Pumpkins, that's all

Autumn is here! California loves 'the fall' even though it is absolutely no different to summer so far. I've been experimenting with vegan baking these past few weeks so I have a giant pot of applesauce to get through which works as a good egg replacement. So on Saturday I used it in some pancakes with a lot of cinnamon and we had some very tasty autumnal flavoured pancakes. 

At the gardens, the botanist has broken her ankle and is out of action for six weeks so I've been helping out with what would have been some of her duties like feeding the turtles and watering all the big exotic plants in the greenhouse and dome. When we went into the greenhouse, we found that it was more than a one person job to maintain, so as well as the watering, we've been weeding everywhere and we'll start to rearrange and sort everything next week. I've had to up my days to three times a week so that we can take care of this project and I can continue with my herb garden project.

Coudn't get a picture of the turtles, but here's a fancy fish

Casually growing a single pineapple in the greenhouse

On Wednesday, I met Mitchell for lunch again and students were back on campus! They all looked very lost as it's a big campus and were all roaming around in herds. They also had a stand where they were giving away free t-shirts and maps, but when we went to try and get some, all they had left was large and 2XL. I did get a pen though. 

On Saturday morning, we headed out to an old, Victorian house in Riverside, which stands out because most of the area, and entire city, has been rebuilt. It only opens to visitors at the weekend so I'd booked free tickets a few weeks prior. We arrived a few minutes late as we'd driven past the entrance to the car park and had to circle the block again so we missed the beginning of the tour. As no one was taking pictures, I'd assumed they'd requested no photos, so I didn't take any until the last room where she said we could. Unfortunutely, the way the tours work right now meant I couldn't go back into the rest of the house to take more, so you'll have to rely on my words. 

This was the music room

It was a medium sized house, the rooms were quite small, but it still had a carriage room and stables out back. We toured through the music room, parlour, kitchens and bedrooms which were all still deocrated with the original tiling and shutters and filled with either original furniture, or furniture which had been donated from other heritage sites across the city. 

The lady who lived there had moved from New York, and when building her house had it wired ready for electricity and a phone, even though neither of those things had reached the wild west of California yet. 

In the afternoon, we stayed inside as Mitchell had some work to do as he's very close to getting a paper published! (Mitchell edit: maybe, it's sort of an initial data record publication that's very close, it will then be part of a proper paper a little later). We did pop out to get some dessert in the afternoon though, where I got some very autumnal flavoured pumpkin and caramel apple frozen yoghurts.

On Sunday we thought about trying a third time for that spooky sunrise hike, but I couldn't face another early morning (especially if it broke our car again) so we went for a sunset hike instead. We drove through the town of Norco which is known as horsetown and apparently the horses outnumber the people 2:1. The whole place had very wild west vibes and we even saw a person riding a horse. 

We parked the car and walked along the trail which bordered the equine facility where they were hosting mounted police practice that day. We could see a few horses in the distance and a couple of people riding, but no big displays. 

The trail only took about 20 minutes to get to the top (we went quite quickly as we didn't want to be stranded in the dark on the way down) and gave some amazing views of the city below. About halfway up we took a detour to see some horse sculptures (they really love horses here) and then it was on to the main attraction! 

There's a big rock at the top which used to be called elephant's butt rock until a mysterious person painted it like a pumpin one halloween and it's since stuck. It's pretty big and we could actually see it from the bottom of the hill. Once we reached the top we realised there were in fact a few pumpkins that other people must have painted to match the main one. There was a lot of other graffiti too, but it was fun to carry on the trail and find all the pumpkin paintings.

Next week we're off camping again and have the all clear from the fire service that the forests are now open! It's up in the mountain, so hopefully it won't be too chilly!

All our love

Emily and Mitchell

xxxxxxx