Playing hookie

The Calders were very busy last week, with a concert Thursday at Colburn, a Friday Colburn Orchestra concert, and a quartet concert on the UCLA Live! series on Saturday night. (The same night USC played UCLA in football and won.) It poured rain all Sunday, so Eric and I took Monday as a day off. We explored hiking trails in the nearby area, as the mountain roads had snow. We also drove through residential areas in the hills just below the Hollywood sign and in Silver Lake. Amazing constructions! Architects and builders must have nightmares trying to build there. If you look at any LA map, you will find these streets by their curly lines, as opposed to the grid-like lines in the flat areas.

In our search for a trail head on the west side of Griffith Park we discovered the Sunset Ranch, offering horse-back riding in the park. So we went for it - an hour trip with the half-way point a look-out south across all LA to the ocean. The sun came out just as we reached the look-out. Eric had never been on a horse before; he found it a fun new experience.

Other highlights of our day off included finding the Dodger Stadium and nearby hillock where we sat and watched the sun setting over the ocean beyond Santa Monica.