California: Los Angeles, Malibu & Ventura
The City of Angels got its name from its Spanish settlers in the late 1700s who called it “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula, shortened to the Pueblo de los Ángeles”. Shortened to City of Angels, like most things American we tend to try to get there quicker 🤔 The name L.A. is quicker but the traffic sure isn’t 🙄 Millions of people attempting to navigate in a basin flanked by ocean and mountains… that sums up the chaos well. Vince got his RV combat badge driving the bus into and out of town and every field trip was twice as long as the planned route; however, we still got to see a lot in a short time. Once we got to our destinations it was worth the effort!
We split the band in 2 for the first couple days and Michele took Robert and Peyton to Universal Studios and Vince took Jayden to Warner Brothers as well as a few other stops in the Hollywood Hills and Costco (Jayden wasn’t impressed with Costco 😏). Few other drive by sightings of the Hollywood reservoir, Chinese Theater, the Colosseum, Hollywood and some AI bots all over the place 😳 If Skynet is taking over soon it’s likely L.A. will be their home 😏 We saw AI cars (picture below, white car with cameras all over it) amidst the Lamborghini/Audi/Ferrari rentals available on Hollywood Blvd. Also saw a few delivery bots out on the sidewalk in Hollywood so we think that is where the robots are building their forces. The Lucas Museum of Native Art is also suspiciously like a spaceship so it may be the galaxy instead of just Earth when they take over. It’s happening people! But seriously the Lucas Museum is stunning and definitely on our priority list next time in L.A. 🤯
Day 3 we pushed into downtown a bit and visited LaBrea Tar Pits and Museum on our Museums 4 All pass. Very impressive archeological site. We knew it was supposed to be a big site but the scale was 10x anything we expected. As an example we learned that there were 3.5 million fossils extracted from the various tar pits, representing ~660 different species. Thousands of carnivores, which means even more prey, all landed in the sticky pit and never got out. It’s surreal visiting a lovely park with tar pits all around and modern condos and offices surrounding the skyline. A great field trip for the boys and Mom/Dad learned a lot too 🤯 We are watching the movie Volcano soon to show the boys some movie magic at the tar pits.
L.A. is a massive city but also filled with nature and the spring bloom and wildlife were a pleasant surprise. Not sure if the last month crossing the deserts made it more pronounced but we saw tons of flowers in bloom and enjoyed numerous hummingbird and hawk sightings (IPhone isn’t good at capturing birds in flight 🤨) but we did get a blurry humming bird, as well as a very vocal Black Crested Night Heron.
We also caught a Kings Academy Alumni (‘24) and former student of Vince’s, Trinity Shahriya at The University of Southern California. Trinity is completing her first year in the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and based on our tour and Trinity’s involvement in her first broadcast job and involvement with Christian Challenge she’s doing great! USC has one of the top programs in film in the US/world and Trinity has already started working in the industry. Trinity is representing TKA’s Studio 70 well 😎. With Spielberg and Lucas on a few of the film school building it’s an impressive opportunity for an impressive young woman. Her Mom Dr Caroline Ndungu, Director of The King’s Academy Pre-Medicine Program has good reason to be proud 😊
Last day in L.A. so we left for the iconic Malibu coast, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, the famous Pacific Coast Highway and ended our day on the beaches of Ventura at the National Channel Park Visitor Center across the bay from the Channel Islands. We didn’t have our timing worked out so all the boats to the island were sold out but we had fun anyway. If you plan to go, book in advance 😉 The boys got their Jr Ranger books done at both parks and we had a fun west coast mountain/beach day. The boys also learned that the Pacific is considerably colder than the Atlantic during our hands-on lab for school today 🫣. Highlights along our drive were a beautiful Hindu Temple in the mountains, Pepperdine University, some Malibu tide-pools, Ventura car show, VB & surf as well as some Mulholland mountain driving fun. Robert also liked the skunk at the visitor center, we are praying he doesn’t ever find a real one 😂
