Today (Sunday) was another day without the conference, so a true vacation day. When traveling different places, if I have free time on Sunday morning, I love finding a church in the area to attend. Since I didn’t have any concrete plans this morning, that is what I did. I had found the church a week or so ago from their website and looked like a perfect place for me. However, in the past few days, I determined it might be tricky to get to the church. Piecing together several parts of a puzzle, I discovered this was a running weekend at Disneyland, and a 1/2 marathon would be happening Sunday morning, closing roads all around my hotel. Also, these road closures created an island of the town completely surrounded by closed roads for the race. And yes, you guessed it, the church was on this island. I thought maybe some closed roads they’d still let you cross to get in, or something, but wasn’t sure what to expect.

So, I leave about a half hour before the 8:30 a.m. service starts (the traditional service). I drive looking to see if I could cross any of the closed roads, but there was not a chance. One place I wanted to go straight, but a police officer directed me to turn right, so I did. I then just found a place to park and decided to walk to the church, since they let walkers go across the closed roads. So I did that – trying to cross the race route as quick as possible and timing my crossing so as to not impact any runners. I ended up walking about 3/4 of a mile to the church. I get to St. Olaf Lutheran Church right about 8:30 and there was about 5 people there and the pastor wasn’t there yet. No one at the church had shared information or made plans to account for people not being able to get to church. Some were kind of annoyed that the race was on Sunday and made it almost impossible to get to the church. Disney, the city, and/or the police had shared with everyone in the area about the road closures, so they could have planned something.

Anyway, so the few of us that were there just stood around visiting while a few people trickled in. Finally the pastor arrived about 9, and we decided we’d have a shortened service with the people that made it. Their pianist/organist had been there and left I think because I had heard people talking about how the choir director had decided to cancel choir that morning – or maybe thinking they’d just cancel the whole service. So we had a short service and did one hymn acapella, but the others weren’t familiar enough to do without music. I stayed after the service for a little bit visiting and then walked back to my car and back to the hotel.

After touching base with my friend Matt, we decided to meet up at the Grove, which is an outdoor shopping mall where I actually had parked for the taping of The Price is Right. So I drive up there, Matt, Claudia, and I explore the Grove and the Farmer’s Market (which is not your rural type of farmer’s market, but one with permanent shops, selling all kinds of items and lots of places to eat). We walked around looking at things for awhile and then had lunch there. We then walked about a mile or so to see the La Brea Tar Pits, which is an area right there among all the big buildings, etc. Basically they are an artesian well for asphalt. The asphalt under the ground just keeps seeping up. Through history many animals get stuck in the asphalt, so they are huge dig sites for fossils, and they are actively doing digs to find more fossils. We then walked back to the Grove, did a little shopping (mainly so we could validate our parking), and then headed back to the house where Matt and Claudia are staying.

After we got there, Matt filled me in on all the sites I saw as I was driving there, including the part of Hollywood that everyone thinks of when they think of Hollywood and the WB studios. When figuring out what to do until it was time for dinner, Matt and I went to Fry’s, since I had never seen one.  Wow, that was really neat, tons of electronics, components, little do-dads, etc. Including the first time I’ve seen an UHD 4k TV in person.  I want one!!!

When Matt’s friend got back home, we went out for dinner at California Pizza Kitchen, and then went back and watched a few videos. Then it was time for me to head back to my hotel to get packed up and get a little sleep before my very early morning for day 7 of my adventure. It was a great day just hanging out with friends and doing whatever we felt like doing with no concrete plans.