The One with the Griffith Observatory

Before I begin my coverage of our trip to the Griffith Observatory, I want to take a minute to express my deepest, most sincere condolences to the daughter of our dear family friends, the Milletts. Lindsey's husband hit a moose while driving home from work in Rexburg, ID last night in foggy conditions and died. They'd only been married a year; she's only 21, he was only 24. I'm so sad and so upset. I remember going to her bridal shower like it was yesterday (scroll to the very bottom of this post). Life is just so unfair sometimes. I'm so grateful for the plan of salvation and know that everything will be okay in the long run. But still. It's my biggest fear in life that Chris won't come home from school. My mind always wanders to the worst possible conclusions when he's late, and only when I hear the sound of the lock turning and he embraces me in his loving arms do I feel at ease. So to have my biggest fear happen to someone so close to me, really stings. Prayers, hugs, and positive thoughts to Lindsey, her family, and all of Derek's family.

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This morning we picked up the Bybees then headed up to the Griffith Observatory.

I'm not so much into astronomy or space or stars or anything like that (sorry to disappoint Dald!) but it's free - free is good - and it's on my list of things to do. We got good and lost (what's up with that?) and showed up at 11 rather than our planned time of 10...but we made it and that's all the matters.

Aren't they such a cute little family? Sigh :)

One of these weekends we'll take Joey and hike up to the Hollywood sign again.

So there's a scene in Yes Man (which we don't own, which says something) where they're exercising right out in front of the Griffith Observatory, and I thought it'd be fun to mimic said scene.


Then we went inside.

I was super impressed with the massive front doors.

Right inside the entryway is a huge pendulum which is supposed to prove that the earth is indeed moving.

It reminds me of the pendulum in LOST which tracks where the island is going to move to next. (T-minus three days and counting 'til the premier of season 6!!)
Here's a picture of the painted ceiling where the pendulum swings from.

No matter how many times and how many different ways I see it, the Hollywood sign will forever be cool in my eyes.

The observatory with the LA cityscape in the background. Picturesque.

In one wing of the observatory, there's a periodic table with actual elements; it's always cool to see things in real life rather than just on paper.


I learned that our sun is at the very small end of the scale as far as sizes of suns go. See that big massive red sphere on the top right? That's a Supergiant - as big as they get. And see the small dots below the big yellow sphere? That would be the size of our sun.

A picture of a solar flare on the sun. Wouldn't want to be standing too close when one of those things spurts out.

We saw plenty of people on the balconies and surrounding greenery that were writing in journals, sketching, reading, playing on their phones, or taking artsy pictures. Like this dude.

We want to come back at night so we can look through this ginormous telescope.


LA. Ever heard of it? (That's what Chris says to me EVERY SINGLE TIME he sees a sign for it or hears it on the radio or tv or a song....old news babe :)

The gang.

Now here's something more up my alley - jewels!! Down in the basement (which, after watching the video of the renovations and additions to the observatory that took four years and 90 million dollars to do, I can totally appreciate and just stand there dumbfounded as I look at the architecture), there was a super long wall showing "time" and how the earth came to be and for some reason or another it was decorated with fancy and ornate brooches, pins, and baubles. I really wanted to get my hands on some of those things!


And here's Chris being silly with Einstein.

'Twas a fun morning at the observatory!