The scenery was certainly taking on a different appearance now – we had left the coast behind us and were heading into the desert. We were met with long straight highways through rocky plains, along with plenty of scrub and rocky mountains. We arrived in Twenty Nine Palms – a small town just outside Joshua National Park, and pulled up to our hotel. The reception was decked out as a Western-style hotel but our accommodation was a lovely self contained unit complete with a dog turd under the bed (quickly dealt with) and an organ piano – Moose was in heaven and played it every opportunity he got. We dropped off our things at the hotel and headed straight for the park for a quick visit before the sun went down. We bought an annual pass at the entrance which then allowed us free entry into a number of other national parks – including the Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce – all of which would come in useful over the next few weeks. But for now, back to the hotel for dinner.
In the morning we headed back to the park in search of the Cholla Cactus Garden walking trail. After the 30 minute drive there, we didn’t make it out of the carpark before Moose got a splinter on the wooden hand rail. Despite our best efforts with the first aid kit in the car, we couldn’t get it out and so turned around and went back to the hotel. It came out easily with a proper pair of tweezers and some well timed distraction. Here was when the weather stopped going our way….a dust storm blew in with strong winds and very poor visibility. That ruled out going back to the park that day and we hunkered down in the hotel….where the power went out…
Before and during the sandstorm, taken from the end of our street.
The next morning the power had returned and the storm had cleared so we headed back to the park. This time we were in search of Arch Rock trail. After some dubious signage and a false start in the wrong direction, we found Arch Rock and were blown away by the rock formations. Moose was really excited and did a fantastic job climbing and jumping around on the rocks. After Arch Rock we hopped back in the car and headed on to Skull Rock, for some more climbing. After this we raced down to Keys View lookout before the sun went down. We arrived, dealt with an impressive nappy blowout, then rugged up and braved the 5 degree, windy weather to get some photos then retreat back to the warmth of the car to defrost our fingers and head back to the hotel.
The next morning we set off to Phoenix
to meet up with Seb’s dad who would be joining us for the next two
weeks of our trip.
We had varying expectations for LA after accounts from others of it being little more than a big dirty city. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. We stayed in Venice Beach, and while the apartment we were in was larger only than our hotel room in New York, but at twice the price per square foot, the location was spot on. We were one block from the beach and spent a day walking along the Venice Boardwalk in the sunshine, past all the touristy shops and stalls, beachside skate parks, beach volleyball courts and outdoor gyms. I headed one way down the boardwalk and walked all the way to Santa Monica pier, while Seb and the boys walked the other way and were entertained by a silent disco on the beach.
Another highlight was walking through the Venice Canals, just a few blocks from our AirBnb. The houses there were very impressive, and although the canals themselves don’t go anywhere, it certainly felt like a sanctuary from the surrounding hustle and bustle. We also managed to find a lovely cafe a couple of blocks away that did great coffee….owned by Australians of course.
For our other day we headed into Hollywood, walked along the walk of fame and snapped some photos of the Hollywood sign. (An overall terrible experience with streets lined with crap souvenir shops -Seb)
Next, we headed east towards Joshua
Tree National Park.
Santa Barbara was another nice little stop off on the way down to LA. The main highlight here was the MOXI Children’s Museum – another museum we got free entry into courtesy of the reciprocal membership from the Montreal Science Museum. I have to say it is an absolutely wonderful museum and Moose had a ball. There are lots of interactive exhibits based around sounds, light and physical movement. Moose’s favourite part was building and re-building a car and sending it down a race track to see how he could make it go as fast as possible. We finished off on the rooftop looking through infrared binoculars at the traffic and train going past below, and even managed to catch the sunset.
San Simeon is a small coastal town just south of Big Sur State Park. We stayed in a Motel 6 which was nothing to write home about but far from the worst place we’ve stayed (we’re still debating about which place that was…). The main attraction in this little town is the light house, so we went along and had a lovely tour of the little patch of state park that it sits on and learnt about the local wildlife and the history of the lighthouse itself.
