Mike in Long Beach 2011

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Long Beach

A trip to Griffith Park in September In September I made a trip to Griffith Park on L.A's north side. According to my guidebook, this is the biggest city park in the country at 4000 acres. The park is scrubby hills, and not a forested wonderland like Portland's west hills. Numerous attractions are scattered through out the park, which are shown below.     Click these thumbnails to popup bigger pictures.
	A satellite view of Griffith Park. The train museum is at north central, the observatory at south central, and the Hollywood sign at west central. Note that most satellite photos appear to have reversed topography because they are lit from the south.
	Along the way to the park, I drove through the 110 & 105 interchange - apparently the biggest interchange in the world. This thing was huge, like science fiction huge, with the 4th bridge level 122 feet above the ground level.
The old time train museum was a great place to grab a sandwich and spend an hour. There were about ten old engines, this one had the best paint job.	On the west end of the compound, this engine had the bigggest wheels.
This museum was loaded with kids, who were allowed to crawl on and in most of the trains.	The entrance to the train area.
The famous Hollywood sign, in west central Griffith, viewed from the observatory parking lot.	The sundial in front of the observatory.
Front view of the Griffith Observatory. The big dome in center is the planetarium, the two on the sides are telescope domes. It was closed that day.	A closer view of the planetarium dome.
The map of the observatory.	Who'd live in a death trap like this? One good earth quake and the whole house is surfing in the ravine.