Emily and Mitchell in the USA

 This weekend was the Riverside festival of lights kick-off event, and as I get free parking downtown, we decided to go and see the event. Coming straight from work, we both missed the opening ceremony (although I was able to see the fireworks from the big library windows) but we managed to meet up with some friends and see some of the live music and all of the many, many people who had come from across the Inland Empire to see the lights.  We saw the lights and all the stands selling hot chocolate and gingerbread, and the ice rink, but we will be coming back again during the season when it's less busy to take part fully.  We then went out for dinner with the group before driving them home.  The next day we went on a day hike in the Los Angeles forest with Stephie and Milan. We arrived and got the last parking spot, and started on the trail.  The first part went along an exposed trail, but the sun hadn't hit yet, so it was still pretty chilly. We soon entered th...

This weekend was a long one because of the holiday (we get the day off for Veterans' Day) so we went for drinks in downtown Riverside with some people on the Thursday to get the weekend started. On Friday, Mitchell had physiotherapy early in the morning for his knee, and then we went out for breakfast in the little Canyon Crest shopping area. We've been on a mission lately to find some good breakfast spots, and this one seemed a good option with lots of vegetarian choices.  We then spent the rest of the day running some errands and Mitchell had to go into work to pick up his office keys as he'd locked himself out the day before.  On Saturday we drove up to the Cucamonga wilderness for a big day hike. It was a busy day and even though there was a fairly big car park, there were no spots left and we had to park on the street below.  But once we were over that and had filled out our wilderness permit, we were off! The trail followed a river which had quite a bit of water in ...

 Last weekend we had a pretty chill time as we were busy working and then I had all my wisdom teeth taken out (Mitchell had his the week before). So we just went for a little picnic on the Sunday before which was nice, but the Santa Ana winds were back so it was very windy! We had wanted banh mis (sandwiches with Vietnamese fillings) but they were out of the vegetarian fillings when we went, so we just got regular sandwiches, which were nice, but not what we were craving. We took them to Fairmount park, which is in Riverside, but we hadn't been to since our first month here. We had our picnic and then went for a quick walk around the lake, avoiding all the palm fronds which had fallen in the winds. This weekend however, we went group camping in Joshua Tree!  We drove down after work on Saturday and arrived to the campsite after dark when the fire was already lit and food prepared. We all managed to fit on one campsite which was fun, setting up four tents, two either side of th...