Spring Break: Travel Town Museum, Griffith Park L.A.

After spending a few hours exploring the Griffith Park's Old L.A. Zü, we drove a few minutes north to take in the Travel Town Museum.
Founded in 1952, Travel Town hosts a wide array of locomotives, passenger cars and other rolling stock. Most of the locomotives on display are steam-powered, with one dating back to 1864.
We were quite surprised to find the museum as a free admission area. A few cars and locomotives were open and available for us to climb in and on.

inside the A.T.&S.F. Snack Car #3355 (1928)

Santa Fe logo window detail in #3355

Lots of steam, sadly I lost track of which locomotives are photographed below.

artsy-fartsy black and white
tying the grrrl down to the tracks

I really liked the simple type font on this tender:
And I love the engineer skunk from a California Western locomotive:

I think I'm going to have to make a t-shirt with this logo, too cool!

After we had spent about 45 minutes checking the place out, an announcement on the PA alerted us to mosey on over to the station for a ride on the park's passenger railroad.
The fare was all of $2.50 per person for two trips around the park. So we crammed Celeste into one of the cars:
But she quickly discovered that there was adequate headroom to be found.
Bringing up the rear.
An afternoon well spent.

And now a public service announcement from the museum:

(click here for a definition)

Spring Break: At The Abandoned Zü

Ah, spring break. We wanted Celeste to see a bit more than just the neighborhood and the local Target/Trader Joe's/Stater Bros during her time off, so we made plans to go camping out at Joshua Tree National Park.

I rooted around in the attic, gathering the tent, sleeping bags, camp stove and all of our other gear with plans to head out to the desert for three days and two nights. Allie went so far as to buy all the food that we'd need for eating a bunch of meals outdoors. However, it was not to be. With high winds (35-40 MPH) and cold nights (temps in the upper 30s) predicted, we changed plans at the last minute. So I hucked all the camping gear back up in the attic and we re-packed our clothes to head up north to explore the LA area for a few days.

A few clicks on Hotwire.com and we had a nice room booked at the Glendale Hilton. But before we checked in, we hit L.A.'s Griffith Park to explore the old and abandoned Los Angeles Zoo.

Construction started in 1912 and the facility was located here until they moved to a larger, flatter and more accessible plot a couple of miles north. Read more from the sign below:
Now brace yourself for an onslaught of pix of a caged grrrl.
There were a few distinct sections of the zoo. Although I am not certain, I'm quite sure that this area with the fake rock (that Allie's dubbed Zoo Rock®) was built later - possibly in the 1930s. Now you can picnic where the animals once lived.
As well as peer up some of the staircases that lead to smaller enclosures.
Fortunately some enterprising young vandals removed some of the fencing, allowing us to better-explore the bowels of the old zoo. First we scrambled up the steep staircase, doing our best to avoid the glass from discarded beer bottles.
The fencing around the upper sections was also compromised, much better than trying to go back down the stairs.
Up top we found an old building, complete with even more cages to climb in.
I think Celeste is acting as if she's a bird here.
Nice view of Glendale and the surrounding mountains from this vantage.
I loves me some rusty hardware. Fine patina!
It's quite amazing how small the cages were. I hope (but don't believe) that only small animals were caged here.
This bank of cages seemed older than the others. Possibly the original part of the zoo?
Only a couple of these cages were not welded shut. Which is fine as most had running and/or standing water and algae in them. My grrrl would have ended up soaked.
We followed a small ravine up to a diminutive waterfall.
Then back down to the zoo for one more look around.
Overall I highly recommend the old zoo as a great place for a budding urban explorer to crawl around and get nice and dirty.