Hi all, Time for another weekly roundup: Wednesday 12.06.13: Great way to start the day with the happy news that Zhann Wyatt Nicol arrived safely today. Congratulations Drew, Lys & Zakiyah, we cant wait to meet your gorgeous little man xxxxxx Today we had decided to hire a car to go and explore the Orange County surf beaches along the coast. Somehow through a miscommunication between Ben & I, he had booked the car at one branch yesterday while I looked up walking directions to another branch (we didn't realise this at the time though, we thought we were all efficient having all of our info together). This is what happens when you have no internet access & then get on free wifi madly rushing to search all the info you need for the next few days haha :) So this morning we set off to the car hire branch and long story short, once we realised we were going the wrong way, checked the GPS to find the right place and worked out where we were meant to be going, it was about a 2hr walk before we arrived at the correct branch. I can laugh now, but it was seriously not funny at the time haha. So I guess we started the day off badly, we were both in a bit of a mood by the time we got the car. We'd booked a small economy car but they upgraded us to a 2012 Mazda 6 so that felt like luxury. I tell you what though, after driving Toby the Mazda felt like I was sitting on the ground.... I was surprised how much I'd gotten used to sitting up nice & high and being able to see where we were going. I really didn't like being so low in the hire car, it just felt weird which I thought was funny because it was pretty much the same as my car at home which I've always loved - funny what you get used to hey. We stopped for coffee and then hit the coast road, which again was very scenic and pretty. We drove through Seal Beach and Long Beach but didn't pull off until we reached Huntington Beach. It's a very surfy town with another really long pier over the water and I was surprised how many people were out & about at the beach for a weekday, it's obviously a very popular place. We had a walk out along the pier & around the main streets, then stopped by the international surf museum only to find it closed for renovations which was a real shame. We had a blowout on Toby the other day when our (plastic) pressure regulator on our water inlet hose burst, so we found a Walmart & bought a new brass one. Now we can hook up to our water again instead of using our tanks. We had planned on going in to Dodger Stadium to catch the baseball tonight (since we have the car), but we didn't end up leaving Huntington Beach till 5pm so we wouldn't have made it back home and then across town in time. So that was a bit disappointing, we both LOVED the baseball last time, but we sussed out the Dodgers schedule and they'll be playing in San Francisco when we're there so we might go see them play then. Instead, when we got home we grabbed some beers, cooked some hotdogs and listened to the game on the radio. Not quite as good as really being there but it was still a fun night :) Thursday 13.06.13: There's a bit of a baby boom this week with more happy news that Reegan Valentine Williams also arrived safely today. Congratulations Kurt & Sarah, she is just beautiful xxxxxx Mum & dad are coming today!!!!!! Our first job was to return the hire car, so we dropped it back & had the rental car company drop us off in Manhattan Beach. We had a really yummy brekky at The Kettle then strolled around checking out the area before ending up back down at the pier. There were heaps of surfers out again so we sat watching them for a while. It's like having front row seats watching them off the pier - you're practically right above them which is great. After watching for a few minutes we noticed a pod of dolphins playing amongst the surfers in the waves as well. That was pretty cool - they were just riding the waves up and down the beach & were fascinating to watch :) Afterwards we walked home along the beachfront path which took about an hour, but because there's so much to see it didn't feel like that long at all. There are so many big fancy houses along the beachfront!!! Lots of rich people hehe. Once we got home we did some laundry and tidied up a bit, then went and lazed about on the beach for the rest of the afternoon. Excitement of the day was when mum & dad arrived for dinner around 5pm, it was soooo good to see them! Lots of hugs all round!!!! We got the fire going on the beach and sat out there having drinks and pizza while we caught up. After dinner we traipsed up to Toby for coffee and dessert, where mum pulls out a goody bag for us. We have a little wedding photo album from Michelle & Chris, 2 x huge 1kg jars of moccona coffee, 2 tubes of vegemite and a 'Toby' bear from mum & dad plus 4 x 500g jars of moccona coffee and 4 x small jars of vegemite from Nan. Thank you so much everyone, I