It was also Ollie’s first birthday, so to celebrate we treated ourselves to dinner at a nice restaurant where both children refused to eat most of what we’d ordered, so Seb and I hurriedly ate our meals and we retreated to out motel before the kids got too disruptive. We sat around the eski (cooler/chilli bin) to sing happy birthday to our little man, whose best effort at blowing out his candle was to try to burn himself on the flame and then spit at it. He did it with a big grin on his beautiful happy face though and that’s all that mattered.
After spending the last two months in
the eastern United States, we repacked all our bags, dug out our
winter gear, bid farewell to the Chrysler van and set off on a plane
(or rather, two) for California. First stop on the west coast was San
Francisco and after landing in the evening, we picked up our new
Dodge minivan (the cheaper-in-every-way version of the sweet ride
we’d had on the east coast) and headed off to our AirBnb and bundled
ourselves into bed.
The following day we took the train to the Embarcadero area. We stopped to grab a coffee – Seb was very excited to buy his coffee from a street stall that had a robot that made your coffee. Turns out a coffee machine makes your coffee then a robot arm picks up the cup and hands it to you. Quite entertaining to watch but unfortunately tasted like garbage. Nevertheless we continued to wander around downtown and walked along the waterfront, past the piers to Fisherman’s Wharf. The Wharf was very touristy but entertaining for the kids and we found a carousel for Moose to ride and then went to see the sea lions at pier 39.
The next day we went to Golden Gate Park – we came across an amateur game of baseball then found a playground for the kids to wear themselves out on. On the way home we visited the Golden Gate Bridge for a few photos.
Monday was time to leave and start driving down the coast towards LA, but not before we forgot one of our bags at the AirBnb and had to turn back to retrieve it. Second time lucky and we were back on the road. We took the coastal highway and enjoyed the stunning views through Big Sur and of the pacific on our drive down to San Simeon – the coast and the landscape reminded us a lot of the South Australian coast.
We’d been looking forward to visiting New Orleans for a while – we’d both heard about the culture, the food, the music and we were excited! We arrived around lunch time and had time to kill before checking into our next Airbnb, so we decided to go to Storyland in City Park. City Park in New Orleans is enormous – bigger than Central Park in NYC. It has a couple of golf courses, two stadiums, lakes, a forest, a community produce garden, an amusement park and Storyland. Unfortunately the amusement park was closed, but Storyland was great. It’s an outdoor area with giant sculptures of characters and scenes from children’s book that you can walk around, climb on and interact with – there was Alice in Wonderland, the Three Little Pigs, Snow White and lots more.
When it was time to check in we hopped back in the car and made our way to the Airbnb, only to arrive to find the front door open….Hmmm….Turns out the owner was inside with a plumber doing some repairs so we had no running water. Not a great start… So we dropped off our bags and went to a playground across the road. Still no running water when we got back to the house so we decided to have dinner out. We got back an hour or so later and thankfully had running water. Unfortunately we also had a leaking toilet….Fortunately it wasn’t a major leak and was still usable, but the plumber was due to come back the following day to fix said leak.
The next morning we went to Audobon Zoo. It was the first zoo of our trip since crossing the border into America and it did not disappoint. As we were there fairly early in the morning a lot of the animals were active and we could see them moving around their generally spacious enclosures. We got good views of the lions, giraffes, rhino, zebras and gorillas. My favourite were the flamingos who actually make a sound like a goose!
