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..