Signal Hill

Had a great flight from Oz, left a little late but made up time on the flight and actually landed about ten minutes early.
Flying Qantas was great as usual with really good meals and free drink, but of course I was driving upon landing in LA so had to be careful. Took in 3 movies and one was an absolute screamer.
The movie Olympus Has Fallen was absolutely amazing, and a real eye opener as to the security of the Whitehouse. We'll see it happen for real now as movies tend to create a scenario that eventually happens in real life, yeah?
Now, when we travel we always expect a few things to go wrong and today was no exception. Got to homeland security border control and Bec had a document missing that she needed to enter the country as a Student, an I20, but apparently it was torn out when she left there last time. Fortunately the guy was very pleasant and we sweet talked our way through and got in, would have been a long trip back home.
Drama then continued when Sue suddenly remembers she left some medication on the aircraft that needed to be kept in the refrigerator. Race back to one of the information volunteers who kindly took off back to the aircraft and managed to collect the package before everyone had left the aircraft, talk about lucky.
So now into a cab to get out to Santa Fe Springs to collect the RV, nice driver, polite, courteous, well kept, but virtually no English so we had to show him the address so he could type it into his GPS and off we went. Luckily we headed in the opposite direction to the traffic as it was horrendous, bumper to bumper on the freeways to miles and miles. Wouldn't want to be doing that trek every day for work, so true what they say about the LA traffic.
We arrived at El Monte RV around 8:30 which was perfect timing for a good early getaway, or so we thought. After doing the paperwork, watching the induction video, we headed back out to do orientation of the vehicle only to be informed that there was a problem with a tear in one of the seats and the upholsterer was onto it and should be no more that 45 minutes, I figured he must be a damn good upholsterer to do it that fast. Sure enough I was right, 2 hours and 15 mins later we finally hopped aboard and departed the depot. Leaving at 12:15 after having pre-paid a early departure fee seemed rather pointless.
So, we hit the road and headed East.
The smog was atrocious, a dark grey haze that covered the entire city, wasn't until we got right out through Riverside and headed towards Palm Springs. The desert.Read more