Saturday
We relaxed today
Sunday
We took a walk up to the Visitor
Centre. It was here that we learned more of the peculiar nature of
the State Park. It was originally owned by Twentieth Century Fox and
was the place where they would shoot all their outdoor scenes, they
sold/gave it to the State in 1976. It’s greatest claims to fame
were that the original set of MASH was there (though we didn’t get
up to it), the place where Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid jumped
into the Colorado River, the House that Mr Blandings (Cary Grant)
built and the Welsh valley from How Green Is My Valley. The
countryside also featured in The Planet Of The Apes. In fact some 150
films are documented to have been filmed in part here. We chose to
visit a place called The Rock Pool, which is a beautiful and secluded
pool in a little canyon, well it would have been secluded but for the
30 or so other people who were there enjoying their Sunday afternoon.
Although this rock pool has appeared in many films the only one that
we knew of was Dr Dolittle, but it was very pretty.
Monday
Today we are taking the movie theme
further, because just up the road is the Paramount Ranch, which was
where Paramount shot a lot of outdoor scenes, particularly Westerns,
in fact there is a complete cowboy town which has been abandoned. We
had a good old stroll round this abandoned set, with its huge list of
films shot there, most of them were made before the war, notably ‘On
the Trail of the Lonesome Pine’ a Laurel and Hardy movie of note.
More recently the Herbie films were shot here. Although we didn’t
remember seeing these sets in the films we had a great time and
enjoyed exploring these bits of movie history.
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