Our hosts took us to the local zoo called The Living Desert in Palm Desert, California.
At the entrance,we stopped to find a letterbox. Letterboxing is a hobby of theirs.
You register at this site
http://www.atlasquest.com/ and find clues to boxes hidden all over the world.
Inside box you find a stamp and a book.
You put your own "signature" stamp in that book and you stamp your book with the stamp you found. It was fun!
Inside the zoo, we found lots of native desert animals like this King Snake and Burrowing Owl.
We found maps and information about what makes a desert. It isn't always hot in the desert, it's mostly dry!
We also checked out the "Discovery Center" for kids. We had our picture taken with a coyote picture and a real skeleton of a rattlesnake.
There was a very nice mural of the desert valley.
And an working example of natural cooling.
Hot air moving across wet pads is very refreshing when it's 110F outside! Don't worry, it was only 70F degrees today.
On the way back home, we stopped for ice cream at McDonald's!
We arrived in safely in Orange County, California on Saturday afternoon, just in time for pizza.
That evening, we got to attend a band practice. It was very loud for us.On Monday, we were treated to a movie. The movie was called Megamind in 3 d. We also sampled a bit of popcorn.Today, we got to accompany the family's children to various activities. 
Including Girl Scouts and Lego club. 
We felt very at home at Lego club. They even let us play with some.
We have heard a rumor that this house has many friends for us. 
And we hope to get to play with them soon.
We went to Joshua Tree National Park to do some rock climbing! We stopped at Hemmingway Buttress.
There were plenty of rocks.
This is us in front of the Hemmingway Buttress. Lots of rock climbers come here from all over the world because of the deep cracks and projecting rocks. It makes for some great climbing.
We saw more of those crazy Joshua Trees! There were lots of other plants growing right out of the cracks in the rocks.
There was a man climbing right up the face of these rocks! It was fun to sit and watch.
We had a nice picnic lunch up on the rocks. It was a beautiful sunny day and not too cold or too hot.
There was a sign that showed how these rocks were formed and why there are so many of them here.
We went to a Cub Scout meeting with one of the children of our hosts! We played marbles with them and then all the boys wanted to have their picture taken with us.
One of the boys is taking lessons on how to play the Electric Bass Guitar so we tagged along for the tunes.
Baseball season is just getting started here, so we spent a Saturday morning at the ball park watching Try-Outs.
After practice, we all went to Denny's for pancakes and eggs!
The Pacific Ocean is only 100 miles away, so the family took us along for a day at the beach. We went to Laguna Beach, lots of movies are filmed here and I bet you can guess why! It was quite a different scene from the desert where our host live.
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It is the home of the worlds biggest free standing boulder! Well, it was until a piece fell off in 2000 and made it the second biggest. We climbed some rocks and took a picture from high above the rock. 
You can see for miles up there.
There are lots of stories about aliens landing here and there was a man that carved out a place to live under the rock. 
On the way back, we stopped and took a picture of the Integretron. 
The same man built it because aliens told him it was a way to heal people through sound. 
There are some pretty crazy places out here, but it sure is peaceful!
Feeding the chickens was exciting and a little dangerous for us!
We liked walking around the garden and seeing the crazy Joshua Trees. 
They are found no where else in the United States but here. And they aren't really trees but a giant spiny flower! 
We hung out with a tortoise in the rock garden and found some very neat looking cacti.
The high temperature today was 45F.