Parks Parks and Parks: Day 17- Paramount Ranch and Queen Mary

Today, we slept in and rested up from our trip to the Channel Islands. On our way to the Queen Mary we drove through the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. This recreation area is the largest urban national park in not only the United States, but in the world. We originally planned to visit the Griffith Observatory today, but as we approached Griffith Park we discovered that the park and observatory were closed due to a brush fire. Sadly, we had to turn around, but there were plenty of other parks to explore.

We drove to Paramount Ranch, the site of a western town that has been used in numerous movies ands television shows. They had just finished filming something when we arrived. We were able to walk through the streets, look in windows, and take pictures of the set. It was really neat!

Next, we drove to the Queen Mary for our final destination of the day. We had booked an interior stateroom for the night and were really excited to check this historic ship out. We arrived to find out that we had been upgraded to a room with a port hole! The staterooms were surprisingly large compared the the staterooms we have experiences on Carnival cruises. After checking in, we got an early dinner on the ship at Chelsea Chowder House and explored the ship until it was time for a ghost tour. No ghosts were seen but we had a great time anyway.