Emily and Mitchell in the USA

This Sunday we went back to Idyllwild for a big day hike. I think it was one of the prettiest we've been on with some amazing views and autumn colours.  It takes us just over an hour to drive into the San Bernadino National Forest and we stopped at the Ranger Station on the way to pick up an adventure pass and wilderness permit so we could hike safely. On the ride up we caught an amazing sight, the clouds were actually below the tops of the mountains and they looked like they were floating above the horizon.  We got to the trailhead and the path immedietely started to climb. We took the Devil's slide trail, so called because the slope to the side is a pretty steep drop. There were a lot of pine trees which got more sparse the higher we climbed, showing the white rock beneath. As we ascended, we got better views of the opposite mountain as it slowly got further and further below us.  When we came to Idyllwild last time, we learnt about Tahquitz, the shaman who was trapped ...

Hello, I'm picking up from last week as we did a few little trips around which I didn't mention in the last post.  Last week, after going to watch the improv show, Mitchell went along to their weekly drop in session where he got to do some improv for the first time in California. It went really well and although it was an hour drive to get there and I went along for the ride as he's not driven anywhere by himself yet, there was a milkshake bar next door so I had a fun evening too.  We also went to Target that week to pick up some more things we needed for the apartment and some Halloween decorations! A lot of the flats in our block (and especially the ones with families) have had them up for weeks and we wanted to get in on it too! We now have a spooky bat skeleton on our door and a little woollen pumpkin on our windowsill.  In other spooky news, we went to two pumpkin patches at the weekend! The first was a small event by UCR with a few pumpkins by the gardening club and...

We had a great day out last week! We left kind of early in the morning (8:30am) and drove into LA for the first time. We'd heard scary things about driving in the city, but either because we were just going to the edge or because it was so early, we didn't find it so bad. I think San Diego was actually worse. The small part of LA we drove through was interesting. In the space of just a few roads we went from large, three story, gated white houses, to streets with homeless campers lining the pavements.  We arrived at Griffith Observatory just before 10am and found street parking. When we walked a bit further up we found that there were a few spaces left in the official parking lot, which I was surprised by as this is a major LA attraction and had been prepared for the worst.  This observatory was built so that the public could stargaze and they hold regular evening sessions. Inside it's a big space museum, with information about our solar system, the history of the earth and...

 This week we: went to a college party, saw some art and went to see an American improv show. After some attempts to get her started when we went to Big Bear Lake, we took our car into the garage to get her serviced. They replaced a lot of parts, including the front brakes and driver belt and cleaned the engine air filter. It cost a lot, but she should run fine now until we have to leave.  To celebrate, we took her out for the evening to the monthly Riverside Arts Walk, which is an event where arts venues, cafes and bookstores stay open late to celebrate local artists and an entire parking lot is taken over by vendors selling their artwork. It was pretty cool to walk through and see their pieces, there was everything from stickers and pins to full canvases. They even had a band on a balcony opposite the parking lot, providing live music to all the artists.  Vendor lot plus band We've never seen Riverside town centre so busy, especially at night, although we haven't been i...

This weekend we went camping again! Big Bear is a mountain city and lake in the San Bernadino National Forest and is only an hour to an hour and a half away from us. Unlike Lake Arrowhead, you can actually do some walks around it and get to the water without having to own property, it's a lot more wild.  I knew it was going to be colder up there, especially at night. According to the weather forecast it was due to get down to only 4 degrees celsius! So I packed up all our warm layers and an extra blanket, hoping we'd be ok and picked Mitchell up straight from work. Big Bear is so popular, when we booked back in August, the first and only dates we'd been able to book (before it got even colder) were the Thursday and Friday nights. We traversed the rush hour traffic, but it wasn't too long before we were up into the mountain roads. Because we'd set off in the evening, we got to see an amazing sunset as we climbed higher, the whole mountinside turned red as the sun san...