#9 Griffith Observatory

Jen still had one more day of her visit, so I asked her if there was anything on my list that appealed to her, and she immediately chose the Griffith Park Observatory. I wanted to plan this visit around sunset, because the Observatory
is in Griffith Park and overlooks the Hills and the Hollywood sign and downtown LA. The view from up there
would surely be incredible.

Because I get uneasy driving through the Hills, I chose to take advantage of the Observatory Shuttle. LA DOT (Department of Transportation) offers the LA Dash (get it? DOT ... DASH ... yeah), which is a cute trolley that takes
us right to the front door of the Observatory. It only cost a quarter per ride (which was the only cost for this night).
As the Dash drove us up to the Observatory, I realized that I made the right decision, because the only
parking up there is on the side of the windy roads ... with traffic coming both ways. No thanks.

Outside the Observatory, on the ground, were circles and plaques representing the orbits of the planets. We celebrated the fact that Pluto is still included :-)
Inside, the first floor is divided into two sections: Hall of the Eye and Hall of the Sky. Between the two is the Central Rotunda, which houses this:

the Foucault Pendulum. This picture shows exactly why it works! You can see that some of the pegs have been
knocked over already. So cool.

Since I've been to the Planetarium in New York, I didn't feel that I needed to see the show here. Also, it was kind of expensive. We went outside to check the progress of the sunset and realized that we had timed the visit perfectly.


Beautiful, right? There were about 15 people around us who stopped what they were doing and sat down on the
wall to watch it. No one made a sound. It was a very cool couple of moments.

After the sunset, we got in line for the telescope. We timed that perfectly as well, because shortly after we got in
line, about 50 people followed us. We waited about 40 minutes before we got into the building that houses the
scope. While we were outside, we got to watch them adjusting the view of the lens to focus on whatever they were
highlighting that night. That was pretty cool. When we reached the door, we saw the screen that showed the view
from the scope ... and it was Jupiter!!! There were four white dots surrounding it, and I asked the girls if
they thought those were some of Jupiter's moons. I was hoping that was the case.

As we climbed the stairs up to scope level, one of the Observatory staff members was spouting out some random
facts about the Park, the Observatory and the sky. He then told us that we'd be seeing Jupiter, FIVE of
it's moons, and dust and clouds on the planet. He was so excited about what he was describing that he made
everyone in the room psyched too. Everyone got to go up to the scope one at a time, and when I got there I
could see EVERYTHING that the staff member had told us to look for. The two stripes (deep dirt/dust
settlements), the clouds, and all five visible moons. So unbelievable.

Here's the view from outside the Observatory. It's not as cool as what we saw in the scope, but it's Jupiter :-)


On our way back down the hill, our Dash trolley had a minor malfunction. The doors would not close. Every time we
hit a bump, the doors would fly open. Our driver kept pulling over to the side of the road, and one of the passengers
would pull the doors back in. It happened so many times that the driver stopped the trolley and called the
dispatch center. The dispatcher was very helpful useless. He told our driver to drive down the
hill and finish her route and then they would figure out how to help her. So the passenger who kept closing the
door decided to just sit on the steps and hold the doors closed. We were all cheering and yelling "MacGyver!" at him.
He loved it. It was a very entertaining and unexpectedly funny end of the day.

I will definitely go back to Observatory again. It's FREE, and it's beautiful. Next time, I will try to coincide my visit with some fabulous celestial event.



Miles: 67.8
Cost: $0.50

Miles to Date: 328.6
Cost to Date: $124.56