L.A., Part 4: Descanso Garden, the Hollywood Sign and Waymo

 

4/14/25 Descanso Garden

A girl dressed like a mushroom at the Descanso cafe
(I colored and made the border while riding in the car afterwards, which explains the jiggly lines.)

LA’s Descanso Garden is well known to urban sketchers through the vibrant paintings and sketches of Virginia Hein. One of my long-time sketching dreams has been to sketch alongside Virginia in one of her favorite locations. Alas, that dream will be more difficult to achieve now because Virginia recently moved, ironically, from LA to the Pacific Northwest! Nonetheless, I channeled my inner Virginia on my first visit to the lovely garden.

Although springtime blooms made the garden especially colorful this time of year, I chose two of Virginia’s oft-sketched icons instead of flowers: the vermillion bridge in the Japanese garden and the rose garden’s gazebo. The ancient forest was a restful, shady stop in between.

Birds and bees were very happy in this spacious garden filled with mature trees and meadow-like areas. I kept stopping to use my Merlin app to ID birds unfamiliar to me.

4/14/25 The Hollywood sign from Lake Hollywood Park

To round out this day of touring, my brother and sister-in-law took me to see the famous Hollywood sign. Amazingly, even though Elaine has lived in LA her whole life and Frank has been there most of his adult life, neither had seen the Hollywood sign up close! They needed an out-of-town visitor like me to make the trip to Lake Hollywood Park, one of the easiest places to see and sketch the landmark.

Full-on tourist mode

My ride is here!

No tipping and no stinky aftershave!

Although I rarely write on this blog about things I didn’t sketch, I’m making a rare exception here because it was a key moment in my LA visit: I rode Waymo! Hearing my family members talk about Google’s autonomous car service made curiosity overtake doubt. I chose the 10-minute trip from my hotel to my brother’s house as an appropriately short, easy course to let the car do the driving. Once I got over the weirdness of the experience, I had little anxiety. Indeed, with a “driver” that makes full stops at every stop sign, never exceeds the speed limit, never fiddles with its phone, and actually slows to a stop when the light turns amber (instead of speeding through), I felt safer than I would with many human LA drivers. 

Pricing was competitive with Uber, Lyft and other app services. Bonus: Compared to some Uber and Lyft drivers I’ve had, this one wore no stinky aftershave -- and did not expect to be tipped. If I have a future opportunity to ride Waymo again, I would not hesitate.

Very rare for me, I did not feel compelled to sketch this unique and unusual experience; I wanted to keep my eye on the road! Additionally, I didn’t know what I would sketch to show the experience . . . an empty driver’s seat? In any case, since I have no sketch to show you, please see the video I posted on Instagram.