can't believe it, love you all!!!!!! :) I cannot wait to have vegemite toast in the morning!!!! :) Mum & dad were understandably pretty knackered from their flight over so we had a relatively early night. Can't wait to spend some more quality time together in the coming weeks. Once they left we packed up & got ready to head off in the morning. Friday 14.06.13: Today we're off to Barstow, California which is about 200km away. We left Dockweiler around 8.30am and headed to Target first up to buy a laptop. You may have noticed I'm a little bit behind with blogging... Well when we first decided to come over here we bought an iPad thinking that it would be easy to travel with & that we would just store all of our photos on there and that would be fine... What we didn't count on was the fact that we are both very happy snappers and take waaaay too many pictures, so now our iPad storage is already full up. Because it's full I haven't been able to upload any photos off the camera onto the iPad to keep blogging, hence why I'm behind! So we decided to buy a laptop for photo storage and found a couple of good cheap ones at Target, so we're off there for a look. Turns out they had the one we wanted so after we finished shopping we hit the road to Hollywood. When we were here 2 years ago we always said we wanted to come back, but who could've guessed that 'next time' we'd be driving a motorhome down Hollywood Boulevard haha, too funny! We had planned on getting photos of Toby in front of some of the famous landmarks (Roosevelt Hotel, Grauman's Chinese Theatre etc) but I can't believe I'd forgotten how busy it was. Funny how time plays tricks on your memory, in my mind the boulevard was just single lanes each way but it's actually 2 driving lanes (plus parking lanes) so that meant twice as many cars and not really anywhere for me to jump out and snap touristy photos. Nevermind we still cruised Toby down the boulevard which was fun and then headed out to San Bernardino to visit the historic site of the very first ever McDonalds. They have a little museum there full of McDonalds information, documents, photos, memorabilia etc and it's really interesting and cool to look at. Talk about taking a stroll down memory lane with some of the happy meal toys they had on display hehe. Naturally after checking everything out we both felt like Maccas so we grabbed some lunch to go down the road and hit the road to Barstow. The scenery from here was actually really pretty. It's amazing, the landscape is so barren - there's just mountains in the distance and then a whole lot of nothing, yet it's so pretty in its own unique way. I really like it :) The trip was pretty uneventful until we reached the city limits of Barstow and traffic came to a complete standstill, and then we had 3 lanes of freeway traffic just crawling along. This went on for about an hour and a half and the most frustrating thing was that we were only about 15km from our campground on the other side of Barstow and just couldn't get there any other way. I'm not sure of the temperature but it would've been high 30's/low 40's coz we were really hot just sitting in traffic (we have no air con - you don't need it in Canada lol). We weren't too sure how Toby would handle the heat to begin with, and then to be just crawling along the freeway as well we were a bit worried about overheating, but he was a trooper & had no problems at all which was a relief! While we were waiting, we heard on the radio that there had been a car accident earlier in the morning which is what was causing the traffic backup. We were coming through around 2pm so it must've been a bad one to still be causing dramas. Finally we reached our campground, checked in for 2 nights, set up camp and headed straight for the pool to cool off. Considering the outside temperature was so hot I was really surprised to find the water cold when we jumped in. I mean it was refreshing but I couldn't stay in for more than 5mins because I got cold and had to get out. Most times on a hot day when you jump in a pool to cool off the water is lukewarm and not even really refreshing so I don't know how they kept it cold, but it was good. We kept jumping in to cool off, then laying in the sun to get hot before hopping in again... Our campground is literally in the middle of nowhere off the side of the freeway so it's nice and quiet, I really like it. Because we can see the highway from our site, we could see the traffic continued to be backed up for several more hours - even as we were eating dinner... I feel sorry for the poor b*****s still stuck in the traffic. Saturday 15.06.13: Happy Birthday Steve!! Hope you had a fantastic day :) xxxx Quite simply today was a hot & lazy day! :) We hung around home for the morning and then hit the pool around lunchtime, claimed some banana lounges & hung out there all day. So we swam, read, napped, lazed in