Playing in Griffith Park

See-saws, bulldozers, dinosaur slides, and infinite amounts of sand. Shane’s Playground is one of the best outdoor play spaces in L.A. It was packed (despite the Wed. noon time) with yoga moms, nannies, tatooed dads, and ebullient children. After playing with the toddler-size bulldozer/digger for what seemed like hours, Jack used my empty coffee cup to make birthday cupcakes out of sand. No surprise there, since he knows his own birthday is in 4 days.

Later in the day, he told the cashier at Costco his birthday was in March. When asked how old he was going to be, he replied: ”three and a half.” 

Cowboys & Indians

The place: Autry Museum of the American West, Griffith Park.

Jack & I whiled away a rainy morning at the “horse museum.” It’s not aimed at kids, but there was enough to keep him interested: he said hello to the giant stuffed buffalo, circled the old-fashioned fire wagon with the huge wheels, and gleefully stuck his hands in the un-manned gold panning troughs outside. I liked the first-floor art galleries, at least what I got to see of them while I chased him around. When we got to the Colt firearms collection, he stared at the guns and asked “What are these?” When I told him, he asked “What do they do?” I think this was the first time he’d seen one. He’d moved on to the Cowboy gallery before I could answer (whew).

Highlight: In the Conquest gallery, kids can hop on a saddle, press a button, and watch themselves on TV as they get chased by a black & white backdrop of horse stampedes, gun-firing posses, and a smoke-spewing train.

Rancho Santa Ana

Two words: Joshua trees. This botanic garden in Claremont is the best place to see them outside of the national park. If you go in winter, it will be all the more stunning because snow-covered Mount Baldy dominates your view of just about everything. 

Located just off the 210 freeway, Rancho Santa Ana isn’t as glamorous as the Huntington nor as leafy as Descanso Gardens, but it’s quiet and stroller-friendly with wide well-tended paths. Jack & I spent an hour here before picking up a friend at Ontario airport, a 10-minute drive away. We practically had the place to ourselves.

Bonus: Most of the plants and trees are labeled with signs aimed at a munchkin’s eye view. Since Jack’s obsessed with letters right now, he had a ball spelling out the scientific names, then asking me what they meant. I quickly got tired of answering Ceanothus, manzanita etc., so I switched to visual translations like “berry tree” and “red bark,” which seemed to satisfy him.Another bonus: The college town of Claremont is a five-minute drive away. Lots of bakeries, frozen yogurt, and a worthy independent music store.

Welcome to my travel blog

When I moved to southern California nine years ago, I would get giddy with anticipation every time I read the calendar sections of the L.A. Times and L.A. Weekly. There were so many things to do — you could hike up a mountain in the middle of Hollywood, then go and hear Dennis Hopper introduce a screening of “Rebel Without a Cause,” then find yourself eating vegan meatloaf next to Madonna at a place owned by the guy who created Rugrats. I’d  hyperventilate just thinking about it all. But a 10-to-7 job and a newcomer’s fear of 20-lane freeways kept me from doing justice to all there was to offer. Then I got friendly with my Thomas Guide, wrote lots of travel stories for Sunset Magazine and the Washington Post, had a baby, and published two hiking guides to Southern California.

Now I’ve got six months before that baby starts preschool. Before Jack enters the world of circle time and ABCs and I resume the sedentary life of a work-for-hire writer, I want to introduce him to the best of L.A. and take advantage of our unscheduled weekdays and gloriously liberating ability to use the HOV lanes. Join us as we check out cactus gardens, outdoor concerts, hidden fountains, and any thing or place that has the remotest connection to trains and motion. Most of our destinations will be within easy driving distance from the Pasadena/downtown L.A. area. Of course, we’ll do some hiking, too, though the trails may be more of the meandering, stop-and-smell-the-buttercups kind.

This blog is mostly aimed at parents looking for cool and easy things to do with their energetic under-7 kids but it will also be a crafts-challenged mom’s version of a scrapbook for her son, so I apologize in advance for the cute kid quotes and milestone anecdotes that will inevitably make it into the entries.

Thanks for dropping by!