In late August we were watching TV (we get the L.A. channels) and there was an advertisement about an exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls showing at the California Science Center. Roxie mentioned she would love to see them. However there was only a few weeks left to see them. I got in gear at got some tickets and was able to obtain them for a showing only 4 days before they ended. Now to find a place to stay with the trailer in the L.A. area.

In the years that I have been following the Aluminarium blog they have mentioned a program through the City of Burbank called a Large Non-Commercial Vehicle Permit (LNCV) which ostensibly allows people to park RV’s, and other vehicles, on the city streets for 3 nights. We thought that would work well as we were just going down to see the scrolls.  I checked out Aluminarium’s posts to see where they stayed and had it all planned out.

I used Google StreetView to look at these areas and was concerned about a sign I saw.  It stated no parking during the day.  I wondered if that was OK if you had this permit.  I contacted the City of Burbank.  Through a flurry of emails and calls with city employees including the police department I found you cannot use this permit if you have any intention of disconnecting your tow vehicle.  That would not work for us on this trip.  I feel the guidelines that are put forth by the City of Burbank are unclear.  They even used to have a horse trailer on their PDF that discussed the LNCV.  Now they just have an image of a Class C motorhome.

Now what?  We had stayed in Van Nuys previously and it was pretty good.  Luckily I was talking to a fellow camper a few weeks earlier at Princess campground.  He mentioned a campground in San Dimas.  The East Shore RV Park.  It is part of the Frank G Bonelli regional park.  They had some spots available but since the next weekend was the start of the L.A. County fair we had to leave on Friday due to reservations.  That was fine with us.  We went down on Wed and stayed two nights.

The campground is very nice.  We got the loop that was on top of a hill and had a very good view of the lake and north of the park:

Our site was pretty level side to side but front to back was difficult.  There are also some permanent to semi-permanent residents there that can make it seem a bit seedy.  Just stay away from those areas.

We were able to have dinner with our friends, the Chen’s, one night so that was an added benefit!

The Dead Sea Scroll exhibit was at the California Science Center in downtown L.A. which is 39 miles away from our campsite.  It took us 1 1/2 hours to drive that distance!  We were told that that was actually pretty good.  It definitely is not something we are used to.

Part of the tickets we purchased included an IMAX showing of a movie about Jerusalem.  It was a great movie made even more dramatic on a 7 story high screen.  After the movie we went to wait in line for our appointed time to see the exhibition.  There were many different period exhibits that were extremely ancient and they tied each one into the timeline of the artifacts.  Near the end of it all they have the scrolls, or portions of them.

In the center of the scroll snippets was an actual jar that was discovered.  Photography was not allowed, I suppose due to flash issues, but I got some secret shots.  My iPhone 6 plus sticks out of my pocket enough to expose the lens.  So how to actually take the picture?  My Apple Watch has a remote camera trigger capability where I can make the phone take pictures.  You will see the results here.

One of the jars.  You can see the visitors looking down at the scroll pieces.  The pieces were very hard to see as they were not very lit or very big.  There were, however, enlarged versions, translations and interpretations next to them.

They also had a piece of the wailing wall on display:

The pieces of paper on the top are prayers that visitor have placed there and will be taken to the wailing wall in Jerusalem.  Roxie really liked this part:

Another benefit of the admission is that we could go in and see the Space Shuttle!

That was something I didn’t expect to see.  However the exhibit that seemed to be the most popular was:

Yes!  The space potty!

It was a quick trip down and back but well worth it to see the scrolls.