Upper Midwest - Day Ten (Whittier - Los Angles County Museum of Art - Crystal Lake - Whittier)

I am staying at the Motel 6 in Whittier, CA - $50 a night (two nights) plus $2.99/day for the internet. The room is clean, bed is big and comfortable, relatively-large flat screen tv, bathroom clean, shower good and hot; no fridge (that's ok), no "breakfast in the lobby" that's ok because I had breakfast this morning at IHOP. I'm going to visit the Los Angles County Museum of Art today:

but let's see what that is like at 8 AM traffic

ouch, that's a lot of red lines. The Museum doesn't open until 11 AM (YES, it's open on Mondays!!) It is 21 miles away, and only "supposed" to take 33 minutes - I'll leave here at 10.

I was at the LACMA for an hour, then went up into the Angeles National Forest (north of LA) and saw Crystal Lake

The area up by Crystal Lake does not look that impressive, even when I switch to Terrain View, so took a look in Google Earth. WOW!! This is looking south from above Crystal Lake, with LA in the desert in the distance.


At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is a room of (my kind of) American Art. It includes
Thomas Moran - Hot Springs of the Yellowstone, 1872

Sanford Robinson Gifford - October in the Catskills, 1880

as well as an Albert Bierstadt and 2 by Thomas Cole. Elsewhere are 5 by Claude Monet. But the sculpture I liked is
Auguste Rodin - Eternal Spring, c. 1881-84


The hostess at the IHOP this morning mentioned that they had gone up to Crystal Lake on Saturday, so I figured I would check it out (it certainly has a nice name!)
I went up the San Gabriel Canyon and saw a nice dam



but the area was VERY DRY, with water levels way down:


They have some beautiful trees:


The "Lake" is pretty low (the sign says "No Swimming")


Alongside the road are some very interesting desert-type plants


and the view back down the canyon is spectacular!


Drive with Deede (and her bike) up to Berkeley tomorrow!

Monday, October 27, 2014

for music today, I decided to "stay local" and listen to the radio - JACK-FM 93.1 played Classic Rock (but with an LA flair, of course)(and with a bunch of ads - I think that's it for "local radio").