The Hollywood Sign Or Bust! (Bust)

     Though I visit Los Angeles two or three times a year, in truth I have little sense of the layout of city. 
   In my mind Los Angeles is divided into two sections:

The Beach Part,

...and the Hollywood Part.

     The  Beach Part and the Hollywood Part are separated by a great terrifying tanglement of asphalt known as The Freeway,  a complex looping, stacking, and conjoining of four different arteries which, I'm proud to say, I once drove across years ago,

...though I'm not sure I could do it ever again.

.     The Beach Part consists of everything on one side of the Freeway and The Hollywood Part consists of everything on the other.
    The Freeway cuts through a vast field of behemoth skyscrapers known as Downtown which, as far as I know, nobody ever goes to, but just looks out the window at on their way from The Beach Part to The Hollywood Part and back again.  Though I could be wrong about this.
     Oh, and there's also a part of Los Angeles called The Valley, but I'm not sure where or what that is.    
     But anyway, as  Maria, Justin and the kids live in the Beach Part, we seldom traverse The Freeway to The Hollywood Part during our Los Angeles visits
     However as Tom, Tommy, and I were on our own Last Monday I suggested that we venture across The Freeway and hike up into the Hollywood Hills to the Hollywood sign, something Tommy had never done and that Tom and I hadn't done in years, not since Maria and Justin lived in The Hollywood Part.
       We all agreed that a hike to the Hollywood sign would be the very thing.
       But we got a late start, it was close to 10:30 by the time we left,  and though Tom drove and negotiated the  high-speed bumper-to-bumper Freeway traffic with impressive proficiency, it was about 11:45 before we reached the Hollywood hills.
    Now, as I recalled from previous excursions years ago, to reach the hiking trail one was required to drive uphill through a steep but lovely winding neighborhood of beautiful homes, at the top of which was the Sunset Ranch,

...where one could rent a horse to ride the trail,

....or one could drive on to the parking area from whence began the hiking trail.
      I guess we should have taken a clue, though, from the crowds of people who were walking through the uphill neighborhood, the streets of which were now lined with parked cars, and from the fact that we were the only ones driving.
      When we arrived at the top of the street we were greeted by a gate closing off the Sunset Ranch and a no-nonsense police officer who told us in no uncertain terms that there was no parking beyond that point. 
      Which explained why everyone was hiking the long trek  through the street up to the trail, having apparently parked in the neighborhood below.
     My daughter later explained to me that there was some dust-up going on around the Hollywood sign, the residents were sick of tourists driving up their street to get to the hiking trail and so the trail was closed to parking.  To which I replied that I wondered how well the residents now liked all the parked cars and walking people crowding their street.
    But anyway, we subsequently had to make our way back down the hill to look for a parking spot either along this street, or, more likely, some other street farther away.
    As it was by now close to noon I suggested that we put our hiking plans on hold and grab some lunch at the cafe at the bottom of the hill street.

     So we parked at the bottom of the street,

...and walked to the cafe,

...to learn that it was closed on Mondays.

      Now our mission changed from where to park to where to eat.
      As we were strangers in a strange residential upscale Hollywood Hills neighborhood, I suggested that we pull out the map and  find our way to Hollywood Boulevard, the heart of the tourist trade in these parts, where we'd surely find some nourishment and some parking, and which we proceeded to do.

However, as the Lieutenant Colonel would never agree to paying the exorbitant price of $10 for parking for the brief foray that we figured our lunch operation would be, we drove around until we found a parking meter on a side street from whence we walked back to Hollywood Boulevard.

     We found a promising-looking sports bar called The Rusty Mullet where the walls opened out the street,

...and the motif was Hillbilly-chic.

  The ambiance was fun and the food was wonderful:

     Tom had a really yummy burger and fries,

... I opted for the  Cobb Wrap, which was humongous, delicious, and came with the most ethereally scrumptious sweet potato fries, which I swear I must  seek to replicate someday,

...and Tommy had a sort of stylized Cobb Salad, also very tasty.

     But though the food at The Rusty Mullet was great, it took overly-long to arrive, and under normal circumstances I might have said the food was worth waiting for.  But it was a little before 1 pm when we arrived at the restaurant and 1:45 pm when we left.  Doing the math we figured that by the time we drove back to the Hollywood Hills, found parking, and hiked up the steep hill street it would probably be at least 2:45 pm before we even reached the beginning of the trail to the Hollywood sign.  Our drive back home over The Freeway could take  1 1/2 hours or more during rush hour.
     And we'd promised to have the car back to Maria by 4 pm, as she needed it to get to a work appointment.
     And so, seeing as a hike up to the Hollywood sign was not in the cards, we folded and instead joined the crowds hiking up and down Hollywood Boulevard,

...which was also interesting,

...and fun.

     However on our drive back home, as we sat stuck on The Freeway in the famous L. A. traffic, we decided that if in the future if we wanted to go for a hike in Los Angeles we'd stick to the lovely hills of Malibu in the Beach Part.