Night Skies

I intended to hike with the Sierra Club in Griffith Park tonight but completely forgot about the DWP Light Festival traffic. As a result, I arrived about 15 minutes after all of the hiking groups had left, but ran into a group of 5 very nice non-Sierra Club hikers who let me join them on a hike up to Mt. Hollywood. It was quite cold, but the skies were crystal clear and a spectacular panorama of Los Angeles and Glendale was our reward. This is a view I never get tired of:

I took the picture below earlier tonight. Its not one of my more spectacular efforts at first glance.

...but it is actually a (very cruddy) picture of the International Space Station, which was visible tonight in the skies above Glendale from 5:21-5:27pm. I was unsure how visible it would be, but the dot of the space station was quite bright and I was able to easily track it as it swiftly moved across the sky, rising above Burbank and ultimately disappearing beyond Eagle Rock.

If you haven't been to the DWP Festival of Lights already, you are out of luck, as the event is now open to (hellish) vehicular traffic. I walked the festival last week with my parents, but after hiking tonight I thought it might be fun to drive through the festival with the top down on my Miata. After one look at the hundreds of cars waiting to enter the event at 9:30, I decided to save my sanity (and clutch) by heading home.