My Parents Come to Visit!

We had our third set of visitors come to visit (now that the worst of summer is over), my parents!

They arrived on Friday evening and I picked them up after work. California was having a heat wave this week, so badly that we'd had alerts about how much power everyone was using to stay cool, and warnings that it might cause blackouts. Half the county was also on fire (one of my libraries had to close for the week) because it was so hot and dry. When I picked up this pair however, they brought with them a tropical storm, and some of the heaviest rain we'd had since Christmas. 

We came home and had a little dinner while they settled in, and then an early night for the travelling pair. 

For their first day in California, we did a little tour of Riverside. After making a big breakfast, we went to the farmer's market and looked in some shops, found some art murals, and bought tamales from the Tamale Guy stall. It was hot and humid and we were soon very hot and sweaty. We came home to try out the tamales. 

We then went for an explore of the grocery store to pick up some food for dinner and show off the huge collection of pumpkin spice flavoured things. When we got back, the sky had cleared a little bit so we drove up to the top of box springs park to see the view of Riverside below and see if we could find some wild donkeys! We did find donkeys, and as we were driving home, they were blocking the road and we had to slow right down. As we stopped, they came over and tried to get their head in the window, obviously thinking we were about to feed them! We now have donkey mouth prints on our car windows. 

Then it was enchiladas for dinner and another early night. 

Sunday was our first big day, and we went to San Diego Zoo! We started out very early (the zoo opens at 9am and it takes an hour and a half to get there) and had a really fun day exploring the park. We're experts at it now, and other than the birds and some of the smaller animals, we managed to get round and see everything. Unfortunately, we couldn't see the polar bears that day, but we did see the pygmy hippo and koalas. 

On the way home, it started to rain very very heavily and there was even lightning! We all got emergency alerts come through on our phones, warning about flash floods, it was quite scary! It didn't stop us on our quest for ramen (noodle soup) though, and we picked some up on the way home to have for dinner. 

On Monday, I had to work from home, so we now have a guest editor.

Hi, Sarah here :)  Emily didn't leave us completely to our own devices thank goodness and we have had the pleasure of Mitchell's company this week, driving us here, there and everywhere at Emily's direction!

Monday was the Huntington Library and Botanic Gardens.  It's an absolutely fascinating place, the gardens are lovely and even though it's the wrong time of year for flowers there were lots of interesting fruit and seeds to see.  

Bonsai in the Japanese Garden

The Chinese Garden

Eucalyptus

Sausage Tree

The library itself was amazing, it was an absolute treasure trove of historically significant books and documents.  The one that caught my eye particularly was the copy of Audubon's American Birds.  It's a huge book full of actual size illustrations of birds, and a very important work in the bird world.

Audubon's book of American birds with a Mitchell for scale

Finally, we popped into the mansion house to look for the "blue boy" portrait (Portrait of a Young Gentleman" by Gainsborough.  We weren't prepared for the size of the art collection and then discovered that upstairs there was also a museum.  We didn't have time to view everything, there was just so much.  Definitely a place worth a visit or two, or three, might see it all by the 4th time....

I particularly liked the way they had hung a modern remake of the portrait facing the original Gainsborough.

We arrived home to find that we had just missed another heavy storm, there had been so much rain Emily had been worried that the water would come over the sill from the balcony into their apartment! That evening Mitchell had to work on a presentation for the next day so we picked up a Mediterranean takeaway which was very tasty, but so big none of us could finish it. 

On Tuesday both Emily and Mitchell were working so Emily dropped us at the UCR botanic gardens (where she used to volunteer) and we spent a couple of hours enjoying the gardens and the views.  Again, most of the flowers had finished but there were many interesting seed pods and also some plants that had buds, flower and seed pod all on the same branch.

Jewel Bug - as big as a hummingbird!

After a light lunch we walked out to the Sycamore Canyon national park which was VERY hot and dusty, then came back and hit the pool to cool off.

Sycamore Canyon

We had hoped to visit Joshua Tree national park for a sunset picnic with yesterday's leftovers, but there were still flash flood warnings and storms threatening, so we decided to leave that for a different visit. We finished up the leftovers then popped out for icecream, which was so yummy!  I am now addicted to horchata!

Interesting flavour icecreams with freshly made fish shaped waffles

On Wednesday we headed up into the mountains to visit Lake Arrowhead, it has been used as a film location many times and was a popular resort in the 20s and 30s.  Today it is a peaceful village with a few shops and large houses all along the lakeshore.  On the way up the mountain the views were obscured by thick cloud, we could see it billowing across the road, but when we reached the lake the sky cleared.

Beautiful blue sky and lake

After lunch there we took a slight detour to hike along a very pretty trail to heart rock.  It took us a while to find it, and we scrambled up and down a bit searching, but we got there.  

Heart Rock

Views on the way back

On the way back down the mountain the clouds had cleared and we had wonderful views all the way.  Then when Emily finished work we headed down to the Food Lab that we heard so much about when they first moved here for dinner.  We all had something different, all very tasty.

When Emily asked me what I would like to do when we visited, one of the things I'd requested was a hike with a good view of the mountains, so on Thursday that's what we did. We headed up into the mountains again - so high my ears popped, to Inspiration Point (in the Los Angeles forest) and hiked along part of the Pacific Crest Trail that runs from Canada all the way down to Mexico.  The air was cool and fresh and the views were spectacular.  The trail wound through evergreen forest (not sure what types, but there was a variety, and huge pinecones everywhere) every so often coming out on to a clear area with sheer drops and unbelievable views.  To my delight we saw a couple of chipmunks along the trail too. 

Bench obviously designed for giants

As we got back towards the car we found a giant sized bench and just sat for a while taking in the view, then we headed back home and into the pool again.

For dinner we went to the Cheesecake Factory - yes Big Bang Theory fans it's a real food chain! I can understand why Sheldon had the same thing every time - the menu is mind-boggling in its variety.  Emily and I stuck to salad as we really wanted to save room for the cheesecake, but the salads were huge and Emily had to bring half of hers home.  In fact the cheesecake slices were so huge too that we ALL came home with doggy bags of leftovers. 

Today is Friday and our last day with just Mitchell.  This morning we went to the Citrus National Park and had a tour of all the many hundreds of varieties of  citrus.  It's not currently citrus season (that runs from November to March) so a lot of the fruit was still green, but we were able to sample lots of mandarins and an interesting fruit native to Australia called a finger lime.  It was tiny, very sharp and apparently retails at $1 a piece!

Australian finger lime

Buddha's hand

Odd shaped acorns

We met up with Emily for lunch at Lenoirs and once I've finished here, will be heading out to the pool again to cool off.  When Emily has finished work we will be off out for a yoga class leaving the boys attached to their various devices.

So, impressions of California:

1.  It's huge.  If you don't have a car you're stuffed.

2.  The roads are terrifying!  We so appreciate Mitchell driving us around, there's no way I'd drive here.

3.  Everything is huge.  The mountains, the deserts, the sky, the storms, the food, the roads, the space between everything - huge.  Everything except the hummingbirds, they're teeny tiny and so pretty! 

4.  So much wildlife - we heard coyotes yipping one evening, have seen loads of lizards of all sizes, lots of birds, a few butterflies, giant jewel bugs, a couple of chipmunks and lots of squirrels (which are bigger and sleeker than the ones in the UK, and more golden being west coast squirrels) and been bitten by a giant red ant.  But no snakes.  I'm disappointed about that one, but I think everyone else is relieved!

Tomorrow we are going to hit San Diego with tour guide Emily, and she will tell you all about that next week.

So bye from me!