Ever since our waterfall hike in the mountains of Pennsylvania, the Birds have been obsessed with hiking. They very much wanted another hiking adventure on this vacation. This time they wanted it to be a more challenging hike (not a wooden path), and they wanted to go up to the top of a mountain and have a great view. I think that today’s hike delivered.
As I am typing, we are all three in need of a shower after our dusty, three-plus hour hike. We have stopped off at “Camelot Kid’s Land” in Anaheim California. It wasn’t exactly on the way from Los Angeles, where we hiked today, to San Diego where we are headed tonight, but Brainy Bird loves miniature golf. Camelot Kid’s Land also has a really nice, clean up to date arcade, laser tag, a very tall waterslide, bumper boats, and go-karts. The Birds are having too much fun to appreciate how dirty and exhausted we all are from our afternoon hike.
The hike was worth the grime. We parked down on Lake Hollywood Blvd, and walked a quarter mile up the road to access the Wonder View Trail. Because of the difficult access…sort of trespassing…to the trail, it is not frequently traveled. At times we climbed straight up. The trail was dusty, and there were opportunities to potentially slide in the lose dirt of the trail down the side of the mountain. Arguably, any three mile climb up a mountain is a bit of work. Once we got to the top of the mountain via Wonder View Trail, we felt a great sense of accomplishment. We took a snack and water break, and Brainy Bird and I were ready to head back down the mountain, but Little Chirp wasn’t ready to pack it in. He wanted to hike another mile across the mountain range to see the Hollywood sign.
“We are big adventurers!” Little Chirp said as we set out towards the Hollywood sign instead of back down the Wonder View Trail. He led us the entire hike with his sure footedness.
The trail became difficult, even appearing to end at times, but there was no convincing Little Chirp that we were turning back. The incredible view of Los Angeles and Little Chirp’s intense enthusiasm kept Brainy Bird and I trekking along behind our fearless leader, “I am a mountain mouse!” Little Chirp declared.
Little Chirp lost his footing, and smacked his bottom down on a rock in a cloud of dirt. He paused for no more than a second, hopped back up again and announced, “I am a hard-core mouse! I am part hard-core mouse, and part mountain mouse!”
We did in fact make it to the Hollywood sign. You can’t go up and touch the sign, it is fenced off and about 10 feet away from where we hiked to. We got as close as we could, and we could not have been happier.
We laughed, as we discovered there is apparently a paved road up to the Hollywood sign, you can’t drive on the road, but there were people walking up the paved road to the sign. We went up the side of a mountain and across the tops of several other mountains, to get to the Hollywood sign, and apparently we could walked up a paved road.
When I pointed this out, Little Chirp said, “WHAT? We are great adventurers! Remember? We don’t take a paved road. That wouldn’t be anything.”
Little Chirp hates to stand still for a picture; he couldn’t stop getting his picture taken on the top of the mountain. I have no doubt that every kid in second grade is going to hear about what a great adventurer he is when school starts.
We reveled in our victorious climb for awhile, and then we headed back across the mountain range path until we reached our first point of victory – the mountain top of Wonder View Trail. We were rationing our water at this point, and we were happy to find the familiar path that would take us back down the mountainside. Little Chirp and I would both slip and fall on the path down, and we were all covered head to toe in dirt when we arrived at the bottom of the mountain. As we took our final steps back down from the mountain, Little Chirp said, “I made it the whole way!! Now, I am awesome mouse!”
We finished our hike covered in dirt and sweat. We were all three exhausted, hungry and a little sun burned, but no one cared. We enjoyed our adventure, and we felt a great sense of accomplishment. Brainy Bird said it best with, “Wow, this is just the second day, and it is already the best vacation ever.”