Lake Perris and an Anime Convention

This weekend, we had two completely different days. 

Earlier in the week, we went to Art Walk with Mitchell's lab, which we hadn't been to for a few months. Mitchell picked out a really nice artwork by a local artist, so now we have a painting of a bridge and some cherry blossoms to hang up on our giant plain walls. 

On Saturday we visited Lake Perris for the first time. It's super close to us, only about 20 minutes to get to and is a State Park right here in Riverside. We drove in, and weren't sure where to park as there's several sections. But we picked a random lot and found a space easily. There's a few beaches where people were swimming and setting up barbecues and a marina where loads of boats and jet-skis where setting off from. It was pretty noisy at this end with so many people, but it felt pretty festive with music playing and families in the water. I did go for a quick paddle, and while it wasn't as warm as Lake Elsinore was last year, it was still a very pleasant temperature and I would have very happily swum in it. Maybe next time. 

However, out plan for the day was not to swim, but to do the nine mile loop around the lake. There's a trail that's mostly paved the whole way way around, so we thought we'd give it a go. We started well, and the first section after the beaches was a dam for the reservoir, so it was very straight, very exposed and very hot. It took us a while as this was a significant section, and we were glad to reach the other side. 

Once we had reached it, we stopped for lunch in the campground and made use of an empty picnic table. We'd brought some canned stuffed vine leaves (from Trader Joe's) and they made an excellent transportable lunch. 

A nice shady lunch spot

Lunch done, we continued our way around the lake, past another, quieter, beach and onto the road less travelled. This half was much prettier and a lot more wild. We saw a bunny hop across the path when we stopped for a break, and a few lizards skittering away. There were also several large hawks circling around, looking for bunnies and lizards to eat no doubt. 

Stay safe little bunny!

Although it was still paved, we felt like we'd left the maintained area as there was long grass and the lake to one side and open plains leading to the mountains on the other. 

The loop took us about 4-5 hours, by which time we were ready to go home for dinner! We might take our bikes next time, but we need to get a bike rack before we can, as the car only holds one at a time. 

The next day, we went to the Riverside Convention Center for the Riverside Anime Convention. We'd chosen costumes to dress up in; Mitchell went as a character from a superhero Anime we'd been watching in preparation for the event (Deku from My Hero Academia), and I went as a Pokemon character (Misty), complete with pet pokemon. It was funny because they only had two giant blow up statues at the event, one from the superhero show and one from Pokemon!

Pikachu!

We met up with our friends, who had also dressed up for the event. The main part of the day was the stalls, where they were selling stickers, t-shirts and just about anything you could think of with anime characters on them. We also went to the food trucks which were selling some interesting Japanese food. We had ketchup rice, covered with an omelette and special sauce, and then a pudding which looked like an egg, but was really like custard with a melon ball on top to look like an egg. 

There were other people here I swear

They also had carnival rides (which were making some alarming noises) anime karaoke, autograph signings and panel discussions, which we didn't go to. Most of the fun was looking at everyone's costumes, seeing ones you recognised, and finding people who had dressed up as the same characters as you. We were both recognised multiple times, so our costumes must have been pretty good! 

After we'd all looked around, we went to go and try a new bubble tea shop (which was really sweet) and get pizza which was pretty good. 

The tea shop was called sleepy kit-tea

Until next time,

Emily and Mitchell

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