Day 6

One of the best decisions we made was to take a break in between each day at Disneyland and California Adventure.  Those days were long, hot, and tiring so doing something else every other day really helped recharge us.  We really wanted to spend a day sightseeing Los Angeles, but the traffic sort of put a damper on how much we could do and see in one day especially with kids.

Our first stop of the day was to the Los Angeles Temple.  This was one of many temples that was closed for cleaning that we visited.  You could tell that this temple was one of the older temples by the design and the grounds were interesting because they had let most of the grass die because of the "extreme drought" that California is experiencing.

After, we took the fast condensed version of seeing Hollywood.  We drove around some famous streets, Rodeo Drive, Hollywood Blvd, the Sunset Strip and up into the Hollywood Hills. We drove down the street of the Grauman's Chinese Theater and saw all the stars on the sidewalk but didn't get out because it was so packed with tourist.  The kids really wanted to see the Hollywood Sign so we found that and then spent the rest of the day singing Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA" song.  We drove past where they film "The Office" although the Dunder Mifflin sign is no longer up.  By the time we finished seeing those few things and sitting in traffic the kids were dying to get out of the car and to go to the beach.

We spent the rest of the day at the Santa Monica Beach and then the Pier.  The kids LOVED playing in the waves and the sand.  At one point we saw a fin in the water and got really freaked out that it was a shark.  It turned out to be some dolphins swimming. We had a good laugh and really liked the idea of seeing dolphins in the water.

I'm pretty sure Cameron could have jumped waves all day long if we let him.  The kids had a blast playing in the ocean. When we could swim no more, we headed over to the Pier to walk around.  Muscle Beach and the Pier are pretty crazy with tons of different things to look at, buy and really weird people to see.  The kids had a good time taking in the sights.

We stayed at the beach until we hoped that the traffic had died down for the day (So like 10:30 at night!)
The last stop of the day was to the Newport Beach Temple.  It is cool to visit temples at night because they are all lit up and beautiful but the down side is that the gates are closed and you can't get up close to them.  This temple is one of the smaller temples and it has a cool design.  Unfortunately, our pictures didn't turn out great in the dark.