Exploring LA

On Friday, I took my parents to Gamble House. Getting there was something of an adventure. Their rental car had "never lost" - but the stupid thing caused us to take a 7 mile detour (by telling us to keep left when the highway split but failing to mention that we needed to take an exit on the right side half a mile later; there was no way to get across 5 lanes in LA traffic in that amount of time) and at least 6 u-turns (because the street names it used did not match the street signs). This is dad and I outside the Gamble House:



We got a late lunch at In-N-Out Burger. Then we drove to Craig's office. After a tour of Thinkwell, we got to sit in on "show and tell" which was really interesting. This is Craig, me, and my dad at the office:



We ended the evening meeting Jason and his family for dinner. Bryce and Courtney drove out to meet us. Courtney really enjoyed Jason's girls. We only got a picture of my parents and I with Jason and his family:



On Saturday, we took my parents into L.A. We went to the Petersen Automotive Museum. On the way there, we saw the most "interestingly" dressed person. Initially we thought a woman was standing at the bus stop in an unfortunate bikini, but no, "she" was a he. A nice taste of L.A. for my parents. We stopped for lunch at the Johnny Rockets in the museum - if you have food allergies, I highly recommend this place. They have their entire ingredient list available online - in full, easy to find. And the food was good too. Here's a picture of Craig with an old Helmes Bakery truck (his grandfather drove one of these, a slightly newer version, though):



From there, we drove out to Santa Monica. My parents weren't interested in going down Third Street or out on the Pier, but my mom did want to look at the ocean. We weren't able to find parking, so Craig stayed with my dad in the car while mom and I walked out to the water. My mom insisted on tasting the water (to make sure it was salty and not just a big lake) and then insisted I do the same. I took a picture of the water - you can see that it was a rather grey and dreary day:



The weather does not explain the traffic, which was miserable all day long. We spent over 4 hours in the car that day, so we met the kids for a late dinner before crashing.