Pinnacles National Park

Welcome to the 59th formed National Park, Pinnacles. Pinnacles was a nice little treat for a quick holiday weekend trip. It’s about two hours East of San Francisco, and you could tell everyone was leaving town that weekend for a brief getaway. We got up at 3:30 am to drive there, and once we were in line for the shuttle, there was a two hour wait just to get into the park to park your car.

It’s kind of crazy to think about, but the whole park is nothing but eroded leftovers of the western half of an extinct volcano, which moved 200 miles away from its original location on the San Andreas Fault. The rocks will continue to move North as the San Andreas fault zone continues to slip at a rate of 1 inch per year. Pinnacles will forever be rearranging its features, changing its presence from yesterday, to creating a new one tomorrow. I would love to live like the Pinnacles, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding. Because if you don’t know where you are going, then any road can take you there.

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Joshua Tree at Night

Maybe the wolf is in love with the moon, and each month it cries for a love it will never touch.

I made a new painting in ProCreate! This is Joshua Tree at night. It was amazing going at night, and I almost think it’s not even worth it to visit Joshua Tree unless you’re staying the night. Hearing the constant howl of coyotes and watching as the Milky Way contours through the sky above you, with stars engulfing the dome. It really is an enchanted place. You look right up at the night sky and know that yes, we are a part of this Universe, and we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of these facts is that the Universe is in us. We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the Universe to know itself.

Joshua Tree National Park

My parents were in town, so that means another National Park trip! Because the second that they get to LA, all they want to do is get out. =] Joshua Tree is about a two hour car ride from LA right by Palm Springs, and it’s the perfect day trip. It is the location where two desert ecosystems, the Mojave and the Colorado come together. Because the park has such high elevation, it has one of the most epic night skies I have ever seen.

Joshua Tree is another beautiful park we have Franklin Roosevelt to thank for. There are few parks as recognizable as Joshua Tree, and being able to live so close to it, it’s become one of my favorites. Growing up in Florida, we had few parks, but no one really wanted to spend time there with how hot and muggy they were at all times. So I have a special place in my heart for this one. It’s the only park that I consistently visit and camp at. The night sky is on a whole other level. Since the park is elevated there is no issue with light pollution. Once you’re out there and your eyes adjust after a while, you can start to see that bright purple band along the bottom of the horizon, and all the rock and Joshua Tree silhouettes jutting up against it. The Milky Way starts to form above you, and it’s such a spellbinding way to get lost in your thoughts just thinking about other worlds and all the possibilities that you have awaiting you. Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars. We have Carl Sagan to thank for that one.

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Wisdom Tree

Wisdom Tree is one of my favorite trails next to my home. Probably because it’s short, but really steep so it feels like a nice quick workout. You’re literally hiking 570 feet up in only half a mile. It’s usually crowded on the weekends, and the trail is pretty narrow so you have to stop and wait for people to pass quite a bit, but that gets in some nice water breaks!

The trail is 1.6 miles and leads up to the Burbank Peak, part of Griffith Park. It starts out at Wonder View Drive, and once you get to the top, another trail extends to the Hollywood sign. It’s a nice 360 degree ridge where you get views of all of Hollywood, the Santa Monica Mountains, Universal Studios, and the San Fernando Valley. On a clear day, you can even see all the way to Catalina Island. There is also an American flag that commemorates September 11th at the top and that’s a nice marker of how much trail you have left.

But the real reason for taking this trail, is to deliver your message to the Wisdom Tree. The Wisdom Tree is a solitary pine survivor of a massive wildfire in 2007. Legend has it that a man received the tree as a sapling from McDonalds as a free giveaway 35 years ago. He carried it all the way up to the peak and planted it. After surviving the 2007 fire, an ammunition box was placed under the tree to be used as a trail register box. The trail register was turned into a place for an outpouring of backwoods philosophy. A repository of ramblings and reflections by those who seek communion with nature, addressed to the tree. I like to talk to the tree about Lang Leav and other lives. About how if you came to me with a face that I have not seen, with a voice that I have never heard, I would still know you. Even if centuries separated us, I would still feel you. Somewhere between the sand and the stardust, through every collapse and creation, there is a pulse that echoes of you and I. When we leave this world, we give up all our possessions and memories. Love is the only thing we carry with us. It is all we carry from one life to the next.

