Spring Fling for the Family

In car-crazy California, it’s sometimes hard to see beyond the latest freeway traffic jam. Sure, your freeway-savvy 6-year-old likes to listen for SigAlerts on the way to school, but she’s too hip to be intrigued by any old thing with wheels, and your kids in the double-digits have become way too cool for Sunday drives.

But what if you could sell them on one-day family field trips built around a transportation theme? Take in a stunning view of the largest breakwater in the world from a boat tour of San Pedro Harbor, or enjoy a low-key excursion on the pedal boats at Lake Balboa.

Weave in history lessons with a trip to see Travel Town’s trains, or ride a working Amtrak train along the coast to Santa Barbara’s storied depot. Put a scientific spin on the subject by exposing your children to the physics behind the automobile at the Petersen Automotive Museum, or let them leap into a simulated jet cockpit at the Museum of Flying.

Wrap up your adventures by hopping on Angels Flight in downtown Los Angeles for a 60-second ride on the world’s shortest railway.

So they’re not the Seven Wonders of the World. Think of them as seven ways to survive seven days: Spring break is just around the corner.

Day One: San Pedro Harbor Cruise

Can’t interest them in boat tours? Try promising them something gothic, like an up-close look at Terminal Island Prison, one of the highlights of the excursions offered by Los Angeles Harbor Cruises.

Gene Meister, who runs the line, says he takes about 40,000 people on one-hour expeditions each year. “I never run out of things to point out to people,” says Meister, who’s run this route as a boat captain for the last 15 years. Besides a glimpse of the prison, “the kids love the fireboat,” he said, “and they are most inquisitive about the boats in dry dock. They don’t understand how you can get such huge boats out of the water to work on them.”

Besides the world’s largest breakwater, short-term voyagers also see the Coast Guard station and the world’s second-largest container terminal (Long Beach ranks first) with foreign ships big enough to carry 5,000 containers, Meister says.

They travel under the Vincent Thomas Suspension Bridge, an L.A. landmark, and cruise the terminal, where ships from around the world are likely to be docked.

* Los Angeles Harbor Cruises, Village Boat House, Ports O’ Call, San Pedro. Adults, $6; children 6 to 12, $3; under 6, free. No reservations necessary. Call for schedule. (310) 831-0996.

Day 2 Copy: Pedal Boats on Lake Balboa

A pedal boat ride on a 27.5-acre man-made lake near the noisy San Diego Freeway combined with loud air traffic from the Van Nuys Airport may not be your idea of idle relaxation. But the freeway-close body of water that is Lake Balboa will enable you to teach your children the meaning of “reclaimed water”--it has 80 million gallons of it--and that some things are harder than they look.

That might be why two-thirds of the pedal boat rentals are only for half-hour trips--pedaling these glittery mini-paddle wheelers takes a lot of effort.

Still, on a typical Saturday, about 100 boats are rented, says Paul Graves, a Lake Balboa lifeguard. Each boat can hold four passengers, one of whom must be at least 12 years old, and the smallest person must weigh at least 30 pounds.

A pedal-induced spin around the lake will give you ample time to see the ducks and the fishing, picnicking and jogging people who surround the lake. This is a virtual three-fer on the transportation front: Tilt your head back to take in the planes as they soar overhead and cock your ear for the roar of the 405 Freeway.

* Pedal boating at Lake Balboa, 6300 Balboa Blvd., Van Nuys. Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to one hour before sunset. $10 an hour, $7 a half-hour. Picture I.D. required for rental. (818) 756-9743.

Day 3: Museum of Flying

How will you explain to your unsuspecting child that the Easter Bunny arrives in a vintage airplane? E.B. is scheduled to land at the Museum of Flying in Santa Monica at 1 p.m. on Easter Sunday, April 12.

If you want to avoid the controversy altogether, take the kids to Airventure, the museum’s children’s area, where interactive exhibits abound, says Grace Nguyen of the museum’s staff.

“They enjoy the children’s area because they can go in and out of the cockpit and simulators,” she says. “One moves around like a jet, and another holds about eight people and moves up and down like Disneyland’s Star Tours.”

Periodically, on Sundays at noon, there are programs on science or history as they relate to aircraft.

More than 30 historic aircraft are housed at the museum and, most of all, the children “are in awe of the planes,” Nguyen says.

* The Museum of Flying, 2772 Donald Douglas Loop North, Santa Monica. Open Wednesdays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Adults, $7; students, $5; children 3 to 17, $3; under 3, free. (310) 392-8822.

