California Christmas
So I've been basically diarizing this trip... long, very long blurb... perhaps I'll post it eventually.
We've had a very long journey but made it safely through to where we are staying for the week.
On Saturday we left Ottawa.
We landed in Toronto and switched planes.
We flew to Calgary.
We flew to Victoria.
Rick's mom picked us up in Victoria where we toured around, finalized some banking and bought some chocolates. We had mustard sausages and potato pancakes for dinner. I updated my financial tracking for the year. I'm proud to say I actually BEAT my goal by $2000!! Rick played cribbage with his dad for a bit.
On Sunday we opened gifts, ate christmas dinner for lunch, and packed our gear for the remainder of the trip. We had a ride to the ferry then the bus to the hotel.
On Monday we got the airport shuttle to the US departures, made it through customs without a hitch and made our flight just fine. The view into Palm Springs was amazing!! We could see the entire valley. Everything was sand coloured... buildings and all. I stopped and took photos of some palm trees and the landscaping around the airport where we sat for an hour waiting for them to wash our car. We ended up with a 2006 Chevy Impala. So new it only had 250 miles on the odometer, and was still outgassing... headache city.
We drove to two family friend's homes before making it to Rick's cousin's home in San Diego. There's a gorgeous view of the hills. They've gotten rid of all the grass and replaced it with large rocks and a $75,000 pool, hot tub, fountain and added in a swimming helper - it creates a current in this tiny pool that you can swim against... almost stationary!
We went to see King Kong yesterday - just like the article I read said, it was 3 hours of pure Peter Jackson flavoured filming. It starts off slow, brings in the romance, then goes into the fantastic special effects with Kong fighting T-Rex. The movie is still quite true to the original.
I've already completely used up a roll of film and am working on the second. I'll post pictures once I can get them developed to a photo CD instead of prints (or maybe both). I killed my first digital less than a year after I received it... :(
It was almost 25C here today and is only going down to 12C tonight - It's colder in the house than it is outside. Apparently the forecast is for 25 or so on Christmas Day!!! I apparently judged my clothing selections correctly. :)
That's all for now... More later.. we're here until next Monday.
Oh, and if you know of any Calgarians willing to put us up for an evening, please get them in touch with us!! We'd rather NOT pay for a hotel if we can avoid it. We fly into Calgary on the 26th from LAX at 5:55pm and fly out of Calgary at 10:00 am on the 27th.
Happy Yule everyone!!
We've had a very long journey but made it safely through to where we are staying for the week.
On Saturday we left Ottawa.
We landed in Toronto and switched planes.
We flew to Calgary.
We flew to Victoria.
Rick's mom picked us up in Victoria where we toured around, finalized some banking and bought some chocolates. We had mustard sausages and potato pancakes for dinner. I updated my financial tracking for the year. I'm proud to say I actually BEAT my goal by $2000!! Rick played cribbage with his dad for a bit.
On Sunday we opened gifts, ate christmas dinner for lunch, and packed our gear for the remainder of the trip. We had a ride to the ferry then the bus to the hotel.
On Monday we got the airport shuttle to the US departures, made it through customs without a hitch and made our flight just fine. The view into Palm Springs was amazing!! We could see the entire valley. Everything was sand coloured... buildings and all. I stopped and took photos of some palm trees and the landscaping around the airport where we sat for an hour waiting for them to wash our car. We ended up with a 2006 Chevy Impala. So new it only had 250 miles on the odometer, and was still outgassing... headache city.
We drove to two family friend's homes before making it to Rick's cousin's home in San Diego. There's a gorgeous view of the hills. They've gotten rid of all the grass and replaced it with large rocks and a $75,000 pool, hot tub, fountain and added in a swimming helper - it creates a current in this tiny pool that you can swim against... almost stationary!
We went to see King Kong yesterday - just like the article I read said, it was 3 hours of pure Peter Jackson flavoured filming. It starts off slow, brings in the romance, then goes into the fantastic special effects with Kong fighting T-Rex. The movie is still quite true to the original.
I've already completely used up a roll of film and am working on the second. I'll post pictures once I can get them developed to a photo CD instead of prints (or maybe both). I killed my first digital less than a year after I received it... :(
It was almost 25C here today and is only going down to 12C tonight - It's colder in the house than it is outside. Apparently the forecast is for 25 or so on Christmas Day!!! I apparently judged my clothing selections correctly. :)
That's all for now... More later.. we're here until next Monday.
Oh, and if you know of any Calgarians willing to put us up for an evening, please get them in touch with us!! We'd rather NOT pay for a hotel if we can avoid it. We fly into Calgary on the 26th from LAX at 5:55pm and fly out of Calgary at 10:00 am on the 27th.
Happy Yule everyone!!