Jerry Mathers

* The childhood star of “Leave It to Beaver” will appear Sunday at the Rhino Records Retrofest at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.

Disney Days: My daughters Merci, 17, and Gretchen, 13, come out here from Indiana in the summer, Christmas and spring break, so for a special weekend we go down to Disneyland. To keep the kids from getting really tired, we go to the Disneyland Hotel the night before, then go to the park, and stay at the hotel for a second night. If you stay at the hotel, you get in the park about 90 minutes early, so I have the girls pick their favorite ride, and then we go ride it two or three times before the crowds come in.

Perfect Beach: We’ll go down and spend the day at Zuma Beach, where they have a lot of facilities--stands that sell drinks, restrooms. It’s a suitable place to go with kids and takes the headache out of a beach day. And there are good lifeguards there who watch the kids very closely.

Walk With the Animals: We usually try to work in a trip to the Los Angeles Zoo. It’s definitely a world-class zoo. In the aviaries, the birds fly all around you--and unlike the San Diego Zoo, you don’t ride on buses so you talk a lot while you’re walking between exhibits. A lot of times we’ll go over to the merry-go-round or the train museum in Griffith Park while we’re there.

Big, Bad Blues: When the kids aren’t here, one of my favorite places is Smokin’ Johnnie’s in Studio City, where they say they have booze, blues and barbecues. It’s an intimate club and they have great bands. A lot of places you go, you’re so far away that it’s like a concert. Here, you can go up and talk to the guys when they take a break.

Riverside Run: About 15 minutes from my house in Santa Clarita there’s a horse trail along the Santa Clarita River. I’ve been running there for a year now and I’ve never seen a horse--but the trail is dirt, so it’s easier on my knees than cement. It’s really pretty, too. You see everything from cranes to hawks and all the flora of a river environment.