Sunset Strip and Hollywood Hills
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Today’s ride was yet another tour of Hollywood and the Sunset Strip, and then a little jaunt up into the hills.
I met Gene at the park at 8:00 and we set out. We took Orange Grove west and then went down through the arroyo, past the stables in South Pasadena. The road there is kind of rough, and I always seem to end up losing my water bottle on the bumps there. But after I went back and picked it up, we went up the little hill and got on York Ave for the trip across Highland Park.
Heading south on Eagle Rock Blvd, we took a right on Fletcher and took that across the L.A. River and into Silver Lake. Then we crossed the Shakespeare Bridge and then turned south to Prospect Ave, which merges into Hollywood Blvd. Riding down Hollywood Blvd in the morning is always a somewhat surreal experience. The street crazies are all still asleep in the doorways, so it’s quite a bit different from how it is later in the day.
A bit west of La Brea, we turned south and took Hawthorn Ave to where it ended, and then went down to Sunset Blvd for the last bit out to the Strip. We passed a car lot that specialized in old Cadillacs. We also passed the Laugh Factory. Back in 1990, I took a class at UCLA Extension called “How to perform stand-up comedy”, and we had our ‘mid-term exam’ at the Laugh Factory. That was an interesting experience.
Continuing on, we got to the famous Sunset Strip. We rode for just a bit there and then decided to try an experiment on one of the side streets. We took a right on Miller Drive. But it was not ‘Miller Time’. It was 15% grade time. Yikes. We took that up for a while until it wound down to Queens Road, where we took a left. Then the road got steep. I had to say ‘uncle’ and shift there. It felt like close to 20%. But it brought us up to Hollywood Blvd, where we took a left.
Continuing on up Hollywood Blvd, we passed a house that had a waterfall over the driveway. Then we merged into Sunset Plaza and took that the rest of the way to the top of the hill. We stopped for a bit to take in the view, but there wasn’t much of a view today, since it was still kind of foggy. Then we went over the crest and down the other side into Laurel Canyon.
At Wonderland, we took a left and then headed up Laurel Pass Road and then Allenwood. On the way up I picked up a real-estate flyer for a ‘Dramatic private gated mini-estate’. $1,995,000. Yow. The house was pretty, though.
We came out on Mulholland Drive at the top of Fryman Canyon at the little park. We stopped for water and then headed back east down the spine of the Hollywood Hills. At the bottom in Cahuenga Pass we took some little side streets to come out on Barham Blvd. A right turn there took us down the hill to Burbank.
At the bottom of the hill, we headed east into Griffith Park. We rode all the way through the park and out the other side, passing the Mulholland Fountain at Los Feliz. Then we kept going back to Fletcher.
Turning left on Fletcher, we headed back across the river and into Atwater Village. Then on up into Highland Park. We took a little side trip to ride along the Gold Line tracks where they go down the middle of the street. Then we took Ave 60 across the arroyo and got on Monterey Road for the trip across South Pasadena and San Marino.
The last part of the ride was up Sierra Madre Blvd back into Pasadena and back to the park where we had started.
It was a nice ride, even with the 20% grade part.
53 miles.
