A few days ago, we went on a school field trip to the Hollywood sign. It was a hike of about two hours, but it was so fine.
We didn’t take a bus there; we took a car. There were all these chaperones, and they drove us in a bunch of cars, and then there were more chaperones at the beginning of the trail, and then they took us up to the Hollywood sign.
It was drizzling a bit, but then later in the hike it got really hot. Two kids were lucky – they had camelback backpacks that had a water bottle inside and were attached to a straw. I had a normal backpack. I used a walking stick that no one else used – so when I got really hot, I didn’t slow down, I just kept at my normal pace. I found it on a pile of dirt (a lot of other kids thought a cobra lived there, but it didn’t – plus, that dirt was way too wet; it would just fall down on the cobra).
On the trail, we saw humongous piles of steaming horse poo. (I think that may have been a little bit TMI.) One group got lost. The kids that got lost – they weren’t with a chaperone [Mom sez: actually they were chaperoned – don’t worry!], so when the sand road turned into a paved road with a T shape, you had to go right or left. All the kids with a chaperone went right, that was the right way, and the kids that went left went toward the Observatory, which was totally in the wrong direction. They found some picnic tables for lunch, and then they turned around and got back to the cars first.
The car I went in was actually a mini-van, so it had two rows of seats for kids. I sat in one of the private seats, and there were reclining seats and they had a movie, so when I was laying down I watched a movie. There was only one movie, and it was “Despicable Me,” but that was OK – it was hilarious.
The first thing we saw before the hike was a ranch. It was called “Sunset Ranch.” It was mostly a horse ranch where teens could have horse rides (not pony rides), but they also raised peacocks and had wild chickens – those were the other animals they had. The teachers mostly sent us there to go to the bathroom, but the ranch hand said we could help for a while, so we did.
They said, “Can you help us get the horses to the horseback riding arena?” (which was just a small area of dirt with some horse stables). It was across the street, and usually the horses want to go there really badly, but this time they didn’t want to. So we had an idea the ranch hands never did: why don’t we hook up a livestock trailer to a tractor – because they had one, and they had two livestock trailers – and just bring them across the street. So they said, “Why don’t we give it a try?” And it worked. They were willing to go in the livestock trailer.
At the top of the Hollywood sign, we found a gravestone. It had the initials “R.I.P” and “D.W.P” on it. DWP was the initials of the person and RIP means “Rest in Peace.”
From up high, the Hollywood sign looked like giant sheets of aluminum. It looks sort of like a factory’s industrial walls. I could also see a sign that was white, on the ground, that said “Tourists go away.” That’s really mean. We could actually see the whole state from up there.
When we were up there, we ate lunch, and then when we were ready to go down, a loudspeaker announced, “A fire truck’s coming – clear the road!” And then when we were hiking down, we saw it, right where we had to turn onto the sand path. The fire truck was right there and stopped. Then we went onto the sand path and it just continued. (I wonder why.)
This trip was fun, but it was not one of our best field trips of the year (because I’ve been to the Hollywood sign a jillion times). The best field trips were to LAX, Dockweiler Beach and the LAUSD Nutrition Center.
[Mom sez: Thanks to Jeremy Miles for the photos!]
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