So whether you’re looking for a calm place to meditate and reflect, pour your soul out onto paper for a tree to read, or just a quick workout for all of instagram to see, this is a lovely spot and you can almost always find me here.

Grand Canyon National Park

“In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world.” - Theodore Roosevelt

Welcome to the painters paradise that is the Grand Canyon. One of the most stunning and immense stopovers I’ve done yet. I decided to take a new route home to LA from Colorado, and went to the Grand Canyon on a whim. I woke up at 4am to be sure to get there by sunrise. Unfortunately it was so overcast, I didn’t get the full canyon effect. I also had my dog, who was only allowed along the top trails of the rim. So she literally went from the Florida beaches straight to the snow of the Grand Canyon within days. The best part of the trip other than marveling at the beauty and stopping for a moment to just breathe and take it all in, definitely was the dog playing in snow for the first time.

I can’t wait to go back for a couple of days and I really think hiking down in there will feel like such a metaphysical and pure experience. Waking up to those fire red sunrises exposing band upon band of aged red rock with millions of years of geological history. Being surrounded by old rocks, and wading through that Colorado River which carved this beast of a canyon 5-6 million years ago will be something I could never experience anywhere else. I have my own love story with the Grand Canyon. She taught me with her ever changing river, that change happens when as much as we don’t want to leave, we know we can no longer stay. Because it’s your road, and your road alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you. So let’s go on this cosmic dance that we call life.

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Mesa Verde National Park

For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the sheltered will never know.

During my road trip to Colorado, I got the opportunity to stop at Mesa Verde National Park. This one is quite different, because it’s more about the people who lived there rather than the dazzling rock formations or giant cliffsides. The park protects some of the best preserved Puebloan archaeological sites, and at it really is something to marvel at. The park includes 600 cliff dwellings, which are the towns that the people built inside the cliffs. Looking at them from far away, they begin to look like miniatures, and it’s such a wild experience. The park does guided tours where you can go into the village, and check out the houses and climb through all the crawl spaces. Unfortunately since I arrived during the winter, the trails to see them up close were all closed for ice and snow, so it was a quick visit.

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Delicate Arch

The Universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them. It’s time for some more ProCreate art! This one is of Delicate Arch, and it is from my recent trip to Arches National Park. I decided to try out this new digital style, and I am absolutely loving it so far!

Arches National Park

I went to Arches National Park again! I went about 15 years ago, and this is the first time I’ve been back since! It was so different this time around. I went in January and the park was covered in a light dusting of snow, and there was absolutely no one there compared to how it was in the summer. I only had a couple of hours to explore the park, because I had to keep driving through to Colorado. Although it was extremely overcast, and minus the fact that it was only 23 degrees, I think the winter season is my new favorite time to visit parks! Mostly because of the lack of people. =]

Arches is by far on my list of top 5 favorite National Parks. The barren desert wasteland filled with these alluring phenomenons built from this naturalistic process of erosion are quite the sight to see. You could feel the earths love running through it. To truly feel not just the emotion of love, but to become the vibration of it. That’s what was special. I could have wandered there for hours as time stood still, letting my soul come to peace with whatever the Universe had in store for me. It was as if the very second I felt this living thought, my emotions shifted and my energy changed. I became realigned with the Universe. Just one day here was worth more than all the kingdoms in the world.

Taking a day to escape the daily confines of life, and adventuring out to no where Utah was definitely what my soul needed. The entire park was so otherworldly, it really makes you question what else is out there. You have this urge to keep exploring, to keep finding new things. Then when you finally find yourself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that you were made for another world.

