Hummingbird Trail and Hockey

On Saturday, we went for a group hike. Quynh had told Mitchell about it, but hadn't said anything about it other than where it was. It was on the other side of LA so we were hoping it would be worth the hour and a half drive there. Susan picked us up early and we arrived at the trailhead around 10:30am. 

We started the trail and there were signs leading the way, but they quickly stopped and we were left with a fork in the trail and no directions! We picked a side, but it turned out that this was the wrong one as it was very steep and vanished when we got to a set of large boulders. By this point we'd already been going for 45 minutes, so we decided to press on and find a way over the boulders to reconnect with the trail. We clambered over some and jumped some crevices and finally made it back onto the trail we wanted. 

When we were nearing the end, the trail vanished again, and we were left wandering around trying to find the cave which was the final destination. We couldn't see it, but luckily some girls who had already been up came over to help us and pointed us in the right direction. Behind a boulder was a metal rope, bolted into the rock face. We had to hold onto it as we climbed down, as the path was almost vertical.

Once we'd reached the bottom, there was a swing hanging from the ceiling of a small cave. We stopped for some photos and then climbed a ladder to the next cave. This one was big and full of graffiti art and had several hammocks hanging from the ceiling.


As we came down, there were big rain clouds starting to gather and the wind picked up, making it a lot cooler than when we were on the way up. We didn't get rained on thankfully, but only just made it.

The next stop was some food. Apparently, there's a very large Vietnamese population in Westminster, Orange County and there were definitely a lot of food options! The other three in our group were all Vietnamese-American, so they knew what to order and spoke to the waiters in Vietnamese. We got some tasty veggie spring rolls (which use soft rice paper rather than crunchy pastry) and a vegetable clay pot each. 

The next day, we had a slow morning and then Susan picked us up (again) and we went into Anaheim. Our first stop was the packing district which is a big food hall, with so much choice! This is a lot prettier than the one in Riverside, with some much fancier items for sale. 

We both had an excellent Indian curry and then some ice-cream! I got chocolate orange and taro tea flavours, and Mitchell got maple pecan. We ate these very quickly in the car, because it was almost time for our next activity, hockey!

Susan's team - the San Jose Sharks - were the playing the Anaheim Ducks, so she'd brought us all along to watch and had even brought jerseys and hats for us all. The matches are split into three sets of twenty minutes and play moves very quickly. I was very surprised to find that I wasn't bored at any point during the game! It is quite violent with players smashing into the walls, falling over and fights breaking out, but for the most part they play nicely. During intermission, and when ever play stopped, they had screens up and played adverts, competitions, and even brought out a car onto the ice to advertise it. It was non-stop! Unfortunately, the Ducks won, but we all agreed we'd like to go back and watch some more games. 


Lots of love

Emily and Mitchell

xxxxxxxxxxx

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