The McKenzie's Official world tour site
# Saturday, 14 February 2009
MORE CALIFORNIA!

As we have made many changes to our initial game plans along our way on Macswayround, we decided to make another as we headed towards California. We arranged to put Nessie into safe and secure storage to let her have a rest when we reached California. This decision is due to the current worldwide financial situation, and in particular to the massive drop in the exchange rate of the U.S Dollar to the British Pound. This- on top of the fact that shipping costs have almost doubled since our initial quote to ship Nessie across the transpacific has meant that it makes much more sense for us to store Nessie and rent a similar camper from Brisbane, for the time we are in Australia.

We camped at the Shady Oasis Campground in Victorville, and found an excellent storage facility, to the north east of Los Angeles. This is where Tim and Sylvia (our new found Zion friends) sprang into action and helped us out. As they live at Huntington Beach, south of Los Angeles, they VERY kindly offered to pick us up from the Storage Centre, let us stay with them for 4 nights and then, if that wasn’t enough – drive us to the airport when it was time for our flight! It  is uncanny to think we ended up here as this is next door to Long Beach where Nessie was due to sail from! We couldn’t believe our luck and we are very grateful to them both. We really enjoyed Huntington Beach and our time with them, also meeting some of their friends and family too. Huntington Beach is located along the Southern California coast in Orange County. It has been named as the best city to live in Orange County and has been ranked among the ‘top ten safest cities’ for decades. It has pristine white beaches and is also named as the Surf City of the USA – surfing began here as it became popular in the States!

We visited the original part of Los Angeles, as it always was, with Tim and Sylvia. Once again local knowledge was priceless! We saw the traditional market stalls, some Mexican- Indian dancers and some break-dancers too!

Into Hollywood and we took a stroll down Hollywood Boulevard where famous stars have their names written in a gold star – along all the pavements. As the sun set the Boulevard was illuminated with bright lights and atmosphere! We saw the place where the stars have signed their names and left hand and foot prints too.

The next day Sylvia, Jemma, Ben and I took the Disneyland experience! Tim and Phil got out of the treat (we are not quite sure how!) and they enjoyed a day at the Petersen Automotive Museum instead!

It was great to go to the ORIGINAL Disneyland Theme Park in California! It was very busy on the day we chose and there were some long queues but we did manage to do lots of different attractions, throughout the whole day. We went on every roller coaster possible and even I can say I went on them all and enjoyed them – which is very unusual as I usually avoid them and hold the bags while Daddy gets the pleasure! We even went into the home of Mickey Mouse and met him while he had a break from his filming. The children got a photo each with the most original star of Disney!

Everything was aching as we got back to the house and after carrying two happy, sleeping children to bed we adjourned to the hot tub with a good supply of wine! The perfect recovery – how lucky are we?!

On Tuesday 3rd February we packed our bags ready to fly down under! After a lovely Thai Curry we were taken to the airport and dropped at the check-in point. We said our goodbyes and thanks to Tim and Sylvia and the two dogs and we look forward to meeting again on our return to the States! (please?)

 

WILDLIFE HITS-

·         2 different types of Humming birds

·         Sparrows

·         Lots of Starfish

·         Ground Squirrels

·         Various very large butterflies

 

 


Saturday, 14 February 2009 11:53:07 (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Comments [0]  USA