Hollywood here we come!! (Sun., July 18)

Up bright and early today and off for a tour of the LA area to include LA, Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Bel Air. The tour was great. Very informative. Learned so many things we never would have known without a tour guide. He showed us several areas of LA and then did the typical stars tour. We saw so many stars' homes that I can barely remember who owned most of them. Many of the stars the kids didn't know but I sure did!! Houses were people like Jimmy Stewart and Jackie Gleason lived. Colin says about 90% of the actors/actresses were people they never heard of. I think I knew about 95% of them. But it was still a great tour for the boys as they got to see some amazing houses. The parts of the tour they enjoyed the most though were the unexpected things. We took a ride up to see a park that was once an estate which was donated to the city of LA. When we got up there a Porche car show was being held. It was suppose to just be a drive by but the driver had to stop and let the boys out or they would have probably jumped out the windows!! He gave them five minutes. Thank goodness for digital cameras that can shoot videos!!! You can get a lot of cars on film in five minutes with video. The other unexpected pleasure (well at least a huge deal for Conor) was a puppy adoption being conducted at the Farmer's Market where we stopped for lunch. I think Conor spent five minutes of the 75 minute break eating and the rest holding puppies. He wondered out loud what would happen if he got a puppy for a souvenir. The mean aunt stopped any thoughts of that one!!! Just what we need, a puppy in the camper!!

After the tour we headed back to the campground for a bit of a rest and a quick dip. Then I took the boys back into Hollywood. They wanted to spend more time at the Chinese Theatre and the Star Walk of Fame. We just didn't have enough time when we were there in the morning. We spent several hours there getting many pictures of many stars on the walk as well as pictures of the cement blocks in front of the Chinese Theatre with various actors and actresses hands, feet and signatures on them.

The highlight of the night for the boys was a trip to Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. They had a blast posing with all of the different statues. In what was about a one hour visit the boys managed to take over 100 pictures!!! All I can say is I am really glad that we now have digital pictures and I don't have to pay to develop all those pictures!!!!