Best Morning Walk

All right, last week I went to California for my Grandma's birthday and on Saturday morning I took a big, long, healthy walk with Mom, Dad, and Aunt Afton through their old neighborhood. It was fun and I learned (or was reminded of) things I never knew about the residents of San Marino and Pasadena and heard about where Mom and Afton went to Birthday parties and stuff and I saw some of my favorite houses of the area. Let me show you some things I saw...

First of all, here's Mom, Dad, and Afton on Grandma's porch before our walk. Grandma's house is a likable yellow ranch house with a big driveway and big backyard, nothing too over the top.


But all around it there are houses like this!


And this!


And this!


And this!


Down the street and over a block from Grandma's is the home Dr. Nathan Roth, meaning that this is the house where David Lee Roth grew up. He and the Van Halen boys (from nearish-by La Canada) used to practice in their garage. Afton remembers hearing their racket in the neighborhood and recounted that Van Halen used to perform at San Marino High School during lunch.


This house is known for its very poorly concealed sprinklers.


And this house is knowns as my cousin Katherine's favorite.


Around Grandma's there's lost of nice California Live Oaks.


This one house has a solar observatory at the end of its driveway. What, yours doesn't?


The following stately manor (of which I've photographed the gates and taken a lousy through-the-gates shot) has been featured in numerous films. Recently it was seen as the home of Vince Vaughn's character in Starsky and Hutch. When they were filming it a few years back I saw Vince leaving the set in his criminal costume. I know, great story.



These are the gates to the estate of the lady that owns the LA Times.


This is just a nice house.


These are stairs.


Looking up from the stairs, there's this house.


Palm trees.


I always really liked this house...(oh look, it's for sale!)


But I always thought this house looked like it had boring people living in it.


Another grand front lawn.


This house is where Cameron Diaz lived in the Holiday.


This house I have always really, really liked. So cool.



Someone tore down their house to build a modern glass house.


And this is the house from Mr. and Mrs. Smith.


Next time I post I'm going to talk about the things I did and the tacos I ate while in California.