Wald's World On Wheels: Welcome to Hollywood!

Hollywood was just a two hour drive from our campsite in Bakersfield. This was possibly the kids most anticipated excursion of the year. They were so excited to see the Hollywood sign and stroll down the walk of fame. We were hoping to see at least one celebrity, but it just wasn't our day.

We spent half of our day in Hollywood checking out the tourist attractions including Beverly Hills and Bel Aire. While walking down the walk of fame there are about 3 kiosks per block for tours of the celebrity homes. Being the obvious tourist that I am with a wife, four kids and a massive camera around my neck...they flock to me like flies on #$%#. Having visited many of the nations tourist traps I've gotten pretty good at politely declining their offer.

The cost for a tour of celebrity homes was about $25/person...way more than I was going to shell out. I had heard that for the most part the tour is a waste of money because the large homes have even larger privacy walls and large gates hiding the homes they protect. I passed on the opportunity to pay for a tour of walls and gates. But that wasn't the end for me. I already knew where Beverly Hills was so I hatched my own plan to look at the houses for free (minus the cost of gas of course).

So without further ado I launched my master plan. I took off to Beverly Hills and located a tour van. I pulled over so he could pass by me, and then the chase was on! I tailed the tour van from house to house. I figured wherever he stopped it must be a celebrity home...I just didn't know which one. So I had fun with it and just made up the celebrities that lived in each of the houses and confidently rattled off random celebrity names to the kids as we stopped at each of the houses. They didn't know the difference, and it didn't really matter...they were just gates and fences anyway.

The tour van was on to me. I'm guessing he sees this type of behavior all the time. After all, Hollywood is known for it's stalkers! I prodded the driver of the van a couple times to give the scoop on the celebrities he just shook his head and gave me the old "show me the money" hand gesture out his window every few stops.

After spending 30 minutes of touring the gates and fences of Beverly Hills I figured it was time to move on to something more scenic so off to Santa Monica Beach we headed.

This was the first visit to the Pacific Ocean of our adventure and... it looked a lot like the Atlantic. Who knew?

Anyway, the kids played in the surf for a little while before we headed to the Santa Monica Pier. My biggest thrill and surprise of the day was that this was the official end of historic route 66, or so the sign said. We have been weaving in and out of route 66 for almost a thousand miles so seeing the end was a fun treat for us.

We grabbed dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen and were pleasantly surprised at how good it was. We have been eating cheap frozen pizzas for so long we had almost forgot what a good pizza tasted like.

We headed back to Bakersfield exhausted, tired and ready for our next adventure!