Palos Verdes and Channel Islands

The boat trip to the Channel Islands takes about an hour. We saw one whale but on the way back there were "mega pods" of dolphins that followed us. There were about a hundred of these little fellows all around the boat who came up to say, "Hello, humans, welcome!" It was an amazing experience and makes me think a different way about our relationship with the animal kingdom. This is as close as we got to the traditional photo of the arch at the Channel Islands that you see in all the brochures. We did not visit the Island near the arch. During the winter the trips are limited and the only Island available to us was Santa Cruz. We had a lovely hike there, though and enjoyed it very much. I am working on my scrapbook now and plan to scan it for a slideshow when I finish it.

Here we are on the Palos Verdes pennisula that we could see from our hotel balcony. You are looking at Redondo beach with Los Angeles in the background. We drove over there one evening and arrived just in time for sunset and enjoyed a walk along the ocean across from some of the million dollar homes there.

Basil got the Palos Verdes sunset with a boat and a helicopter!

South Coast Botanic Garden

This is a very old botanical garden built on a landfill . It was beautiful and we spent a very enjoyable afternoon there. I was amazed to see everything green and blooming in January.
The Lake
Wait for me!

California Poppy

Japanese Plum TreePlum Tree Blossom

Calla Lilly

Reminders of home

The Bottle brush Tree was about 3 times as large as the ones we saw in Florida.

The Mall

One of the scariest things I did in Los Angeles was drive to the mall by myself. It was only 4.5 miles (and I had a GPS) and I had no problems. Well, I did circle the parking garage a couple of times before I found the way out, and someone honked at me. (Everyone honks in California) I also turned on the wrong street once, but it was a nice detour in a residential neighborhood and a I had no problem getting back to the street I was supposed to be on. I was also worried that I was going to have to park in a garage at the mall, but it was a normal parking lot, just like ours! There are lots of hills in Los Angeles and sometimes you have to stop at a red light on a steep incline. It was a very pretty mall with 3 levels, but not all that big. One of the larger stores, Mervyns had closed two weeks before.

I bought Middle Eastern food from the food court to take back to the hotel for lunch. The guy I bought it from, Isaac, was from Israel. I said "Shalom, God bless you!" and he said, "You like Israel? You Christian?" with a big smile.

It was a very enjoyable trip for me and Basil enjoyed the rest and was pleased I didn't have a fit because he was too tired to drive to San Diego.

Our Trip to Los Angeles

This is the first photo I took driving down a street near the airport. The palm trees are taller than in Florida and don't have as much shaggy dead limbs at the bottom. The entrance to the city of Redondo Beach.

Here is our hotel with a view of the ocean. I searched really hard for it and got a good price and it was really nice, but we didn't know about parking in Los Angeles. There is no such thing as free parking. Parking at this hotel is $18 a night in a parking garage with attendants. The first night we got valet parking (that is extra, of course) and a young man opened the door for us and helped us with our luggage and parked the car for us. The next morning, we called and they brought it to the front driveway and opened the doors for us again. I may have pretended I was rich and famous for a minute there.

The lobby of the hotel.

The aquarium in the lobby.Here, we are sitting in the lobby with the pastors of Vision International Minisries. They were very welcoming and friendly as were their church members. She is tall, beautiful, glamy and the proud mother of seven. He has a tremendous vocabulary and speaks very eloquently but he also has a very playful and fun side to his personality that is very engaging and refreshing. She is from Uganda. He is from Ghana and they met in London. They go on missions trips to Africa regularly. Here is their website where you can see more photos and hear some of their worship and praise time which was my favorite, ever:

http://www.visionintlm.com/

I didn't listen very well in world history classes and was interested to learn from him that all of Africa was in European hands except Liberia and Ethiopia in 1914. Here's a little history break:

• Europeans began to transport African slaves across the Atlantic in the 16th century. However slavery was nothing new in Africa. For centuries Africans had sold other Africans to the Arabs as slaves.

• In the 18th century ships from Britain took manufactured goods to Africa, returned to the West Indies with slaves and took sugar back to Britain. This was called the Triangular Trade. (Many other European countries were involved in the slave trade).

• Some Africans were sold into slavery because they had committed a crime. However many slaves were captured in raids by other Africans. Europeans were not allowed to travel inland to find slaves. Instead Africans brought slaves to the coast. The slave trade would have been impossible without the co-operation of Africans, many of whom grew rich on the slave trade.

• In the early 20th century attitudes to imperialism began to change in Europe and as missionaries provided schools and increasing numbers of Africans became educated they became impatient for independence. The movement for African independence became unstoppable and in the late 1950s and 1960s most African countries became independent.

• Yet the newly independent states were often failures. Many suffered civil wars and brutal dictators like Idi Amin.

• Today most of Africa remains very poor. One reason is corruption on a massive scale. Many African rulers bled their countries dry and made themselves very rich. Another reason is gross economic mismanagement. In the 1970s Socialist policies proved disastrous in countries like Zambia and Tanzania while in the 2000s Robert Mugabe wrecked the Zimbabwean economy.
  Africa also is suffering severely from the AIDS pandemic.

• Hey, do you think I would have made a good homeschooling mom?

We really enjoyed the balcony.

The view See that peninsula in the background? That is Palos Verde. I didn't know that when I took this photo, but we went over there another day and I will show you some of those photos later. It is a very nice community. It was sunset on our balcony when we arrived at the hotel. It was pink with the blue ocean below. I'm not sure I have seen a sunset so pink before.

Channel Islands National Park

We are home from a week in Los Angeles and still have not unpacked or gone to the grocery store. We had a wonderful time and I will just post one quick photo of us on in the Channel Islands before I start my chores this morning.


Channel Islands National Park consists of five of the eight Channel Islands that span 160 miles off the coast of southern California. We discovered many people who live here have never heard of the Channel Islands even though one of them is Catalina Island.(Catalina is commercialized and not part of the national park) A one hour ocean trip is required to get there and it is one of the least visited of all of America’s national parks. Here is their website if you want to learn more. They have a web cam and you can watch the first baby bald eagle to be born there for many years.

http://www.nps.gov/chis/index.htm