That afternoon we went on a swamp tour. I have to admit I was not initially keen on this as when I think of a swamp I think of dirty, stagnant, smelly water. But I was proven completely wrong and it was absolutely beautiful. It reminded me of the Yellow River Cruise in Kakadu, NT that we did a couple of years ago. We cruised through the bayou in Jean Lafitte National Park and saw alligators, egrets, deer, a racoon and little river shacks. The tour guide was very entertaining and had a wealth of knowledge about the local area, information about the wildlife, and even had a 3 year old alligator stashed away that he brought out at the end of the tour for us to hold. Moose was very excited! It was a wonderful tour that I would highly recommend. After the swamp tour we headed down town to have a look around and had a great time wandering through the narrow streets, seeing street performers in Jackson Square and hearing jazz music from every pub and bar that we passed. It had a very European feel (not surprising given its French and Spanish past) and was also quite touristy. I had been advised to try a beignet, which is a fried dough/pastry treat that is doused in powdered sugar and is a New Orleans specialty – it exceeded all expectations and was totally delicious! I vowed to have one every day until we left. We wandered around some more and then had dinner at Gumbo Shoppe – gumbo is another New Orleans specialty and is a type of stew, also delicious! After that we headed home….. to a still leaking toilet…
Day three and we decided that cruises were our thing so we went on the Creole Queen Paddleboat cruise along the Mississippi River. But not before scoring another beignet. This was a historical cruise with another very entertaining local providing commentary and an account of NOLA’s French, then Spanish, then French, then American history. The cruise took us to the Chalmette Battlefield where we disembarked and learnt about the Battle of New Orleans, before hopping back on the boat to head back downtown. The return journey was quite incredible as we heard a detailed account of Hurricane Katrina, its devastation upon the city and its people, the strategic and bureaucratic difficulties in securing aid and then the recovery and revitalisation of the city.
We had lunch at a restaurant with a live jazz band which the kids thought was great and had some catfish (you guessed it – a New Orleans specialty), then did some more wandering down town through the French Market, Frenchmen Street (which has some funky bars and jazz clubs) and Bourbon Street (which is more debaucherous and touristy). We headed back home for dinner and were greatly relieved to have a properly functioning toilet.
Our final full day in New Orleans was wet and stormy so we went to the Butterfly Garden and Insectarium. Although I’m not a huge fan of creepy crawly things it was actually very interesting to see and learn about a lot of different bugs and Moose really got into it. My favourite part was the butterfly garden where there are beautiful butterflies of all different colours and sizes flying around you as you walk through. One landed on Moose which he didn’t really like. One landed on Ollie and was lucky to escape with its life! At the end we went to the museum cafe and could try some edible insects – Moose didn’t bat an eyelid as he downed a deep fried cricket and then a choc chip cricket cookie. All he could say was “I’m still hungry!”
My fantastic idea for the afternoon was to go to a particular bar called Pat O’Brien’s that I had heard was famous for its dueling pianos. I had imagined it being really entertaining and thought we would all have a blast. Turns out dragging the entire family through the rain to the courtyard of a bar that is almost washed out and that doesn’t allow anyone under the age of 21 anyway just results in tired, wet children and no-one has fun. So as we sat undercover on the patio of the bar instead, and Ollie slept in his pram and Moose slept on my lap, Seb and I tried to salvage the afternoon by having a cocktail and sharing a huge piece of chocolate cake. It kind of worked until we then had to walk through the rain again to get back to the car to get home. All in all the afternoon was a write-off but I think they’ve all forgiven me now!
The following morning was still a bit wet and dreary, but luckily, we were off to Florida and its white sandy beaches – but not before stopping for a final beignet on the way out of New Orleans!
We arrived in Jackson, Mississippi before check-in time for our Airbnb, so we took advantage of the sunny (and humid) weather and spent some time at LeFleur’s Bluff State Park. The kids had a run around on the playground and Seb got some great pictures of the wildlife, in particular some beautiful bird life. We also convinced ourselves we saw an alligator or two pop its head up above the water but of course didn’t manage to get photographic evidence. Our Airbnb was a lovely house very close to LeFleur’s, some cafes and, more importantly, a bbq restaurant right across the road called “Pig and Pint”.
The following day was mostly raining so we had a slow morning then went to the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science – Moose loved looking at the dinosaur skeletons and fossils and then got to meet and touch a tortoise and an alligator. That evening we took advantage of the Pig and Pint for dinner.
The next morning we packed up and left for New Orleans.
