimes depend on who's joining the host for the night. We got Donald Glover and Machine Gun Kelly. Glover is a writer, comedian, actor, filmmaker, hip-hop artist and probably about ten or twelve other things who most notably for me portrayed the greatest Star Wars character ever (Lando Calrissian) in the fourth best Star Wars movie of all time (Solo - had to get that one in again). Super excited. I honestly couldn't have told you anything about Machine Gun Kelly (MGK for those in the know) before I got to Los Angeles last month. But hey, I like music of all sorts so I could go for a live performance to open up my mind a little more.

These aren't the droids you are looking for...at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

If there are potential audience members out there who have performance anxiety about being on a show like this, there's no reason to be at the Kimmel Show. That's because we were coached up ahead of time and told when and how to applaud and cheer and when to stand and sit. When Jimmy or guests enter, stand and go crazy but don't yell out anything specific or notable, no matter how well intentioned you might think you are being. No "I love you, Jimmy", in other words. Don't move out of your seat or you'll risk being forcibly removed (the forcibly was more implied than explicit). Don't stop clapping and cheering suddenly; bring it down slowly but DO bring it down. And most importantly, if you don't get the joke, laugh and applaud like you do anyway. It's Hollywood. Fake it!

Oddly enough, the first thing Donald Glover said when he sat down was "Do y'all stand for everybody? That was great!" Actually, yes. Yes, we do. That's exactly what we were coached to do. The guests have to know that, right? Right? 

Glover was great. That dude has so much going on. I don't know how he keeps it all straight with all the creativity outlets he has. I'd love for there to be some more Lando movies. I can always dream. He and Billy Dee Williams are totally different from my perspective but I'll take either guy in the role.

So...Glover in and out. Machine Gun Kelly into the guest seat and let's get ready for a performance, although honestly, we couldn't figure out where he was going to perform. There didn't seem to be a spot on the set for that to happen but they DID build Jimmy's carpet, desk and guest chair after the monolog during the commercial break so maybe they had it figured out? I mean, they do this sort of thing all the time, I guess. But legitimately setting up for a musical performance would seem a lot more complicated than setting up a desk for some discussion.

After Kimmel's talk with MGK (I'm catching on...), he left Kimmel there alone in the studio and we were then told something to the effect of "now you are going to hear Jimmy talk about something you are not going to see" and the tape rolled on Kimmel doing the intro to the MGK performance. And that was it. Show over. No performance. If you watch the show (or any episode of the show, I imagine), you see a performance with enthusiastic audience clapping after. It wasn't us. We weren't there. So I still haven't seen Machine Gun Kelly perform live (and probably never will).

The actual shark from Jaws. The least scary part of that movie is when we see the entirety of this thing.

It is difficult to say I was disappointed by anything about our experience at the Kimmel Show, including the lack of a musical performance. The whole thing was just awesome and really, really well done. But there had been a musician that I am truly into, I might have been a little stunned here. Good thing I don't have any MGK in my collection. 

We walked through the spot where the musical performances happen on the way out towards Hollywood Boulevard and realized that we had actually heard the performance earlier in the day. When we first got where we thought the line might be, we heard banging of drums and other general concert-type noise coming from the building. We figured it must have been a rehearsal. Probably now we think it was the actual performance that ended up on the show.

I'll say a few last things about this whole experience. The Warner Brothers Studio Tour was awesome and eye-opening. Having the background that things are not always what they appear to be translated well into our whole weekend experience. That tour paired with the Academy Museum worked well. Finally, if you get the opportunity to go to a taping of a live show, do it. It's some interesting stuff and it's free. For us, Kimmel was I think about the perfect thing for us to do. Jimmy's on the same side of the aisle as us I think on most issues, he's genuinely funny and doesn't seem like a complete jerk. That last piece is important. I'm hoping I'm right.

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How We Did It

The first three things we did on our Hollywood weekend (or more accurately Monday and Tuesday of a long weekend that included a trip to Palm Springs) were fairly straightforward from a logistical standpoint. 

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (which opened in the fall of 2021 so it's brand new as of this writing) is open every day of the week and advance purchase tickets are available. We did buy in advance and it made the admission process (which included a COVID vaccination check) super easy. If you do that, of course, you are locked into a time of the day which isn't always convenient when dealing with Los Angeles traffic. There is an add on experience at the Museum called The Oscars Experience which as we understand it is some sort of VR thing where you get your name called winning an Academy Award. We skipped that part. It's an extra $15 on top of the $25 admission price. Not cheap when buying both.

The Warner Brothers Studio Tour runs daily except Tuesdays and Wednesdays. We took the standard Studio Tour which was the only one running when we visited in late March 2022 (although other options are now available as of early April). We bought our tickets in advance for this like we did for the Academy Museum although it seemed like there were plenty of people there when we got there who hadn't. There was a television show called The Big Salad and a movie called Pinch filming when we were on the lot. It will be interesting to see if those things ever get released under those names and if we realize what was right near us when we were on site.

Pink's Hot Dogs is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to late (11 p.m. except Friday and Saturday when they are open until 1 a.m.). This is pretty basic food. Honestly, and I can't believe I'm writing this about a hot dog, I thought the food lacked salt. From my two visits to Pink's, I'll say it's way cooler and more of an experience to go at night (like you actually can make yourself think that some celebrity is going to join you in line) but way quicker during the day. 

The most complicated thing we did was go to the Kimmel Show. Tickets can be requested from a site called 1iota.com, which hosts ticket requests for a number of live shows and events as well as movie screenings (and not just in Los Angeles). You can pick the day of your request, which is good if you are limited to specific days like we were.

There's no guarantee (from our experience and talking to one other dude who was there trying to get into the Kimmel show who had also requested tickets through the site) that your request will be honored. In every request, there is what I'll call an essay question part, where you have the opportunity to advocate for why you should be in the audience. For three of the four requests we made, we were probably less enthusiastic than we needed to be. But for the Kimmel request, we (and by we, I mean my wife) pulled out all the stops trying to demonstrate a deep and historic love of all things Jimmy Kimmel. We weren't faking or anything; our desire to attend this show taping was genuine. It seemed to us that our response to the essay question part of the request made all the difference.

We made our requests about five weeks ahead of the show taping, although it didn't seem like there was any advantage or disadvantage to that timing. We heard back one week before the actual taping. We never heard back on our other three requests.

Our first-in-line experience here started at about 2 p.m. with our arrival in Hollywood in front of the theater. About 15 minutes later they started rolling out the signage for the show line which we stood in for about 90 minutes before we entered the theater. If you want to do this, have patience. You can't wander off and do other stuff once you are in line. Sometimes to do something exclusive you just have to wait it out. 

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