Will Rogers State Park

In keeping with trying to do some sight-seeing every weekend, I spent Saturday at the Will Rogers State Park in the Pacific Palisades, up near Malibu. I think I found out about it by doing a search on parks in Los Angeles. Another one of the Michigan interns went with me, and it was nice to have some company, for a change. A second intern joined us later in the afternoon to watch some polo.

The day started by driving up to Malibu, which of course consisted of sitting in some traffic. :-) We made it up to the park around 12:15 or so, and started on a short hike to Inspiration Point. Luckily it was a nice day and the hike only took about 20 minutes, though it was pretty steep in parts. The view from the Point was amazing, though I just wish it wasn't so hazy in LA. You could see all the way from downtown LA out to the ocean, including views of Santa Monica and Malibu. That took you about three-quarters of the way around the circle, and then the other quarter overlooked these hills/mountains (slightly more than hills, but not yet mountains). I was really struck with how different this hike was than ones I would take back home just in terms of the terrain and shrubbery (bring me a shrubbery!). As you can see from the photos, the hilltains (ha ha - makes me think of Paris Hilton) were kind of pointy and the foliage was dry and short. Nothing compared to our scenery back home in MD or VA, in my opinion.

Me at Inspiration Point, with a view of the ocean in the background. (This is looking towards Malibu and Santa Monica).

I want to stitch the following photos together into a panoramic view, but don't have the software on my laptop to do that right now. But hopefully you get the idea. And these pictures just don't do justice to the view we had -- it was kind of hard to capture.

In this photo of me, you can kind of see downtown LA in the right corner. On the top of the hill in the upper left corner is a house. We found out that the guy who lives there is the one who paid $20M to go on the Russian space station (you can read about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Tito). The house is worth probably around $40M. We found this out from a gentleman who was at the Point on horseback with his daughter. He seemed to have been around the area for a while and knew about it.

This is looking back down towards the polo field and the ranch house.











After the hike, we took a tour of the house, but that didn't take very long. It was interesting to know how modest Will Rogers lived, especially when you learned how much money he was making during the Depression. But he had a relatively small home and turns out gave most of his money away to various causes and disasters that happened around the world. I had no idea he was a great philanthropist. His house was very Western, of course, and had all the original furniture. Some of the more interesting things in my view were on the patio. They had a wire running across the uncovered part of the patio where an awning could be drawn in case of rain or too much sun. Also, there was a bamboo curtain that could be hung across the open side, making the patio just like another room of the house.

Then, polo games are held from 2-5 every Saturday and Sunday, so we watched a couple of games. I have been to one other polo game in The Plains, VA. It was held in a dirt arena that was about 2/3 the length of this field. This was definitely a much bigger field, but they only played with 4 players on each team. I'm not sure if that is typical or not. Of course, 4 players is a lot when you think how much space a horse takes up. The games got better as the afternoon progressed -- we thought that they must build up to having the best games later in the day. The last game was a charity match for one of the LA art museums or societies. But even still, the people did not get all dressed up. I have yet to be at a polo match like the ones you see on TV or in the movies. I think my favorite part of the game is the sound of the horses hooves pounding against the earth as they gallop by.

Video from fairly far away.

Unfortunately, these videos are a lot clearer on my computer and camera than on Google video.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8451831626658257590&hl=en

Then, I discovered how far my zoom really went!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4033756840051466549&hl=en

There is a tradition in polo that during one of the breaks, spectators go out on the field and push in the divets that have been created. This is a little bit of that. At the end of the video you can see a small group of people, one of whom has a camera. There were two guys there doing some filming and interviewing, but I don't know what it was for. Probably some local thing.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1303954231042243633&hl=en

So after all that, I was pretty exhausted, my energy sapped from the sun. So I ended up relaxing for the rest of the weekend. (I had planned to go to the beach on Sunday, but the weather was cool and cloudy).