Category Archives: California

City of Burbank strikes out!

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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:

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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.

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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:

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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:

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

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

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Yes!  The space potty!

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

Birthday weekend

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Our granddaughter’s (Paige) birthday is in August.  We asked her what she wanted for her birthday.  She said to go camping in the trailer.  We are always happy to oblige any camping!  Roxie’s birthday is also in August as our anniversary (35 years).  It seemed like a thing to do.  We couldn’t go right after Paige’s birthday so we did it the next weekend.  We chose our old reliable, Princess campground.

Paige’s father (our son Aaron) and Aaron’s girlfriend, Rachel, decided they wanted to go also.  They decided they would stay in a tent.  Fine with me.

We decided to head up there Thursday to get a head start and they were coming up for the weekend.  They also wanted to bring their dog, Maggie, which was up to us to do since we have the truck.  It was nice to get there early.  We were able to take a naturalist-led walk around Indian Basin and saw a fawn and a woodpecker:

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As we were resting, waiting for the rest of our party to show, on Friday we heard some diesel engines.  The Rough Fire had started 2-3 weeks before and we knew that there were firefighters fighting it.  The noise we heard were some Forest Service fire crews heading into the campground.  They occupied a few of the open sites and probably rested from their chores:

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A couple of times various crews had to move as campers were coming in for their reservations.  We knew that there were helicopters getting water from nearby Hume Lake and we heard them from time to time.  I wasn’t worried about the fire as I knew it was a ways away.

On Saturday we all did the requisite visit of the General Grant tree but this time it was different.  Rachel had never seen it or maybe had never seen and Giant Sequoia’s.  I think she was impressed.  Here is a shot of the General Grant and the walk through tree.  Recently I was not sure that if we might ever see the General Grant after how the Rough fire has gone but it seems safe now:

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One thing we noticed this year at Princess was it was very dirty and dusty.  This ight attributed to the drought and possibly because we usually don’t head her as late in the season.  Here is our campsite, and that is not my tow vehicle:

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On Sunday, Aaron and Rachel left relatively early which gave us a chance to go on another walk around Indian Basin.  This time we took Maggie and Paige.  It was warming up and a bit of smoke was beginning to show:

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The dreaded part was next.  Heading back down to the 100+ degree weather.

Shortly after we left they closed the highway that leads down to the Kings Canyon right by our campground.  As Maxwell Smart says “Missed it by that much!”