by Pat on September 6, 2010
I love California. The nice weather, the beaches and beautiful sights are what keeps me in a constant day dream of going back. Since the company I work for has a couple offices in Southern California, I’ve had the opportunity to head out that way quite a few times. It’s great being out there on business since it’s a free trip. However, those free trips don’t usually come with much free time. So photography opportunities are very slim. Finally earlier this year we decided to go back, but for vacation. We had so much fun being able to just stroll around on our schedule.
Here’s a few surfers at Huntington Beach catching the last waves of the day as the sun sets behind the mountains. This was also one of the last frames for me for that night.
We recently went on a quick 5 day trip to California for a long getaway vacation weekend. We stayed in the beautiful and luxurious town of Newport Beach. We also did a one day trip to San Diego which was a lot of fun, and a two day trip to Los Angeles. While trying to decide what to see in L.A. during our trip we added the Griffith Observatory at dusk to our list. As it turns out we were there on the 75th birthday – very cool! They had a special event on the front lawn with a big birthday cake and telescopes setup you can check out and use. Of the 3 telescopes they had setup, the one I remember clearly was the one aimed at Saturn. I was very impressed at how clear you can see the rings around Saturn! I think I was mostly impressed because these telescopes weren’t the huge ones they had inside. They were smaller telescopes like this one here – but still not your typical cheap home telescope! All in all it was pretty cool to stumble upon a celebration.
The observatory itself was great, I loved every part of it. The planetarium was possibly the best I’ve ever been to. It was pretty much an IMAX theater in the planetarium dome ceiling, but still employed the old-school star machine at the same time. I enjoyed the use of old and new technology there.
If you ever find yourself in L.A. and haven’t been to the Griffith Observatory – be sure to add it to your sightseeing list!