Day 4: Amtrak to Santa Barbara

You’ll feel like a veteran of the rails when you hop on the train to Santa Barbara without a ticket; cash or credit cards are accepted when you board a train at an unstaffed station, such as those in Moorpark or Simi Valley.

Once aboard, you’ll see “parts of the coastline you can’t get to see any other way,” says Patrick Merrill, Amtrak’s manager of the San Diegan Corridor, which runs from San Diego to San Luis Obispo. “It’s kind of cool.”

If you take the train beyond Santa Barbara, a top-secret mission is included: a trip through Vandenberg Air Force Base, something that usually can’t be seen without a security clearance, Merrill adds.

From downtown, the trip to Santa Barbara takes 2 1/2 hours; from Moorpark, it’s about an hour and 15 minutes. At the train station on State Street in downtown Santa Barbara, you’ll find information on area attractions--and a historic depot built in 1905 that’s at the beginning of an 18-month restoration.

* One-way unreserved coach Amtrak fares from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, $13.50; from Moorpark, $10. Children 15 and under, half price. Call (800) 872-7245 for train schedules.

Day Five: Travel Town Museum and Train Ride

Most of the would-be engineers who tour the Travel Town Museum and catch the mini-train ride in Griffith Park are members of the 7-and-under set, says Patrick Alonso, operations manager for the museum founded in the early 1950s. The younger ones like the model railroad, open on Saturdays and Sundays, as well as the free rides in cabooses pulled by full-size engines that take place the first Sunday of each month.

“The kids are amazed by the size of the trains,” says Alonso of the museum’s 14 historic steam locomotives, which range from 70 to 134 years old.

Full-size freight cars, passenger trains and cabooses round out the collection, but the seven-minute mini-train ride that showcases Griffith Park and the old trains is what children like best, says Antonio Villarreal, assistant ride manager.

“Before this,” he says, “most of them didn’t even know what the trains were like.”

* Travel Town, 5200 Zoo Drive (near the Forest Lawn exit off the Ventura Freeway), Los Angeles. Museum open Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays till 5 p.m.; as of April 5, it will be open an hour later daily. Free. Call (213) 662-5874. Train ride open daily 10 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. Adults, $1.75; children 14 and under, $1.25. (213) 662-9678.

Day 6: Petersen Auto Museum

At the Petersen Automotive Museum on Wilshire Boulevard, head straight for the giant engine in the Children’s Discovery Center. There, the kids can work off their pent-up energy by becoming one of the human spark plugs that make the larger-than-life engine turn.

The children’s center, open since November, is the only one of its kind in the country with an automotive bent, says Linda Beltran, a museum spokeswoman. The museum’s third floor is now dedicated to teaching the fundamentals of science as they relate to the automobile, whether it’s examining friction through tires or the viscosity of liquids.

A popular exhibit is a simulator that lets children get a glimpse of how difficult driving can be. On one recent day, every child who got behind the wheel quickly crashed.

* Petersen Automotive Museum, 6060 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. Open Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Adults, $7; students, $5; children 5 to 12, $3; under 5, free. All-day parking, $4. (213) 930-2277.

Day 7: Angels Flight Railway

If you ask your children, “Can you say ‘funicular’?” you’d better be prepared to tell them what it means.

Angels Flight, the restored railway on downtown Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill, is one of the world’s dwindling number of funiculars, a railway that is counterbalanced so that one car rises as another descends.

About 1.5 million people have paid a quarter apiece to travel the 298 feet that make up the shortest railway in the world since it reopened in February 1996, says John Wellborne, president of Angels Flight Railway, the nonprofit foundation that keeps the historic cars running.

Built in 1901, Angels Flight was primarily used as a way for Bunker Hill residents to get to shopping at the bottom of the hill, and it operated continuously for 68 years, Wellborne says. The restoration effort moved the railway half a block south and revived the original station house, complete with Victorian carvings.

A ride can be like time travel, Wellborne says. “Sometimes, it’s like being on Main Street in Disneyland. People will actually talk to each other about the last time they rode the railway before it closed.”

* Angels Flight Railway is open daily from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. One-way fare is 25 cents. (213) 626-1901. To get to the line on Bunker Hill, consider taking Metrolink to Union Station, then the Red Line subway to 4th and Hill streets, across the street from Angels Flight. All Metrolink lines run Mondays through Fridays. Only San Bernardino and Santa Clarita lines run on Saturdays. None run on Sundays. Information: (800) 371-5465.