Along with my love of being able to see the world, I can also include geocaching as another hobby of mine. A combination of both of these together has allowed me to unearth some interesting locations around the world. This is a story of how the hobby of geocaching brought me to a famous landmark.
In November of 2010, a good friend of mine and I traveled from Moncton to Los Angeles for the sole purpose of seeing a concert. Faith No More was wrapping up their reunion tour and this was one of the only US dates they had on their tour. As massive fans of this band, we packed our bags and proceeded to fly out to LA for a few days to catch a concert.
It had been many years since I had been to LA and the city had become a bit more welcoming for me. There’s a long story behind why I was not a fan of LA for so many years, but for now let’s just say I wasn’t a fan.
With a car to see the city, we wanted to see as much as we could in the short time we had. But of all things we wanted to see, the famous Hollywood Sign was at the top of the list.
Prior to coming to California, I had done some research about the best places to see the sign. I had found a residential neighborhood that Google Street View had some decent views of the sign from. I also had done a bit of research on geocaches in the area that were worth finding.
Now for those who don’t know, geocaching is a high tech treasure hunt hobby that allows players to find mysterious containers hidden all over the world. I had been geocaching since 2007 and wanted to find a few in LA to add to my list of places I had cached in.
In planning to go see the sign, I uncovered the fact that there were several geocaching spots that were along the way to the area we were traveling to. I explained to my friend what I was looking for and away we went.
The first notable geocaching related spot we encountered was the “Garden of Oz”. This was a home that had the front lawn covered in decorations inspired by The Wizard of Oz. It was unlike anything we would see anywhere else in the city that trip.
As we drove up into the Hollywood Hills, we eventually came to the neighborhood I had found on Street View and parked the car. Although it wasn’t really meant to serve as a tourist spot, we did get quite a decent view of the Hollywood Sign from this area.
You can see from this photo, we were parked in front of someone’s lawn but the view of the sign was really clear. The best part about taking the photos here was the lack of other tourists in the area.
We continued along our trek and made our way to Ledgewood Dr and eventually the Mulholland Hwy. Years later I would learn that if you follow that road just a little further west, you come out at a huge area where the sign is really visible. The only catch is, it’s a huge tourist spot and so it can be difficult to find parking.
Now when you drive up in this end of LA, the road are incredibly narrow and insanely twisted around in every direction. You really need to pay attention to where you are because in no time flat, you can get lost.
My handheld GPS had the coordinates of a geocache called “Picture Perfect Hollywood Sign”. The listing said you wouldn’t ever find a better spot to take a photo of the famous sign. But it did show that the cache was located in the middle of a residential neighborhood. When we finally got within 20-30 meters of the container, we stopped the car and tried to find a quick place to park.
Getting out of the car, I looked around and from what I could tell, the GPS kept telling me to go towards one of the homes in the area. I did not want to wander around on someone’s property and end up in serious trouble.
As I looked a bit closer, I spotted a tiny little walkway that appeared to go between two of the homes. Following the GPS arrow, it brought me to a small fence and a couple of posts that designated a small walking area. The container was hanging on the fence so I quickly signed the log but then followed the walking path only 20-30 feet or so and came upon what the owner of the geocache was referring to.
This picture was taken from the same spot a few years ago when I brought my wife and kids to LA for vacation. My daughter can be seen here taking a photo of me and Tamara. As you can see from the spot, the sign is clearly visible and there’s virtually nothing else around. About 3 minutes up the road is the major tourist area where everyone takes their Hollywood Sign photos. This spot had no one at it and made for an amazing find.
When speaking to people about geocaching and travel, I often tell the story of finding this hidden little gem. The tourist maps will never tell you about places like this, but geocaching certainly will highlight them.
Now whenever I travel to a new city, I check out what geocaches there are and wonder what kind of other amazing sights I’ll see from finding these little containers.
