Back in Los Angeles

Today was another driving day.  One map we had said it would be about 3 hours and another map said it would be about 3.5-4 hours to get to LA from San Luis Obispo (SLO) - it took us all day!  Of course, that includes the 30mins we had to spend waiting for Eric to buy a Ryobi 18V Cordless Hard Surface Blower, which he intends to use to blow bees out of the boxes.  It is cheaper to buy it here than in NZ.

Before we left SLO, we popped our head inside the Mission (as the door was open for prayer), then we walked round more of the historic area, including the old Free Library (one of over 1,600 donated to the country by Andrew Carnegie) which now houses a small museum.  Thanks to an email from home, we became aware of a local tourist spot in SLO, Chewing Gum Alley!  Yep, an alleyway plastered on each wall with chewing gum of every colour!  It smelt like chewing gum!

 We drove for some time, and stopped in Lompoc at the site of the original Mission La Purisima, founded in 1787 but destroyed in an earthquake in 1812.  When it was re-built, they did it some miles away, and it is now a State Park.  Apparently, it is very well re-constructed, with an authentic atmosphere, even costumed interpreters.  But, with cost and time against us, we headed on.  Lompoc itself is where more than half of the world's flower seeds are grown, and June to September are colourful times to drive around Lompoc.  All we saw was one field of colour, and lots of vegetables.

Next stop was Solvang, a town founded by Danish educators from Minnesota as a folk school.  There are windmills, half-timbered buildings, thatched roofs, and storks, and lovely fattening danish pastries!

There is also a Mission, Mission Santa Ines, built in 1804.  Parts of it have been destroyed by earthquakes and fires, but it has been restored and has a lovely painted altar.  The walls of the mission are 12 feet thick, hence that building surviving earthquakes.  It is when the whitewash comes off or the tiles come off the roof that the adobe underneath gets eaten away and destroyed and collapses.

 Next stop was a windy drive to see painted caves at Chumash Painted Cave National Park (no entrance or parking fee!).  The actual cave is blocked off, but you can see through the wire gate.  They believe that Shaman from the Chumash Indian tribe did the paintings, but they don't know why or what they represent.  The black circle in the top picture below may represent a solar eclipse.

Next stop was Santa Barbara.  Again, because time was against us, it was just a fleeting visit - we went up to the mission, and looked at it from the outside.  In 1925, much of Santa Barbara was flattened by an earthquake, but the mission survived.  It was founded in 1786 and sits on a hill, looking down over the town.  The Chumash Indians there were very clean, and built a clothes washing basin or lavanderia, which has a carved mountain lion's head for a spout at one end, carved by a Chumash artisan and believed to be the oldest public sculpture in California.

We drove through Malibu Canyon and then along the coast, looking for stars at their Malibu beach homes in the early evening (must have been too early for them to be about though!), and the boys played on the beach with the pier in the background as we tried to find some reasonably-priced accommodation.  We have ended up over by LAX, the airport, ready for our departure tomorrow afternoon for Tahiti.  But, we do have a reminder of Malibu with us - there is sand on the floor and in the boy's bed!

Half way back to Los Angeles - or, half way from San Francisco?!

 Today saw us farewell San Francisco, driving south along Highway 1, the scenic, slightly longer / slower route between San Fran and Los Angeles.  But, it afforded us lots of stunning vistas, somewhat reminiscent of the drive along the Kaikoura coastline back home in New Zealand.

Most of the beaches that are accessible to the public along the coast are State Beaches, with parking fees to go to the parking bays.  But, we were able to pull in to a couple to use their facilities, without paying.  At one stop, we saw driftwood sculptures and huts on the beach.

Eric and I had a look at the Pigeon Point Lighthouse, one of the tallest in America (at 115 feet tall).  It was first lit in 1872, but is currently closed so it can be restored and earthquake strengthened.  The lens, which is currently out of the lighthouse, weighs 2,000 pds.  There is a Youth Hostel next to the lighthouse - quite a cool place to stay, I think.

We then did a drive-through of Monterey, seeing Cannery Row (where tens of thousands of sardines were canned before the sardines suddenly disappeared), and California's first theatre.  We didn't stop in Monterey for any length of time, as we were too tight-fisted to pay parking fees anywhere!  Plus, we didn't really have time to do it all justice.  That had been the same at Santa Cruz, where we drove along next to the famed boardwalk, but didn't (a) pay for parking or (b) pay, or queue, for rides on the roller-coasters or ferris wheel.

Carmel was very quaint, similar to places like Arrowtown or Hanmer Springs.  We didn't go into the mission there, Carmel Mission, but we did look over the fence at it.  It is the mission where Father Junipera Serra is buried.

As I said, there were great views, rugged coastlines, crashing waves, jagged rocks

Disney California Adventure

Disneyland.  Wow!  Everything you hear about it - smiles, happy, clean, busy, families and groups in matching t-shirts - it is all true!

We were at California Adventure for 13hrs today - and went on 17 of 37 attractions (and 2 of the attractions were closed for the day).  We waited for about 50mins to go on one, Goofy's Flying School - we were 2mins from going on it and they stopped it as "someone was on the track"!!  Got to go on it later on, when the queue was shorter.

Karl's favourite rides were Grizzly River Run (he went on it 2x by himself later in the evening - the rest of us didn't want to as it was getting much cooler then and we didn't want to have wet clothes like earlier in the day!).  He was honestly jumping up and down like a jack-rabbit - he was so excited to be going on it!!  His other fav was Radiator Springs Racers, which was our last ride (thanks to a Fast Pass ticket) and which was everyone's favourite ride (and our car won the race!!).  Robin enjoyed both of them - although both during the wait and the actual ride, he had mixed feelings about them!!

