3rd November - Another lazy morning spent catching up with my friend Jenny and my sister Kariss on the computer while Ralph got the latest news from his dad about his mum who is still in hospital.At lunchtime we drove around an hour to a place called Pasadena to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where NASA build deep space exploration satellites and track them to Saturn, Pluto or wherever.They deal mainly in robotics and build things like the Mars rovers.We took a fr...

27th October - Happy 31st birthday to our friend Joey!We had quite a relaxed day (for us!).We used the fact that we no longer have to check out of a hotel by 11 a.m. to catch up with family and friends and Ralph was able to speak with his mum after a kind nurse at the hospital let him ring her private mobile phone and passed it to his mum so they could speak.After settling into the apartment we headed into Los Angeles to post some postcards (I have been sending p...

20th October - We drove south from Portland for about an hour to the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville.Ralph has been looking forward to coming here since he found out that it houses the world's largest wooden aircraft with the longest wingspan ever constructed, the Howard Hughes H-4 Flying Boat (more commonly known as the Spruce Goose).Once inside the hanger the size of the thing is difficult to comprehend.It is absolutely massive and takes up the majorit...

10th Feb - An early start today to collect the car from its on-street parking space, which would cost us money after 10am, to move it to another car park near the pier where we are getting the ferry to Alcatraz.The ferry only took about 20 minutes to get us across to the island, as it's a lot closer to the mainland than you would think.A retired SFPD officer was the volunteer ranger who welcomed us to the National Park Service run former penitentiary and gave us ...

3rd March - After a mammoth 4 hour session updating the blog into the early hours of the morning, we arose rather late and too late to go on NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's once a week tour today, so unfortunately Kirsty will have to miss this NASA facility! We decided that since Venice Beach was so nice yesterday, we would continue looking at the beaches, starting with Santa Monica beach. We have seen the pier and beachfront at night when Regis and Hazel took...