A Southern Boy's Adventures in LA: Ben vs. The Talking Deer at the Griffith Observatory

Many of my readers are aware that I love my location in LA.  I live nice and close to just about everything, which is great most of the time.  True, whenever the Lakers play downtown at the Staples Center, traffic can be a bit more intense around us, since we live only 2 and a half miles from there.  But aside from putting up with traffic caused by Kobe and his team, we got it pretty good here in Echo Park.  We can see the Hollywood Sign from our rooftop, which is great, but something even cooler is right up there next to the sign.  The Griffith Observatory.  

The Griffith Observatory is arguably one of the most well recognized observatories in the world, and it's visited by hundreds of thousands of people each year.  Perched atop the mountain ride next to the Hollywood Sign, it's become an iconic part of Los Angeles and a spectacular place to go and get a great view of the city, as you'll see from my photos above.  It's pat of the massive Griffith Park area, a great place to go and hike, get away from the concrete jungle of the downtown area and actually get up above the smog that hovers over the city like a blanket.   Well we like our view from atop our apartment in Los Angeles just fine, but we figured we'd actually go atop the mountain some evening and check out what view the Griffith had to offer.  When JP and I noticed that the crescent moon of the evening had two bright dots lining up beneath it in more or less a straight line, we hopped online and discovered it was actually Venus and Jupiter, visible to the naked eye above the horizon and beneath the moon.  

There's never a better time to visit an observatory than when the stars and planets are aligning and making news, so we hopped in my car and went up to the observatory that very evening.  It's free to visit, and the only thing that costs money is the actual planetarium show itself, and even then, it's only $7, cheap for Los Angeles... probably one of the coolest places in the city to visit for the least amount of money, and since we're poor and live only 4.7 miles from the Observatory, we figured we better go check it out.  I hope to go more often after our experience, it was awesome, and totally worth it.  

They've filmed many a movie scene at the observatory, including most famously one of James Dean's movies, Rebel Without A Cause, and they have a bronze bust of Dean out front to commemorate his contribution to film and solidifying the observatory in Hollywood history in such a memorable way.  The grounds outside the observatory were full that evening, it was a Sunday night and many people were there to see the planets and stars.  Inside the observatory they have a pendulum swing, a bunch of scientific displays, and all sorts of interactive information about science and other cool stuff.  They even had a Tesla Coil which they fired up to show an impressive display of crackling blue electricity.  

As we walked around the outer edges of the building to observe the view of the city itself however, we noticed a funny thing.  We could hear what sounded like soft, stealthy footsteps beneath where we were standing... we looked over the edge of the railing down into the dark forests below and that's when we saw them.  Two deer, a mother doe and a baby, both walking around the base of the observatory.  It was one of those quiet moments when you stumble upon something so unexpected and yet so profoundly unique and beautiful in it's own way.  Alas, our moment of silence and amazement with the deer wasn't to last.  From a level above us, we suddenly heard the high pitched squeaky voice of a small girl call out "Hello deer!  Heeeelllllooooo Deeeer!!!!"  It was cute, sure, but it also made me laugh because JP opened his mouth and said back "Hello Human" in a funny little voice.  Since our diminutive companion above us couldn't see us, for all we know she may have thought the deer were talking to her, because all she could see were two deer and hear JP's voice responding to her own.  Whatever happened, whether she knew it was other people messing with her and we scarred the little girl or she was amazed at the magic of the talking deer at the Griffith Observatory, our little friend fell silent once JP responded to her salutations.  It was a fun little moment of entertainment and a fitting end to what had been a fun week out here.  

We continued our tour of the interior and took pictures with the statue of Einstein, watched the documentary about the history of the observatory hosted by Leonard Nimoy, and had a lot of fun before the kicked us out at the closing time of 10 pm.  Worth visiting if you're ever in the LA area, the Griffith Observatory is a great place to enjoy the view, both of the city and the stars above.