Today's hike is the first in a series of what I like to call The Unemployment Chronicles and it brings us to Altadena (aka the poor man's Pasadena, aka the town named after the milk, aka where is that place again? Is that anywhere near Glendale?). 
I could have easily gotten the same picture standing in line at Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disneyland but it would have cost me $72 and a small part of my soul.
This is what I like to call a metaphorical bullshit picture in which I am stopped in time between where I came from and where I want to be. That's the kind of stuff you can only get from a freshman year Psych 101 elective class..... or a fortune cookie. 
While this plaque makes it look super important there are actually over 80,000 places listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Some of them are diners. You make your own conclusion.
Made it to the top only to find what appears to be a giant's junkyard.
Ruins of the Echo Mountain House Hotel. Perhaps building a hotel 1400 feet up a mountain was not the best business plan.
Some sort of campfire/hippie party area. Open letter to hippies: Don't leave your beer cans/plastic bags/cheetos bags on the ground at the top of a mountain. It ruins it for the rest of us that are contributing members to society. 
Echo phone! If you yell profanities into echo phone you can be sure to destroy the innocence of small children somewhere on the mountain. 
The view from the top that sums up the whole smog situation we have here in LA. Don't worry, if the smog doesn't get you eventually the earthquake will. 
And finally a good lesson for all of us from our friend Smokey the Passive-Aggressive Gas Mask Bear: Remember! only you can cause(prevent) forest fires.Beer can count: 6
Snake count: 0
Hike rating:
4 out of 5 Stewies
