The travel so far has been all pre – RV!
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| Day 1 in America |
The first day of the tour – the arrival of the family –
involved a brief trip around the LAX area. Specifically we aimed at beach areas
but pretty soon we gave in to jet lag and went to the hotel for afternoon
siestas.
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| Megan and Thomas overlooking the coast |
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| Gary and Millie |
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| Griffith Observatory |
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| LA View |
The following day involved the necessary visit to Hollywood
strip plus a splurge on a Hollywood tour which involved some stalking of
celebs.
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| Our US vehicle |
We re located to a site north and west of the main city and
from here launched a two day assault on Universal Studios. It was quite good –
Americans do these things well. Harry Potter World and the ride therein was,
also, quite good. Millie liked it a lot as did Matt. Tom did too!
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| Krusty and fans |
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| Megan and Tom |
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| Lunch Day 2 - Simpsons Pizza |
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| a monster and Frankenstein |
One day would have been enough for me however we had spent the
money and day 2 began at Universal Studios. Thankfully perhaps there were more
crowds in on the second day and therefore the line ups were more tedious than
the day before so by about 2pm our kids were over it so we headed towards the
hills.
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| The Chapel at Paramount Ranch - created for the Westworld TV series |
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| Westworld street? |
Our final pre RV day had us visit another movie related
site; Paramount Ranch. A variety of movies and TV shows had been filmed there
over the years including the latest hit show; Westworld. For me there was a
decent variety of common birds including Acorn and Nuttel’s Woodpeckers,
Californian Towhee, House Wren, Allen’s Hummingbird, Western Bluebird, Nuttal’s
Kingbird, American Kestrel, Song Sparrow, Oak Titmouse, Say’s Phoebe, American
Crow, Common Raven and Mourning Dove. Other fauna included a feral Parrot
species; plus Californian Ground Squirrel plus, most
excitedly my first Rattlesnake, probably a sub species of the Western Rattlesnake - Southern Pacific Rattlesnake [Crotalus oreganus helleri] .
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| American Kestrel |
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| Say's Phoebe |
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| Western Rattlesnake |
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| Western Rattlesnake |
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| Do you like your rattle? |
The rest of the shortened day meant a drive around to the coast at Malibu before heading back to Inglewood near LAX.
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| Californian Coast |
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| beach houses! |
Have just read from top to bottom Ken; what a wonderful blog, I almost feel as if I was there with you all. I absolutely loved the pic of Tom with a wide smile too and happy to see Megan is looking really well and healthy. xx
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