Hiking to the Hollywood Sign

The first time I saw the Hollywood sign, I nearly jumped out of my seat in excitement. There was just something about those huge white letters that made being in LA suddenly feel real. But seeing it from a distance, great as it was, just didn’t cut it so we decided to get up close and personal by hiking to the Hollywood sign.

Parking in the Griffith Park Observatory, we gazed across the hills at the famous sign and excitedly geared up for the walk. Quashing the little voice inside that piped up saying ‘that’s really far away’, we set off towards the trail.

We started on a road that sloped upwards at varying degrees – a killer leg workout if I ever did one. Knowing that we would be taking the long flight back to rainy England later that day, we didn’t let ourselves complain about the heat for a second and instead, took in the stunning views of the Hollywood hills.

See how it looks hazy in the distance there? That’s the smog over LA. That explained a lot about the strangely misty start to our Santa Monica beach trip. In the next photo, you can see how far we had already come from Griffith Observatory when things got a little challenging.

You see, we weren’t exactly sure how but the dusty but wide track we were walking along suddenly stopped. Unable to remember another turning we should have taken, and encouraged by a large group of teenagers with their school teacher behind us, we now had to navigate across an opening in the undergrowth that could have been a path – just a metre or so away from a steep drop into the hills.

Things were a little rocky – excuse the pun – for half an hour or so and we nearly ended up flat on our faces on multiple occasions before we finally slid down a 45 degree slope to rejoin the road! No longer able to see the sign, we powered on upwards across the back of the hill where we rounded the last corner to be rewarded with this sight….

Just feet away from us, albeit protected by a huge fence, was the Hollywood sign.

Being behind the sign was pretty special: we spent so long just looking out across Hollywood towards the skyscrapers of downtown LA, imagining what it would be like to live in one of the houses just below us.

It was such a beautiful way to spend our final day in California – especially after the triumphant conquest of the mountains behind us! Now just to find our way back…

You can see more of our Hollywood hike in the below video! For more posts on our America trip, check out our trip to Santa Monica Beach, Las Vegas and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Hollywood.

Laura x

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