Just spent a snowed-in stop overnight at Hemet Lake, California! Yes, California and it was snowing - then again I did make the first year navigation cadet error of selecting a campsite from the nice internet pictures without realising it was at 5,000ft! Oops! My suit's thermal equipment came in handy but Cadets Mark & Ashley L chose to sleep in our land vehicle rather than their tent - can't say I blame them!

After a very long day yesterday, testing equipment at the Universal Hollywood facility, we had a relaxed afternoon visiting some of earth's more endangered species which were being cared for at the San Diego Zoo. There was quite the variety and some surpassed even Zurg's minions in their, shall we say, 'unfortunate' looks!

As a last minute change of plan, my Cadet students and I visited the Universal Studio Facility in Hollywood, Los Angeles. After a long land cruise from San Francisco to Los Angeles we arrived at 09:30 sharp for a full day of inspection's and equipment testing. We managed to test out some new Ranger suit designs and also met some rather unsavoury characters! The chap shown here was particularly unpleasant, but I had some old friends on hand to help us out!

We took our land vehicle (along with thousands of other travellers) across a very impressive structure today called "The Golden Gate Bridge". Looked a bit more like red than golden to me, but there's no accounting for human's colour perceptions! After checking on the progress of the Space Ranger recruitment poster campaign we visited an old penal facility called "Alcatraz" which gave me some good ideas for the new Space Command Correctional F...

Met this chap on the road to Eureka, California. He is 49ft tall and is apparently a local legend called Paul Bunyan. The bull is his 'pet', Babe, and, as you can see, is equally proportioned in the body parts department!!! The Redwood forests were staggeringly enormous and just went on and on for dozens of miles - just incredible! A quick stop in Eureka for something to eat - very odd mixture of building styles - and then a push on to San Francisco to set us up...