Last week of holiday

It's the start of the last week of our mammoth holiday. It's now Saturday morning here in Grants Pass and the rain that was originally forecast to arrive yesterday afternoon didn't come until overnight. It's just stopped but it's brought the temperature right back down after the heat of the last few days. Meanwhile, I believe it's El Scorchio in Scotland, so it was very unusual viewing on my weather app this morning:

or, for my American friends:

OK - it was only early morning here when I took this and it is forecast to heat up again later - and the next week looks fine too - but it's unusual to see Banchory at the top of any temperature chart.

Yesterday (Friday), Jo and I headed up to Cathedral Hills and completed the Outback trail - the jagged line below:

Here's a few photos I took along the way:

Note the walker in kilt and gaiters in the background

Tricky negotiation, Jo

We went for lunch afterwards at Goodness Gracious. No matter how often we come to the States, we never cease to be amazed at the size of the portions - way more than the light lunch I was planning. We visited a couple of downtown bookstores afterwards and then headed off to the new (brewery) kid on the block - https://www.weekendbeercompany.com/ - to refill my growler. The place has only been open for 6 months but it had a nice vibe to it - may have to pay another visit as yesterday was Good Friday and Jo was abstaining.

Last night we watched a movie on PPV - Holmes and Watson. Here comes the health warning - avoid at all costs - it's pretty dreadful. How does Will Ferrell get away with this?

We're heading to Medford this afternoon and will probably pop in to Kaleidoscope, our favourite Grateful Dead themed pizza pub - you don't get many of them, do you?

First week in Grants Pass

This apparently is my 1,600th blog post.

After our first couple of cool days here, the temperatures have steadily climbed - it almost hit 90F yesterday (Thursday) and the outlook seems set fair although we may get a shower this afternoon. I think we'll go for a walk this morning (Friday).

Yesterday we took a drive, taking in our favourite towns round here - Jacksonville and Ashland. We did a short trail walk in Jacksonville, which included a bit of a hike up one of the hills overlooking the town:

In Ashland, we walked through Lithia Park, where we'd been with the Lesinas on many previous holidays - fond memories of playing in the water with the boys. Jo posed on a bridge:

The day before (Wednesday) was Lucy's day off. She got through her chores, including taking the dogs out and then went for a run. I took the opportunity to get back on the bike again after a break of a couple of months. I took it pretty easy and did a bit of a circle round the town, coming back along the riverside trail:

You can probably see that the river is still high after the weekend rain - plus some snow melt from the mountains. We're not used to seeing it this high - normally when we're here in July/August, the water levels have dropped substantially.

What did we do on Tuesday then? Obviously not a lot - I can't remember and didn't take any photos.

We don't see much of Cade nowadays - he's either working or spending the night at his girlfriend's. This is his (empty) room:

Braeden is usually around - and we met his girlfriend the other day. Here's his room:

What this photo doesn't really show is the size of the TV on the right of the picture - it's enormous.

That's about it for now - need to get dressed and out before the forecast afternoon showers.

Palm Desert (2) and back to Oregon

Wednesday was pretty windy in the desert - at least in the morning - so we postponed our initial plans to go up to the top of San Jacinto mountain by what they called the Aerial Tramway, which was really a cable car, until the afternoon. It gave Scott time to try to make a few phone calls and deal with the theft of his dirt bike, which happened at home on Friday night - somebody apparently got in to the garage and took the bike, but was spotted by a neighbour at 3 am, acting suspiciously. As yet, the police haven't managed to file a charge nor recover the bike.

Mount San Jacinto is pretty high - over 8,500 feet - not the tallest in the range (which is almost 12,000 feet) but still high enough to have snow lying in April, despite the heat in the desert below:

It was alternately chilly and warm as we travelled on one of the many mountain top walks. The views of the Coachella Valley far below were good too:

I moved on by myself from Notch 4 to Notch 5, expecting the others to follow close behind on the downward trail, but I waited for a while and there was no sign of them. Best just to take a selfie then:

The other 3 had taken a wrong turning and ended up on another trail but eventually found their way to meet me at Notch 5. Of course, this was my fault for having left them in the first place and Jo had been worried that I'd got lost.

