Drove to Santa Monica Beach then on Hwy. 1 to Redondo Beach. Took beach drive past Marineland and Wayfarers Chapel (the glass church.) Found Ports of Call. Very quaint - we didn't get anything - too crowded!
It looks like we spent Labor Day 1967 mostly driving around and sightseeing, exploring part of the California coast. Driving that round trip today from our apartment on Normandie would take about three hours with no stops per Google Maps.
Wayfarer's Chapel, located in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, was designed by Lloyd Wright (son of Frank Lloyd Wright) and completed in 1951. (Lloyd Wright's full name was Frank Lloyd Wright, Jr., but he was typically known as Lloyd Wright. As we learned in discussion of the July 27, 1967 diary entry, his brother John Lloyd Wright invented Lincoln Logs.) Wayfarer's Chapel, besides being an actual chapel, is a popular location for weddings. There is plenty of information, including the history of the chapel, on the web site if you are interested. (http://www.wayfarerschapel.org/)
Ports O'Call Village is an assortment of shops and restaurants in San Pedro, CA. I'm guessing it has a more nautical theme than Olvera Street. We didn't even get a bank there so we must not have stayed very long. (https://www.portoflosangeles.org/recreation/ports_call_village.asp)
Since we don't have any pictures to show for Labor Day I think we'll jump in the Wayback Time Machine and see what we can find. Let's revisit my post from August 16, 1967. That's the one where Mom was very proud of herself for driving around Los Angeles for the first time (other than the day we moved into the apartment), and she even backed the car out of the garage under our apartment building herself. As I mentioned in that post and earlier, Dad's car was a Pontiac Bonneville and, like many cars of that era, it was somewhat long. As luck would have it, I have a couple of fuzzy black and white pictures of the car, one with me and Dad and one with just me.
Both of these pictures were taken in July of 1967, before we moved to Los Angeles. That appears to be a motel in the background of both photos, so these were likely taken while Mom and I were traveling around east Texas on a burial run (business trip) with Dad.
In the photo with both me and Dad, you should be able to tell the letters on the side of the car spell "Bonneville." In that same photo you can get some idea of the size of the trunk that car had.
I absolutely love the perspective of the second photo, with just me standing at the rear of the car. Now you can really see how much car there was after the rear window sloped down and met the body. And look at how tall that trunk lid is. But what's even better is the fact that the driver's side door is wide open and visible in the picture. This was a two-door car, and most of those had very long doors. So look at the angle of that door and imagine how long it had to be and where the hinge of that door was in relation to the photographer taking the picture. Then you still have the engine compartment and front wheels in front of that. So yeah, that car was definitely a boat.
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