Spring 2024

This spring has been a busy one! It started with my parents arriving for a visit. They've been before to see all the big things, so this time around we just saw all the Riverside offerings and used the balcony a lot!

We had a picnic at Whitewater Preserve, which is out in the desert, but has a very nice shady picnic area and a little trail which follows a river. There was lots of water in there and plenty of wildflowers left. 

Another day, we grabbed some bahn mi sandwiches and went to Lake Perris for the day. There was a very nice trail through yellow wildflowers, with great views of the lake. We reached the beach area and sat down for a picnic and sunbathing. We also had a little paddle. It's not quite the ocean, but for a 15 minute drive, it's a great place for a quick beach day!

We took a day to explore Riverside and went to the Mission Inn for lunch, which while the food was only medium, being able to explore the old mission afterwards was very worth it. It's a lovely old building, and right out of a fairytale compared to everything else in California. 

After the Mission we then walked to Tio's Tacos for horchata (which my mum has been talking about since the last time she visited) and to look at all the weird scrap art.

We also took a hike up to Mt Rubidoux, which also had some flowers and good views of the city we could explore and see where we'd been visiting all week. It was a little smoggy at the top, so we couldn't see all the way to the San Bernadino Mountains, but we could see the city of Riverside. We rewarded ourselves with some ice cream and a Trader Joe's trip afterwards. 

There was also the obligatory trip to the UCR Botanic Gardens and a visit to the citrus state park, but unfortunately the citrus tours had been cancelled that day so there was no fruit tasting this time. 

After seeing everything in Riverside, our last day together before they left for their trip across the south west, was a day out in LA! We started at the La Brea Tar Pits, which is a museum about the ice-age discoveries from right there in LA. They even have active pits you can look at and see some fossils. 

After the museum, we walked to the Grove for some lunch. We got empanadas and coffee from the farmer's market and looked at all the many cakes and treats on offer. 

On the way to our next stop we caught sight of the Hollywood sign from the car, which we weren't expecting, but was good to include in the day! Our main destination for the day was the Warner Bros studio tour! 

It was very fun, we got to take a tour cart around various sets used in all our favourite shows like the Big Bang Theory and Gilmore Girls. 

After the main tour, we then explored the exhibits, which had props and costumes used in these shows and more like the DC universe, Harry Potter and Game of Thrones. We also got to sit in staged exhibits like Central Perk and even get pictures at the real Friends fountain!

After the tour, we got some dinner nearby while the traffic died down and then dropped my parents off at their hotel ready for their big tour starting the next day. 

The rest of spring has been a busy few weeks of training hikes and hangouts. 

We took a hike through Elfin Forest, which gave us great views of San Diego county and at the top had a big reservoir. 

We hiked through Wildwood State Park, which reminded me of Crystal Cove, but without the cool sea breeze. It was nice and still had a field of wildflowers, but was starting to get very hot!

On Memorial day, we took a big hike to Marshall Canyon Regional Park. This one was pretty tiring, but good preparation for our next big adventure! It started in an urban park, but then we followed a trail past a golf course and into the trees. It was very pretty and went through a few different sections. Along the trail was an old wagon looking bench, which was good for photos. We were then in exposed trails and we must have joined a different trail, as that section suddenly became very busy. We had good views into the valley below and it wasn't too hot which was nice. We then found our way down thanks to a very specific guide I'd found online. 

We also went camping this spring to Dripping Springs campground in Temecula which wasn't too far away. The campground was very nice and I'd picked the best spot thanks to online reviews. It was the only one with good shade and even had trees where we could set up our hammock. Because we'd gone on a Sunday night, we even had most of it to ourselves and there was no-one in any surrounding sites. We had a relaxing day just enjoying the campsite, reading and making a campfire. 

The next morning we did the hike attached to the campground. It was pretty steep and absolutely covered in flies! We made ourselves do three miles up and then thankfully turned around because we were not enjoying this one. The views were nice but the bugs were relentless. 

That was it for our hiking adventures, and we're nicely prepared for our bigger adventure in the summer now!

We also did lots of fun things with friends too. It was Stephie's birthday so we went for a party at her house, we went on a campus bar crawl which got shut down by the police, we went to the board game cafe just us and with friends. We went for a game night at Emily W's house and I went out for dinner with my girlfriends who I hadn't seen for ages due to conflicting schedules. 

We also had balcony days, went out for dinners and ice-cream. And most unusually, we went line dancing! I put my hair in curlers and ended up a little too country, but it was very fun and lots of people there knew all the choreography, which sometimes we could follow and sometimes it was too fast! They did teach a few songs and it wasn't too hard to learn as it's all repeating patterns, a lot like doing the macarena to country music. They also had a mechanical bull and pool tables, so we had a fun night with everyone. 

That's just about everything we did, but look out for our big Yosemite post coming next! 

Lots of love,

Emily and Mitchell

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