Thursday was a busy day - in the morning we drove over to see Cabot's Pueblo. Built as recently as 1941 by the Dutch adventurer, trader and artist Cabot Yerxa with his bare hands and a few basic tools, in the style of the Hopi Indians' - sorry Native Americans' - pueblos, from reclaimed and found materials, it is a treasure trove of artefacts from all round the world. It was abandoned a couple of times after his death in 1965 but is now run as a museum with guided tours. It's astonishing to see what he created - but why? It all seems pretty random and illogical, a product of a fertile and restless mind we suspect:

On the way back to the resort, we stopped for a quick bite at an Italian restaurant, then Scott and I hit the golf course again. We got a freebie this time - I think the assistant pro took a shine to my accent and the fact that, like his grandfather, I came from Glasgow. "I've got it covered" he said when I asked about paying. Bonus.

Lucy and Jo went back to the pool in the afternoon and we then tried to finish off the contents of our fridge as this was our last day at the resort - we were leaving one day early as we decided to break the long drive back to Oregon - 14 hours it would have been.

As it was, we spent a good chunk of Friday on the road, stopping occasionally to refuel both the car and ourselves. One pit stop we made was at a place called Bravo Farms, which looks like an old fashioned Wild West trading post, although I rather suspect, it's a modern faux facade:

Our overnight stay was in Sacramento. Our hotel, which was really a motel, was handily placed close to the Old Town area and the river so we walked out there for a quick beer and something to eat:

We settled on Fat City eventually. We were all a little tired over dinner, especially Scott, who had done all the driving, but we tried to make a good fist of the photos:

After a night's sleep, we were on the road again at 8 am. We made a coffee/fuel stop at Redding, where Scott and Lucy first met. You may recall the city was the scene of major fire devastation last summer and a lot of work still has to be done to restore parts of the town and the surrounding forests. Many of the tall pine trunks are still standing, although heavily blackened by the fires that took out their branches and all the undergrowth, but a good number must be dangerously fragile now. We spotted choppers at work moving some of the larger trunks.

We got back to Grants Pass in good time, leaving the afternoon free for Scott and Lucy to catch up with their domestic chores - mostly trying to get the house back to normal after the boys had pretty much had a free run for over a week, albeit Scott's mother, Karen, was in attendance trying to keep them on an even keel!

It's now Monday afternoon and it's been pretty cool and damp since we got back - the coldest since we left Scotland mid-February. Temperatures are supposed to be getting back up to the 80's Fahrenheit by Thursday - let's hope so. We didn't do much on Sunday, other than go downtown for a coffee, and today (Monday) is back to work and school day so Jo and I are on our own. We chose to take a trip to Medford to do a little shopping, which included a visit to our favourite book store, Barnes and Noble, where, amazingly, for the first time ever, we both left having bought precisely nothing.

Palm Desert, California

The longest day of our lives - Saturday 6th April, 2019, lasting over 40 hours including crossing the International Date Line on our flight from Brisbane to L.A. - wasn't as painful as we thought it might be. The worst part for me was the wait at Brisbane airport - our Qantas flight had been rescheduled by 3 hours a month or two ago, so, having caught a 10 am Virgin Australia flight out of Adelaide - which, sod's law was extremely punctual - we were stuck in a virtually empty international terminal for over 8 hours. We couldn't even get to the Qantas lounge as it was the other side of security and we couldn't go through as we didn't have boarding passes and the check-in gate didn't open until 5 pm.

The reason we didn't have boarding passes despite having checked in online was due to new security regulations introduced by the US Government - all passengers had to be interviewed before boarding passes were issued. Anyway, we got through eventually and munched our way through the freebies in the lounge.

We discovered we were flying on the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Compared with its major long haul rival, Airbus' 380, I would say the passenger experience in the latter is better - primarily because there's more room for the passengers. The main advantage of the Dreamliner is environmental - it's lighter, made from composite materials and is 20% more fuel efficient. It is a bit quieter too, which is a bonus.

