June 7th The Cooper Trip begins

About ready to crash right now, so no photos yet, but I'll go ahead and report out what we did today-  

Up at 0400- showered and loaded up the car, then over to GSP-  Uneventful flight to DFW on an Embrarier 45-  Then, a 45 minute or so layover and gate change, then 2 first class seats on over to LAX-  arriving there at 0930 LA time.   The bags were first off the carousel, so that worry was dispelled right away-   Then, the shuttle over to Thrifty, which is like 6 miles from the airport, and we are like number 17 on line-  not too long a wait, but we decided to upgrade to a Prius- which should give us 50 mpg, which is good for California Driving-  but it was more up front money.  Also learned California doesn't honor EZ Pass, they have their own system.  Also discovered Cali has a very strict anti phone law for drivers of cars, absolutely no drivers can use cell phones, so that was fine. 

The Prius is a strange machine, for sure.  It has a push button start system, and there is a ritual you have to go through, and if you don't do it just so, the car sits there.  Had that happen twice today.   There is a weird paddle system for shifting, which sometimes results in the car not budging- had that happen twice.  The car has very little punch acceleration, which is not helpful trying to pull out into traffic on the freeways out here.  Hopefully, we'll get used to it quickly.  

From the airport, we headed out to the Snooky Goldman Visitor Center for the Santa Monica Mountains National Park, which meant that we drove up into Beverly Hills, and by several landmarks in the area, the Beverly Hills Hilton, the Beverly Hills Hotel, and several stars houses, and such, and some very impressive homes at that, also Forest Lawn, Dodger Stadium and other famous places were seen today, NBC Universal studios, ABC, several record company offices, and so on.  

From the Goldman Center, we headed over to Griffith Park for a de Anza stamp, and then downtown to Olvera Street to get a stamp, then to San Gabriel Mission for a trail stamp, then over to our hotel for two days, the Rodeway Maingate, which is right at the entrance to Disney Land.  

After cleaning up a bit, we headed on over to a Los Angeles Angels game, with the White Sox.  Stayed for 6 innings, the A's were loosing 4-0.  

Active long day, up for 21 hours so far-  tomorrow we will sleep in a bit, then be doing Disney Land for all day.