Eric did not enjoy our first ride, the California Screamin' - a high-speed roller-coaster.  He was looking very pale after that, and it was only our first ride!!

Off to Disnelyand tomorrow, although Karl has said he wants to go back to California Adventure as it was so much fun and Disneyland is boring (like he knows - he's never been to it!!).

Will post photos in a later blog - it's 10.30pm and I'm off to bed and Eric is going to do some work.

Day 2 - Wednesday 19 March

We all slept pretty well last night, give or take.  We'd all gone to bed about 8pm, then Eric and I were both awake at 10pm, thinking we'd had really good long sleeps!! Eric & I got up about 7.30am, and the boys were still sound asleep, finally rousing and making their way to breakfast.  Juices, tea/coffee, sachet of hot chocolate, toast, an assortment of donuts (either sugar-coated or iced), sachets of porridge to make up, very sweet Frosted Flakes and Raisin Bran.   As you can imagine, the boys went for the donuts!!

We finally left the hotel about 10.30am and made our way to the La Brea Tar pits and the Page Museum.  Brea is Spanish for tar, and we actually got to see tar on the grass around the place, as well as some of the tar pits where they have excavated millions of fossils from the pleistocene era.   There is a lake outside it which still bubbles with methane gases and asphalt (or tar).  Did you know that there used to be camels in America?!  And some species of sloth were at least 4 or 5 ft tall.  The original horses in America (whose skeletons and re-constructions look remarkably similar to what we recognise as horses) died out and were replaced by those we know today.  You could smael the tar when you walked round outside.  It was quite cool.  Outside the museum was also where Karl & Robin saw their first squirrel!

After a slight geographical mishap, which allowed us time to see different areas of LA, we found our way to Exposition Park, the site of the 1932 and 1984 Olympic Stadium, and also the home to a number of (free) museums.  The main one we wanted to see was the California Science Centre, home of the space shuttle Endeavour, which flew 25 missions.  It was impressive to see it for real, having watched a number of live launches on TV in the early hours of the mornings in NZ back in the 1990s.  The black tiles on the bottom of the shuttle (each one about $2,000 to make, and very light and brittle to hold, apparently) were all individually shaped to fit exactly into position on the shuttle.  There was a display of the toilet off the shuttles, and a video of a couple of guys talking through the mechanics of actually going to the toilet in space.  There were 3 sizes of cups for women to choose and it had to create a good seal about the .. um .. you know,... the parts.  The cup for the men didn't create a seal, it was simply a case of peeing into the tube.  And the other business was even more complicated!

There were so many more exhibits at the Science Centre, different themed areas with lots of hands-on activities.  There was even a question in one area about the Stephens Island wrens from New Zealand, which had never been seen to fly as there were no predators so it had no need to fly!  NZ is famous.

Outside, in Exposition Park, there were a couple of aircraft, the A-12 (Blackbird) being the key one of interest for the boys (both big and small ones!).

Meandered our way reasonably directly to the LA Farmers Market, where we all had a real American Hotdog for dinner!

Then, a drive along Hollywood Blvd, past the Chinese Theatre, up some extremely narrow and windy roads to a lookout just below the Hollywood sign to see the lights of LA (it was about 8pm or so at this stage) then back down and a quick stop on Hollywood Blvd this time to see some stars (unfortunately none that the boys recognised, but Eric & I saw ones for The Pointer Sisters, Edward Asner, Walther Mathau, Jack Lemmon and John Belushi).

Back to the motel, with the boys falling asleep en route.  Unfortunately, when they got here and hopped into bed, they giggled and carried on and on, and have only just gone quiet (it's now coming up for 11pm).

It's been a long day - but we'll get used to that - but we've seen a few cool things, and hopefully learnt some things along the way.

Off to Disney California Park tomorrow (9am - 9pm) then Disneyland on Friday (9am - midnight!), so may or may not blog.

We are in America!!

It has been a very long day!  The boys went to school on Tuesday morning (NZ time) while Eric & I finished up our task list at home.  We picked them up, had some lunch at home (finishing up lots of things in the fridge), then we picked up one of Eric's colleagues from his work, who was able to take our car to the mechanic next to their work after he had left us at the airport (we are getting an oil leak fixed while we are away).

Check-in was completed relatively smoothly, and Uggie was there to see us off.  The boys had time to do their first holiday blog before we boarded flight TN102 (Air Tahiti Nui) bound for Pape'ete and LA.   Before the boys had time to do up their seatbelts, they were invited up to the cockpit to have a look around!!

5 hrs to Tahiti - watched movies, listened to music and played games.  Stepped foot on Tahitian tarmac (we were in Tahiti before you, mum!) and waited in the humid and muggy departure lounge for about an hour before our onward flight left.

8 hrs later, and we arrived in Los Angeles.  The boys were expecting very gruff, non-smiling Immigration Officers, but our "dude" (as Karl calls people these days) was very friendly - he said he was having a grumpy day!  Picked up our Ford Escape (very roomy for the 4 of us and all our luggage - 3 big bags and a small back-pack each) and eventually managed to navigate our way to our hotel - Super 8 Anaheim, on Disneyland Drive.  I was the expert navigator, no wrong turns, and doing it all on a tourist map that of course, doesn't even have Disneyland Drive marked on it!!  Eric is trying to sort out his GPS on his phone and the tablet - it's not calculating properly at present.

Karl only had a very short sleep on the flight to LA (too busy guffawing away while watching movies!), and has since had a 30-40min snooze while we drove here.  Robin got a reasonable sleep on the aircraft, and Eric & I are just motoring along.  We need to go and buy dinner (who can be bothered trying to cook a meal in a small microwave on so little sleep?!), get some grocery supplies, then hit the sack, ready to explore LA tomorrow!!

Yippee!