Anyway, a meal, a G & T plus a couple of glasses of wine and then down on our flat beds to catch as much sleep as we could. I just had time to watch one movie - Vice, the hatchet job on Dick Cheney. I've watched more films on this holiday than I've done for years - normally I find a lot of the films formulaic and predictable, but this year, between all the flights we've had, plus the cruise, I've seen Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Green Book, If Beale Street Could Talk, Will They Ever Forgive Me, BlacKkKclansman, A Star is Born and probably a few others I can't remember just now.

Anyway, we got to LA on schedule - well, the plane did anyway - but we still had to undergo the torture that is immigration at LAX. We were amongst the first off our plane and we managed to grab one of the machines which scans your passport, takes your fingerprints and photographs you, then prints off what you assume is a pass that will speed you through immigration ahead of the hordes standing in line who either don't have modern passports that can be scanned or just couldn't be bothered to go through the procedure. How wrong we were - we still had to join the Disney-like lines and we were now behind the rest of the people who didn't get scanned! Grrr.

Meanwhile, Scott and Lucy were waiting patiently outside the airport to take us out to our resort in the desert. Memories of a previous trip to Palm Desert driving along the 12 lane freeways jammed solid with cars, flooded back, but fortunately it wasn't quite as bad on a Saturday evening as it had been previously when we hit the Friday afternoon commuter rush - and this time it was Scott driving thankfully.

Our first full day at the Marriott Desert Springs Villas was, understandably, a quiet one, with a bit of orientation and some rest. We thought that should be enough to recover from a bit of jet-lag - after all, we are seasoned travellers now, aren't we? - so we made plans for Monday trips. Monday morning came and Scott and Lucy were ready to get out and about early on, but I had to be woken just before 10 am - by my standards a long lie-in.

We managed to get going by 11 am but Lucy's plans for us to visit Cabot's Pueblo Museum were scuppered when we discovered it was closed on a Monday, so we diverted to plan B - a visit to the "world famous" Shields Date Farm:

It was pretty interesting actually - lots of samples of the many styles of dates and a pleasant desert garden walk:

The 24 oz date shakes went down well too.

The next plan was to visit Desert Distilling but we found it was only open at weekends. OK then - when in trouble, revert to brewpubs - we did two - Coachella Valley Brewing (CVB) and La Quinta Brewing - the latter being much better and it took us in to the heart of Palm Springs, which had a nice vibe to it, including a Stars Walk on the pavement.

Back at the resort, I took a dip in the pool - a nice quiet refuge and much needed as temperatures had soared to over 100 F today.

It was not quite so hot today (Tuesday) - low 90's - and Scott and I took the opportunity to play one of the resort's courses - and delightful it was too, with some lovely views of the high, still snow-capped mountains:

 Lucy and Jo spent most of the morning at the pool then came over and joined us for lunch and drinkies - nice!

Adelaide Daily Diary (8)

Wednesday 3rd April (cont'd)

We picked up Miller after school and he was proudly sporting his bunny ears which he'd worn to the school Easter Parade the day before:

Back to ours where Jo made fajitas for tea for us all - well, all except Kelly, who is practically vegan once more and munches away on salads most of the time.

Thursday 4th April

Asher had another bad night, even although the antibiotics seemed to have pretty much cleared up the infection he had picked up. He vomited in the middle of the night and poor Kelly and Chris got little sleep, so Kelly brought a slightly brighter Asher over to ours first thing in the morning. By now he certainly seemed well enough to go to Casa Bambini but Kelly left it up to us whether to take him there or not. In the end, we decided just to keep him with us all day - and he seemed fine.

We walked to Mitcham Square Mall with Asher in his pram. It was a hot day, hitting 33C, and by the time we got there we were all in need of refreshment. Jo elected to go back to Cafe Ambra so that we could have another of their delicious Portuguese tarts - pastel de nata - and we got coffees for us and a soft drink for Asher, but he was unwilling to sit for long and soon he was off, racing round the mall with Jo in hot pursuit. Eventually we got him back under a degree of control, completed our shopping (home made burgers for tea) and walked back to Grange Road.

