The Terrible Catsafterme

The Forest Lawn Cemetery in the Hollywood Hills, nestled at the bottom of the north slope of the Santa Monica Mountains, is certainly one of the most beautiful and majestic of the cemeteries in Hollywood. Before the cemetery was built, the location was actually used in the film The Birth of a Nation. It is also one of the two cemeteries that I have most often visited. This is because it is where Stan Laurel is buried, and thus far, I have have visited it every year that I have been to California. This means that I was here in 1980, 1988, 1992, 1995, 1997, 2005,  2007, and 2008. So as you might guess, I am quite accustomed to the surroundings here. Read the rest of this entry »

Bob and I had visited Atlantic City, New Jersey on Monday, but we didn’t really get to see a lot of New Jersey until Wednesday and Thursday that week. The morning of Wednesday, June 17, 2009, we had seen the remainder of the sites we need to see in Philadelphia, had lunch in Bristol, Pennsylvania, and then made the short trek to our first destination in Jersey, the capitol building in Trenton. Just as we were arriving at around noon, I got some irritating news from home from Heidi who was feeding my cats. Ashleigh had had friends over after the debacle of my previous trip. This put a bit of a damper on the rest of the day for me. Read the rest of this entry »

My incredible California trip was winding down rapidly as I hit the last day of the adventure: Saturday, July 18, 2009. I had stayed the night at David’s house in Burbank after our day in San Diego so that I would be closer to the first adventure of the day – the Hollywood Show at the Burbank Marriot. The show started at 10am, but David and I met Bob for breakfast before the show at the Coral Cafe. A bacon and cheese omelet hit the spot before Bob and I headed out. Read the rest of this entry »

Bob and I thought we had blown it after visiting the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, June 16, 2009. We had been in Philly for about three hours and had seen a boatload of sites…but wait, there was more. Unfortunately though, when we walked the short jaunt over to Independence Hall at around 3:00pm, we learned that they were all booked up for the day’s tours. This was quite the bummer. This had been the location where the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were both drafted and signed. Read the rest of this entry »

Bob and I had made our way from Atlantic City to Philadelphia, which was about 90 minutes away. We arrived at about 11:40am on the morning of Tuesday, June 16, 2009. We parked the car at the Independence Visitors Center parking garage and set out on a very long and tiring day’s adventures on foot. In fact, we saw so much in Philadelphia, which in essence was where the United States was born, that I am breaking this location into two separate postings. The sites represented in this first volume represent about three hours worth of activity – or roughly half the time it will take to actually complete this posting. I had not visited Philadelphia since 1986, at which time I had only seen a few of the locations that I would see this day.   Read the rest of this entry »