We parked at the Greek Theater (no events were thankfully going on that night there) and worked our way up to Observatory Road where we then walked up to the observatory.  We timed it about right to see it in the late afternoon and then watch the sky turn pink and watch the sunset.  It was so worth visiting and the views were beautiful.  We watched the sun set to the west beyond the Hollywood Sign.  Planes flew upward and emerged from behind the hills and into the pink night sky.  To the south the millions of lights of the city started to shine in the dusk.  We were so fortunate to have a near full moon hanging in the sky too.  I wanted to wait until it was very dark to get a nice picture of the city lights but we ended up deciding to leave before it was fully dark.  We had to cut back to the parking lot through a few trails and wanted to make sure we could see where we were going.  For the photographers reading this, I had to stack a series of pictures to remove all of the people who were in front of the observatory for the full wide-angle picture on this site.  I was not lucky enough to have the observatory all to myself as that picture may lead you to believe.