Asher fell asleep on the return journey and we managed to get him in to our place without awakening him. He slept for a good couple of hours - no doubt making up for last night - up until it was time to go and get Miller from school, so we decided that I should go back to O'Halloran Hill on my own while Jo stayed with Asher.

I had a dip in the pool to cool down and Asher joined me for a while - although he refused to get fully submerged - the waist was as far as he was prepared to go. Miller had his second sleepover at ours.

This was the day that Kelly and Chris discovered their bid for the house in Old Noarlunga had been accepted. Now the hard work begins - their plan is, all being well, to move in at the end of May. Good luck to them - it'll be a big change and should bring a major improvement in their lifestyle.

Friday 5th April

Chris delivered Asher to ours and I again drove him to his work. We planned to meet up with him later and all go to the first day of the Tasting Australia food festival, but, first of all, once we were all ready, we walked round to the Bond and Lane Canteen cafe for refreshments.

Now, 3 weeks had gone by and still we hadn't even been once to my favourite Adelaide pub, the Wheatsheaf Hotel - "The Wheaty". We popped in for a very quick one - we had the boys with us - and then caught the tram in to the city centre to meet Chris at his office before heading round to Victoria Square for something to eat and drink, whilst the boys had great fun playing in the water fountains - especially Asher:

Chris' brother, Matt, joined us a little later on - unfortunately just a little too late for the family end of holiday shot:

We said our farewells to Chris, Matt, Miller and Asher and then Kelly drove us back to our place where Jo and I finished off the dregs of the remaining beer and wine.

Saturday 6th April

Kelly was bright and early picking us up and we were at the airport well before 9 am for our domestic flight to Brisbane. We "donated" to Kelly and Chris the two bottles of D'Aranberg wine that Jo and I had made up at the wine blending on our first weekend in Adelaide - we hadn't managed to find an evening for the planned blind tasting to decide whose blend was best - Jo's or mine - so we've left it to them to let us know. The wine was recommended to be consumed within a couple of months - perhaps Kelly and Chris can make it their house-warming?

So here we are sitting at Brisbane Airport with way too much time on our hands - our flight to LA was originally due to leave at about 5 pm local time, but it was put back to 8:30 pm, so we've had all afternoon - and a bit - to wait, not helped by the fact that Jo got up at 4 am this morning - she couldn't sleep - so we're both struggling a bit already - and we've still got over 4 hours before our plane leaves. Crossing the international date line for the first time will be interesting - it means we arrive in USA at a local time that's before our departure time from Oz!

So my next blog posting will be from Palm Desert, California. See ya.

Adelaide Daily Diary (7)

Monday 1st April

'Twas indeed a quiet day on Monday. Kelly had some work things to attend to and some mortgage matters too (looks like they're going to buy the house in Noarlunga that we viewed a couple of weeks ago) and then picked Jo and I up and drove us over to O'Halloran Hill and we all walked round to Braeview School to pick up Miller and then have tea at theirs.

Asher was back in his Batman outfit again:

and he put the bunny ears on Jo:

Tuesday 2nd April

Kelly's normal Tuesday off and she and Asher arrived at ours in time for us all to drive over to Morialta Conservation Park (https://www.parks.sa.gov.au/find-a-park/Browse_by_region/Adelaide_Hills/morialta-conservation-park). It's a lovely deep gorge with lots of nice walking trails and viewpoints. We had Asher in his pram so it was only the low level walk to the first waterfall that we could tackle. I say waterfall but I've never seen any water falling at any falls in all the times we've been in Australia. Even though it's early Autumn here just now, the falls are still completely dry. Hardly surprising really - South Australia is the driest state in the driest continent in the world. Here's some of the photos I took that morning:

On the way back we climbed up to the cave which Asher thought was pretty cool:

 

We still had time to go to the adjacent playpark which has some magnificent constructions for kids - Asher spent a lot of time in the Snake:

It was early release day for Miller and he had requested that we walk back from school again so we had to get our skates on to get back to Braeview School.