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One Year at DreamWorks!!!!

I’ve officially done it! I hit my one year at DreamWorks Animation Studios!!! And it only took a whole year! =]

It’s been such a wild and lovely ride. The West Coast film culture is so completely different from anything I’ve ever known. You can always find a party somewhere on any given day at the campus. The weirdest thing to me is that you’re encouraged to take breaks from staring at your computer all day and go outside for nature walks or coffee talks. The campus has such a supportive and artistic community feel to it all the time, and it’s such a nice culture compared to the stale fluorescent vibes of a regular office building. I’ve made so many friends this past year and witnessed the release of two feature films, How to Train Your Dragon 3 & Abominable. I still get that doe-eyed look every morning when I drive through the main gates and see my friend Shrek waiting for me at the entrance. I’ve learned and grown so much here working on The Croods 2, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for me here! <3

The Teepees

For Christmas this past year I got an iPad and Apple Pencil, so of course I had to download ProCreate and test it out! If you saw my last post, I took a trip out to Petrified Forest National Park, and the image below is of the Teepees. They are a badland formation in the Painted Desert, and their different colored layers are colored by iron, manganese and other minerals. Enjoy my first ProCreate piece!

Petrified Forest National Park

During Christmas break, I get two weeks off of work, so I decided to head back to Florida for those weeks and stay with family. It was my nieces first Christmas! I hit Petrified Forest on this round, and it’s pretty cool because you’re allowed to have dogs on the trails there, which a lot of other parks don’t allow. Petrified Forest is in Arizona in the Navajo and Apache counties. It’s named for its large deposits of Petrified Wood, and historic Route 66 bisects the park. The park is known for its fossils, especially the fallen trees that are from the Triassic period 225 million years ago. It’s crazy to think that this barren desert land used to be a giant forest filled with dinosaurs and lakes.

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Mount Hollywood Trail

Paint the sky, make it yours.

There’s a palm tree oasis in Griffith Park called Mount Hollywood. I took the trail the other day, and it really made for some gorgeous sunset photos. There are a couple of ways to get there depending on how much of a hike you feel like doing. We started out at the bottom and took the Western Canyon Trail which was a 4.8 mile trip that went right past Griffith Observatory. It also offers some nice views of Downtown LA, which are even better on a day after it rained because it clears out all the smog.

This is now one of my favorite Hollywood Hills hikes. It’s so much less crowded than the Hollywood sign, and you basically get all the same great views. It’s also dog approved!

Trolls World Tour

IT’S RELEASE DAY!!!! It’s time for the world premiere of Trolls World Tour! I’ve never been more proud to work at DreamWorks than I am now. Trolls World Tour is such a phenomenal movie that will blast fun and color into your home. Congrats to everyone who worked on this movie, they did a phenomenal job! The years of hard work definitely did not go unnoticed. Dare I say that I like it even more than the original???

Unfortunately with the quarantine issues, there’s no way to check it out in theaters, so it’s going direct to home rental. But at least I got to see it at the Premiere Party! Below is a link for some ways to check it out. I promise it will make your weekend better to watch it.

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Sequoia National Park

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I ended up where I intended to be.

Our road trip continued with Sequoia National Park! Welcome to the land of giants. This park is such a colossal beauty, and is one of my favorites. The park is located in the Southern Sierra Nevada, right underneath Kings Canyon National Park. Sequoia is home to some of the largest trees in the world, and 84% of the park is back country wilderness.

Standing in a forest surrounded by these massive trees, was such a truly magical experience like no other. It really humbles you. It truly brings to fruition that we are all connected. The atoms in these trees and the atoms in your body all came from a star that exploded. And the stars in your left hand probably came from a different star than the atoms in your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics. We are all stardust.

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Kings Canyon National Park

If we were met to stay in one place, we’d have roots instead of feet.

