Mulholland Ride

Decided to try to ride Mulholland Highway/Drive from west to east.  Been reading Michael Connelly, which are all set in Los Angeles, plus Mullholland has a fair amount of history attached to it.  Started at Kanan/Dume Road since that's where my brother lives.  I may do the last western bit later this week.

Started at the Rock Store and rode west until it cut into Kanan.  Nice ride, not a lot of traffic.  Back down Kanan to the Rock Store, then off to the east.  Looking for that Hollywood sign.  The first sign I see, however,

OK, so some of Mulholland has fallen out of general use.  I'm OK with that.  I can ride seven miles on unmaintained (dirt) roads on  my Harley.  Certainly done it before.

Oh.  All right then. Certainly could have had that on the sign.  Road may be unmaintained for seven miles but that's not really relevant since you can only ride one mile on it.  So, back down the unmaintained road to loop around and try to pick it up on the other side. 

Beautiful view of the San Fernando Valley, though, one of the reasons that Mulholland Drive was originally built.  William Mulholland, LA City Engineer, wanted to build a highway that would give the people of LA access to the mountains.

Down Topanga Canyon Boulevard to Highway 101 and eventually ended up on a variety of roads out of Sherman Oaks that led me back up to Mulholland.  From the map, now that I know what I am looking for, it looks like about five miles of Mulholland are no longer an actively maintained or vehicle accessible road.

First view of the Hollywood sign.

And finally, Los Angeles from the overlook.

Mulholland ends at Cahuenga Pass so I dropped down into Hollywood which is confusing.  No signs for anything interesting, just lots of people and traffic.  Finally found Beachwood Drive (the entrance to the Hollywoodland development where the sign originated)

but it's confusing.  The only reason I found Beachwood is because there was a sign saying that the road was closed and you couldn't get to the sign that way.  No indication of how one might get there, no mention of Mt Lee Drive (alternative route that may have also been closed) but hey, I saw the sign.  It was quite cool.

Then back into Hollywood for:

Capitol Records

A house covered with cowhides

Seriously, how could you not stop and take a picture.  No signs suggesting that cowhides were for sale, just cowhides everywhere.

Anyway, that was yesterday's ride. 


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Recovering from a bit of sunburn so avoiding the surf until it fades out a little so a motorcycle ride seemed like the way to go.  Today, probably headed up to the Reagan Presidential Library and then tomorrow, back to the beach.