Hello, Friends…
So, as you probably figured out from previous postings, we spent Christmas away from home. So it was really quite considerate that Santa swung by the house the evening before we left. Grandma babe had come over, we’d had some food, and were enjoying some popcorn and a movie, when all of a sudden there were sleighbell sounds from the living room….
Which worked out really well. Everyone got to enjoy opening presents.
Then it was off to Los Angeles and the first stop of our Christmas trip. We had a rental car, and a reasonably nice hotel room just outside of Disneyland, so it was easy to walk to and from the park. We had a great time splitting our time between Disneyland and California Adventure. The crowds weren’t bad at all for the first two days, but on Christmas day and the 27th, it was pretty busy – still, we got our fair share of rides and rollercoasters. Daniel’s favorites – well, he couldn’t pick just one, but “Indiana Jones” and “California Screaming” were tops, and Rachel really, really loved “Big Thunder Mountain” and “Splash Mountain”. The new “Cars” land and in particular the ride are very, very well done –> all in all, we had a fantastic time.
After three days of back-to-back park visits, we decided to take a “down day” and do a little sightseeing in LA. We started with the La Brea tar pits, which was surprisingly entertaining to everyone (that’s a giant sloth behind Rachel), and then on to the beach after a stop at the La Brea bakery. The beach was cold and windy, so even though the kids REALLY wanted to play in the sand, it was fairly short-lived.
Back to the parks for one final, fourth day of re-doing all of our favorites, and then on to Palm Springs that evening. Nothing special about PS, just that it got us out of LA, and going in the right direction. Seemed like a nice enough place, but we skedaddled out of there in the morning, and spent a good portion of the day at Joshua Tree National Park.
Now, to be fair – I didn’t really even know what a Joshua Tree was, but it’s these funky Yucca-plant-like Dr. Seussical trees. Pretty neat. Also, lots of cacti, rock climbing and a pretty stunning desert view of the Colorado and Navajo deserts. Well worth it. We spent more time than anticipated, then drove state highways from there to Prescott, AZ.
In Prescott, we’d sneakily arranged for Daniel’s friend Brody to come meet us at the hotel, since he was there visiting his grandparents for Christmas. It was a fun surprise and we spent the evening hanging at the pool.
Onward towards the Grand Canyon, we stopped at the roadside attraction of “Bearizona”, about 50 miles outside the park. This was something new for us –a Jurassic-park-style, “Drive-through zoo”, where there were bears, wolves, bison, various deer and sheep and some other animals wandering around. This was surprisingly fun. Really quite enjoyable.
No vacation is complete without souvenirs, and thanks to spending money as Christmas presents, both Daniel and Rachel were able to decide for themselves what they wanted (which worked out really well for the adults too). It turns out that Daniel is a bit more conservative with his money, while Rachel will buy some thing if she sees things that she likes. At Bearizona, Daniel got a scorpion and Rachel a stuffed wolf.
The Grand Canyon is – well – Grand… Even Daniel could be caught going “wow” under his breath. It was, however, also *cold* and because of snowfall, a lot of the roads – even on the south rim – were closed. So we stayed at the park overnight, saw as much as we could along the top of the rid. Eric hiked a little bit down a path into the canyon, but it was too steep/slippery to be a good idea for the kids to join on that.
It’s certainly beautiful there in the winter as well – just have to be prepared for the cold (which we were only barely ready for), and the kids will have to be older/taller/stronger before we can do any meaningful hiking there, but we’ll go back sometime in the future.
And, finally – on to Las Vegas. We drove a while on US66, for the fun of it, but it was actually less interesting than the roads in CA had been. Then passed the Hoover Dam on our way. It was crowded, and the tours were full for the day, so all we were really able to do was walk across it and go “ooh”.
And finally-finally, we decided to swing by the Las Vegas strip before going to the airport. It – worked out OK. Even though Vegas supposedly has gotten “kid-friendlier” – there’s not much to do, and a world of adult behavior that I’m glad I didn’t get called on to explain – even at 10am. Still, the Jelly bean statue impressed, as did the M&M store, and they did think it was sort of cool to see a pyramid, new york and the eiffel tower all in one day. Still, I was glad when we were out of downtown.
Flight home went great. Got home with a few hours left of 2012 and all agreed that it had been a fun trip.
Happy New Year, everyone.
Love, ADRE.
This is just an oversight, of course – we went up to the mountains last weekend and stayed at the YMCA Snow Mountain Ranch for a couple of nights – went to Granby Ranch/Sol Vista for the first ski weekend of the season. And – it was pretty good – Daniel got right back into skiing, and Rachel took a couple of runs to warm up to the fact that the only run that was open was a blue. 