My parents came to visit from Florida, and instead of doing all of the touristy LA things, we took a road trip up to Kings Canyon National Park, and rented a cabin! It’s located above Sequoia, in the southern area of the Sierra Nevada, and about a 4 hour car drive from LA. The canyon is a glacier carved valley and the park is sprinkled with some famous sequoia trees as well. The park was originally created to protect a small area of sequoias from logging.

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Death Valley National Park

I took a road trip to Death Valley National Park! Better yet, my dog took her first road trip to a National Park. I went during winter, so it wasn’t unbearably hot. It was about a 3.5 hour drive from LA, and we left at 3 am to be able to get there in time for the sunrise. Death Valley is the hottest, driest, and lowest of all the National Parks. Even scenes from Star Wars Episodes IV and VI were filmed here. Death Valley got its name because of the 1.9 inch annual rainfall with a 150 in. evaporation rate, make it extremely tough to survive here.

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Channel Islands National Park

I knocked Channel Islands National Park off of my checklist! It’s located off the coast of Southern California, a 40 minute boat ride away, and the only way to get to the islands is by boat or airplane, which is located at the visitor center in Ventura. There are 8 islands total, and you can choose from 5 to visit. Because this park is so hard to get to, it is the least visited of all National Parks. There are no amenities on the island except restrooms, so anything you might need, including food, must be brought with you. There is one campground on each island though, if you choose to stay the night and experience all that the Channel Islands have to offer.

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Pioneertown

Let’s start with the backstory. In 1946, actor Dick Curtis started up this town as a living, breathing, motion-picture set. It is about 2 hours East of LA, right near Joshua Tree. It was used as a place for Production Companies to film Old West movies, and not have to deal with the daily drive of going back and forth from Hollywood. Hundreds of television shows were filmed here, such as The Cisco Kid, and Judge Roy Bean. A bowling alley was built in this town, and it is officially one of the oldest, still in use, bowling alleys in California. The town is still used today as people rent out the set for local shops, and production companies are still coming here to film. Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace is the local saloon. They are still open for business going long hours into the night. Musicians such as Eric Burdon and Robert Plant are regularly performing there. A lot of the shops are closed on the week days, and it gets brutally hot to visit during the summer months, but it is quite the sight to see. When it is deserted and you are standing on the one street of the entire town, it really does feel like you have been transported back in time.

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Slab City

Well I did it. I officially went to the last free place and survived. Slab City, you were quite the trip. There’s this tiny town out near Joshua Tree called Slab City, and it is considered the Last Free Place on Earth. It consists of a bunch of snowbird squatters living out in the Sonoran Desert. But let’s go back to how it all started. It took its name from concrete slabs that remained from the abandoned World War II Marine Corps Barracks. The deed for this site was later given to the California State Teachers Retirement System. The town, If you can even call it a town, has no electricity, running water, sewers, toilets, trash pickup, and is not even recognized by the government. There are no fire stations, police patrol, or any type of government facilities on site. The people that live here are definitely characters, trying to escape modern reality as we know it and live off of the grid. They survive by means of DIY solar panels, generators, and the ability to not feel the basic needs that todays culture puts pressure on you to have.

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Pyramid Lake

We found a lake in the desert that is Southern California! It’s called Pyramid Lake, and it is about an hour North of LA. It’s a reservoir that is formed by Pyramid Dam. The dam is located right in front of a massive rock which was cut into a pyramid shape, and that’s where it got its name from. The lake is the deepest lake in the California Water Project System, and is between both the Angeles National Forest and the Los Padres National Forest. You can go camping there, and if you have a boat, take it out on the water. I grew up in Florida with a ski boat, so I’m used to going to different lakes every weekend. There are also some trails nearby that you can do, and those go up into the mountains for a nice view. The coolest part about this lake, and probably all of the California lakes, is that the backdrop is mountains! Definitely something you wouldn’t get in Florida.