the sun and swam some more... Perfect! We treated ourselves to some ice creams from the store this afternoon and were amazed at how cheap they were. They were basically the same type as a magnum or heaven (which are about $4 per ice cream at home) but these were obviously a different brand here and we got change from $4 for both ice creams! Love it :) It's very warm here during the day but it does cool off at night and there's been a nice breeze so it's been comfortable sleeping weather which is good. Sunday 16.06.13: Happy Birthday Dan!!! We'll have a drink for you!!! Xxx We left Barstow this morning around 7.45am as we're hoping to get our travel over and done with before the day gets too hot. The temperature peak usually hits around 3-4pm out here and we only have 250kms to travel to Laughlin so we should be well and truly there before then. We took a detour onto part of historic Route 66 near Newberry Springs and took the usual touristy photos. We were going to drive along there, just to say that we had, but the road was very rough, corrugated and bumpy so we turned around and got back on the freeway, which was a much smoother ride. So we did still drive a little section of Route 66 I guess, just not what we had planned :) It was a pretty uneventful trip with not too much to see but the landscape was very beautiful.We came across a roadside fresh beef jerky truck so we stopped and Benny loaded up on his favourites. We went past Avi Casino where we're staying and into Fort Mohave to grab some stuff from Target and then were back and checked in just after lunch. The RV park is part of Avi Casino which is just inside Nevada in the "tri-state" area where the California, Nevada & Arizona borders all meet. It's pretty much on its own in the middle of nowhere! It's super hot here but besides the casino gambling there's a pool, food court, cinema, bingo hall & coffee shop to keep us occupied. Plus the casino is set on the side of the Colorado River so they have a man-made white sand beach and water sport recreation area. There's certainly lots to do if we want to :) We had a wander through the casino and ended up going to the buffet for dinner. The food was ok, a bit ordinary, but it was the unfriendly staff that will keep me from returning again. Pretty rude... The casino was alright but after coming from Oz where you're not allowed to smoke anywhere to here where you can still smoke in casinos and even in restaurants (gross huh) it feels pretty yuck - I smell like one big smoky mess. On the positive side, the free showers at the RV park are fantastic (and air conditioned - awesome!) so I can shower 10 times a day if I want to :) We noticed that it stays a lot warmer overnight here than at Barstow. It was an ok temperature to sleep in, but there was no cool breeze here, it was just warm air... But it's $18 a night for full hookup and complete access to all of the casino facilities so who's to complain :) Monday 17.06.13: It was really hot here again today. We went over to the pool, grabbed a spot and spent the morning lazing about in the sun & swimming. When we got hungry we headed inside to Panda Express and had some yummy Chinese for lunch, then back home in time for a Skype call with Michelle & Chris. So good to see you both & hello baby bump - you look fantastic Shell :) xxxx Afterwards we went back to the pool to relax, swim & people-watch... What a day hehe :) Tuesday 18.06.13: Another hot day in the desert today so we simply lazed by the pool again. We ended up having cheeseburgers poolside for lunch and trying 'Mike's **********ade'. It's a flavoured beer which we'd seen everywhere and here it was only $3 for an enormous can so we gave it a go - it tastes like Solo! Far out I was ready for a nap afterwards though, I hardly drink let alone in the middle of the day so I really felt it & thought Benny would have to carry me home haha. Mid-afternoon we went home for a shower and then came back to the cinema where we saw "Now You See Me" which was fantastic, a really great movie. When we bought our tickets the girl said to us "It's only another few dollars of you wanted to get a large drink and popcorn deal?" So Ben says "Sure we'll get that to share".... Well the drink was huge but the popcorn was enormous - ridiculous really - check out the photo. Consequently we didn't go to the Italian restaurant in the casino for dinner afterwards like we had planned haha. We headed home and sat out under the shade of the awning as it got darker, cooled off & was really pleasant. It's funny, I swear we're the only people outside. All you hear around the park is everyone's RV air conditioner cranked right up and we've hardly seen another soul around here... They're either hiding in their RV or the casino in the air con so it's almost like a ghost town. Pick the Aussies without air con haha :) Much love till next time, Benny & Loz xxxxxxx