I'm a true American now and I went all out for thanksgiving. Thought I'd let the kids have a taste of America. I was a bit scared of pre packaged things, after many bad experiences and ended up quite enjoying making stuffing, pumpkin pie (even the pastry), cranberry sauce and other things from scratch. I'm very proud of myself! The turkey was massive. The drumsticks were nearly the size of a whole chicken - check it out...
And in the forground is our veritable mountain of turkey. Turns out thanksgiving is about the help that the Indians gave the pilgrims with food, because they were all dying of starvation. Which is lovely, but I can't help thinking about how the pilgrims then went and stole all their land and waged war on the Indians. I wonder what the Indians think of thanksgiving day. Anyway, we enjoyed it.
We went to Knotts Berry Farm on Monday, which is another HUGE amusement park. There were some killer rollercoasters there. One of them left a massive bruise on my arm where I had braced myself against the side of the wagon. This is a photo I pulled of the internet because none of mine worked out.
It was totally rough, and bumped around all over the place and went at 55 miles per hour in some places, which is 88 km per hour. It was so shocking to the system that my brain froze and I couldn't even think to be scared. We went on a bunch of other rides, paid $70 US for a very dodgy lunch and that was about it.
The Le Brea tar pits were something totally different, however. Smack bang in the middle of LA are these tar pits. Huge black masses of ashphalt , suplhur bubbling up to the top like wind in the bath. It was in this ashphalt that wooly mammoths, sabre tooth cats, dire wolfs, bears and American lions found themselves stuck more than 40,000 years ago. The tar preserved the bones, and there was a huge museum stocked with the rebuilt animals. Very fascinating. The most amazing thing was all this tar seeping out of the ground. I forgot to bring my camera, I got these photos off the net aswell (I'm beginning to think I don't need my camera, I'll just get all my photo keepsakes of the net).
There was a huge lake of tar, and then there were places where it just bubbled up from the ground...
A homeschool family told me that theres quite a lot of it in LA, and that sometimes after going to the beach they would come home with tar stuck to the bottom of their feet.Anyway, we're out of here (Hunting Beach in LA) on Saturday the 6th and then we're off to San Francisco. Paul has to go to Texas in between, so I though I'd take the kids for a trip to Yosemite national PArk.
Cheers, From Nicole
2 comments:
I cannot believe the size of the turkey - Lindsay looks like he's weilding a small bat!!! Always wondered what the deal was with thanksgiving, seems like they should be doing a lot of thanking & apologising for what they were given and then for their theft. Well done with cooking such a magnificent dinner, how long did it take to cook the turkey... a week?
It was so lovely to meet you and your wonderful children. I'm glad we got to be a small part of your adventure. Good luck with everything and I'll add you to our blog list so we can keep in touch.
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