Easter Bunny found me!!!

Wow - Easter Bunny certainly is clever. He clearly didn't find me at home in Australia and so must have searched for me, because when I went for my morning coffee guess what I found in my coffee mug!!!

So now I have a whole new level of respect for bunnies.

Happy Easter!!!!

More Great Outdoors!!

Today we started out by hitting a local bike trail that took us through some local bushlands - our introduction to the great outdoors which was our theme for the day. The trail started near a local sports ground where the local kids were playing soccer, baseball, and surprisingly for me softball as well. I never knew that was played here. Even more surprisingly a group were playing cricket, however they all looked to be of Indian or Pakistani descent - not a whitey to be seen!

From there we headed out to a wildlife reserve, which had miles of tracks wandering through a ravine area. It was to be in the sun, with a nice breeze, and getting a touch of exercise in the nice fresh air. As you can see nature was showing off some nice colours...

I saw what I thought were hawks or eagles soaring on the air currents, but Don told me they were buzzards - I still don't know if he was pulling my leg or not.

Anyway, after that we headed out to Dana Point for some sea air and a walk around the marina. A lot of pelicans, it reminded me of Redcliffe Peninsular back home. I caught 25 of them in this shot, but Karen tells me there were 35 in the flock.

Jordan - I saw a pirate ship in the marina!!!!!

And for me there were lots of toys to choose from...

That was about a quarter of the marina, so plenty of money still in this part of Southern California.

I was surprised to see how close a lot of the homes were built to the cliff edge behind the marina - I'm thinking there must have been erosion since these were built. Either that or the owners are very optimistic people!!

So once again thanks Don and Karen - another great day outdoors.

Out to the beach!

Today Don and Karen took me out to see some of the local beach communities, and we hit Laguna Beach and Newport Beach.

These beaches were a lot closer to what we have back in South East Queensland - even had quite a lot of people out on the pier fishing for their dinner!

Don had some fun looking through Stand Up Paddleboarding shops, and it looks like tomorrow he's going to hire a board and we'll all head down to Dana Point where he can get back in the water and show me how it is done. He also has some inflatable kayaks so I may jump in one of those and have some fun.

After that we had some food at one of Don and Karen's old haunts, a place called Pizza D'Oro. It was really nice to go to a small, privately owned place after seeing all the chain / franchise food outlets they have here. Great quality food for reasonable prices.

We finished up the day heading over to a Wholefoods store to get a few things for Easter - these places are about as big as your average supermarket, but dedicated to more wholesome food (although looking through the ingredients they do sneak a few less than desirable products in amongst the healthy ones)

All in all a great day out - thanks Don and Karen!!

A day in the outdoors!

Well I've been working during my stay here in California, and today Don and Karen took me out for a great day in the outdoors.

First stop was CalEarth homes, where people learn to make homes out of bags of dirt! Literally the walls are made out of bags of dirt (looks like 5 - 10 kg bags) which are stack on top of each other, with strands of barbed wire between to help hold them together. These are then rendered over to provide a relatively smooth finish. Construction looks very simple, and provides a far quicker and cheaper method of building than methods like mud brick.

After that we took a quick trip into the mountains where Don showed he used to teaching skiing many moons ago. I must say it was lovely to see the snow!!

I did make a snowball, but Don didn't want to play!!! I'll have to wait for Janine and Jordan to come and play in the snow..

Making our way home

During the last couple of days of the trip we made our way back to Austin, Texas. The weather turned a bit cooler, and gave us a nice alternate view of the landscape on the way. I find rain and mist has its own beauty, and tried to capture some of it on my camera.

Paradoxically it was during these last few days that I managed to find time to do a little trading - most of it in Starbucks premises!

The final day was very long, spending around 9 hours waiting in airport terminals in addition to the flight times. Needless to say the shower and sleep upon arrival were both very welcome.

That pretty much concludes our overseas travel for a little while. I expect to be popping over to the US a couple of times next year for quick trading related visits, but that is about it. Our next big family trip is planned for first thing 2012, with a nice slow, long trip around Europe. Plenty of planning to be done for that one!!

Touring the Mountains!

Well - the mountains turned out to be large hills by my book. Still they were beautiful none the less. Starting out the day we went to the local organic diner and enjoyed a freshly baked yam pie with freshly whipped cream - absolutely delicious!! I'm hoping Janine finds a recipe so she can make the same using sweet potato.