Being Tuesday it was swim time again - Miller's lessons, but we all get in the water at the S.A. Aquatic and Leisure Centre - an enormous place used by all ages and abilities, having several different pools and lanes. The noise in the area where Miller gets his lessons is unbelievable - not just the high-pitched voices of the kids but also the microphoned coach at the water aerobics. I spend at least half the time in the peace and tranquility of the Steam Room.

Wednesday 3rd April

With Chris and Kelly back at work, Jo and I had assumed we would probably go for a walk in the morning and do the shopping for the evening meal at ours before picking up the boys from their respective schools, but the plans were blown out of the water when Asher awoke to some pain in his nether regions and, on inspection, it required a trip to the hospital to check it out and get some antibiotic. Chris did the necessary and then brought Asher over to ours where he appears to have picked up quite a bit after his first dose of the medicine - he's back to being his usual cheeky self for now at least. To save some time, I drove Chris to his work as he had an important meeting at noon.

So time to go shopping now and then pick up Miller. Let's hope that Asher has his daily nap on the journey. Got to go now.

Adelaide Daily Diary (6)

Friday 29th March

It did rain in Westbourne Park where we stay, but, fortunately, O'Halloran Hill escaped the showers and Miller's school sports day went ahead as planned, although it was pretty cool by recent standards and there was a fair breeze blowing.

Jo and I spent the morning at ours looking after Asher before heading over to the school to watch the afternoon's events. David and Lorene were already there and we all watched Miller having fun in the Reception (new pupils) race:

Miller was pretty pleased with his 2nd place and the "Super Runner" sticker he got:

Once the sports were over we headed back to ours - Miller - and Kelly - was having his long-promised sleepover, but, first of all, TV suppers:

Saturday 30th March

This weekend we were travelling to the Riverland - specifically the town of Morgan on the shores of the Murray River where one of Kelly's friends was having a big birthday party. The journey was through the Barossa Valley and our first stop for lunch was at Whistler's Winery where there was a kids' playpark and we could get some pizzas for lunch:

That was about the halfway point. Further on as we entered the Riverland, there were Quarantine notices along the side of the road - fruit fly is the concern apparently and Chris, being the good citizen he is, dumped all the fruit he'd bought just this morning at a supermarket in Adelaide:

The house Kelly had rented for us all (through Air B'n'B) sat on the banks of the Murray river:

It looks better from outside than it did inside. It was described as a "pre-reno special" and certainly it was badly in need of some maintenance, let alone TLC. Still, it was only for one night.

Just after 5:30 pm, I drove Kelly and Chris along to the party and then headed back for the challenge of putting the boys to bed - the first time we'd done this ourselves. It got a little challenging at times - well Asher did anyway - but eventually we succeeded in time for me to head back to the party to pick up Chris and Kelly.

Sunday 31st March

After breakfast and packing our belongings, we drove down to the riverside playpark where daddy Chris seemed to be having the most fun:

Our halfway stop this time was at Nuriootpa. We lunched in the park after shopping in the lovely new Co-op there. Have you ever seen a pet rabbit on a leash before? Miller and Asher seemed to enjoy stroking it:

Chris then volunteered to take the boys home to allow Kelly to take Jo and I to a couple of wineries and/or breweries somewhere local. We were very close to Penfold's Barossa winery where we'd had a lovely time a few years back, so we decided to pop in there. We were surprised to find they have since added two new outlets - Stein's Taphouse (for beers) and the Barossa Distilling Co (for gins). It would have been rude not to try these new places so it was samplers of beer (5 of them) first of all, then wine (13 in all!) followed by gin (3).

Monday 1st April

I wonder why Jo and I feel shattered this morning? Kelly's off work and the original plan was for the 3 of us to go walking at Morialta Conservation Park, but Jo's decided she needs a down day, so it'll just be Kelly and I doing the walk. Best go and get showered now.