 

We spent the whole day zipping about the mountains, but only covered half the route planned. That certainly didn't diminish the experience though, and for me the highlight was a small hike to the 'Lost Valley'. It sounded like something out of Jurassic Park to me, however we never saw any dinosaurs. These photos depict the sort of scenery we enjoyed...

 

And this last photo - well it is one of Jordans!! He took it, and I think it is a mighty fine photo!!

 

 

Checking out the Ozarks

We found a recommended scenic trip around the Ozarks, and planned to do that over the course of two days. The first day was to travel north up to Harrison, and from there south down to Jasper where we would stay overnight. Of course we had the mandatory stop-off at the McDonalds in Harrison where Jordan made some more 5-minute friends while playing in the playground. He is really good at making quick friends now, and also a lot better at leaving after his play with no fuss.

Between Harrison and Jasper we stumbled across the Mystic Caverns. These are 2 large caverns full of stalactites, stalagmites, and some other formations that all add up to a great underground experience. Unfortunately I found it virtually impossible to get photos that share the experience as without a skyline the context of the photos gets lost. That being said, I have to show you something!!

These caverns were used to house a distillery during the Prohibition era, and unfortunately as a consequence the formations in that part of the caverns as irreparably stained with smoke. That still left plenty of areas that were in pristine order though, so perhaps those affected areas just served to give historical atmosphere!

The little town we stayed on the outskirts of was Jasper, and gave the impression of having a population of about 20! Lots of atmosphere, and lots of country-style hospitality too. This is the main street - the diner in the foreground was great, serving organic meals.

As you can see from this photo they also served local game meats - in fact the gentleman managing the RV camp said he never buys meat. The majority of the meat he eats is hunted, and the domesticated is prepared by the local farmer with grass-feed cattle. He was well aware of the problems with mainstream US beef and wouldn't eat any of it.

Tomorrow - touring the mountains!!

Arriving in Arkansas

We were looking forward to seeing the Ozark ranges in Arkansas, and so were happy to arrive in that state. Our schedule had a short stay here so that we could visit one of Don's friends in Texas, however that opportunity gave way and so we decided to do a recommended scenic tour through the Ozarks instead. That required last minute changes in our day-to-day destinations, and so we ended up heading for Harrison, AR. That proved to be great as we finally headed off the interstate highways and on to the smaller roads - of course that provided a whole lot more photo opportunities!

This became even better as the sun started to set!

We finally arrived at our campsite in the dark, and it was the first time I had driven the RV through the dark on tiny country roads. I'm glad to say we arrived without any unwelcome incidents, and looked forward to driving through Harrison to Jasper in the Ozark ranges the next day. We also had another unexpected win with some caverns we visited. More about that in the next post...

Tennessee

We stayed overnight in Pigeon Forge which is just west of Gatlinburg. Both these towns have strong "Las Vegas" overtones, with just about as many neon lights!

As neither Janine or I are interested in that style entertainment we headed back to the Smoky Mountains National Park for a day of nature and history. We decided to head to Cades Cove to see the both the natural beauty and historical buildings which can be found in that region of the park.

On the way out we found this roadside area selling local produce. This was great for us as we had decided to sample some of the local produce - particularly the BBQ'd meat. Given our normal preference for an organic vegetarian diet this may seem strange, however we decided to put that diet to one-side for the day and see what the locals had to offer. So here we tried Hickory-smoked pork and beef - I preferred the beef brisket as it was slightly spicier. Chatting to the gentleman who cooked all that meat, he said that during season the cookers were cooking 24 / 7 for 6 months...thats a lot of meat!!!

He had 2 of these going...

As for our visit to Cades Cove, here are some samples of what we saw.

Tomorrow we leave this area and start heading west again - chat to you then!!

Smoky Mountains

The Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee were one of the highlights of this trip that I had really been looking forward too. They certainly are spectacular, and would have been even more spectacular had we arrived three weeks earlier as much of the leaf fall has already taken place.

However we were still grateful for the splendour we witnessed, and I hope these photos I took do it all justice.

Coming down from the mountains we drove into Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Both are vibrant towns, but being very commercialised they aren't what we are looking for and so will curtail our stay in this area. Tomorrow we'll drive out to enjoy Cades Cove and the local caverns, and then try some of the local cuisine before continuing to head west.