Driving Home Day 2

We watched the forecast and decided to leave Wichita Falls last night. The first 3 hours were smooth sailing. Then it started to lightning. Then it started to rain. Thankfully the wind wasn't as bad as driving through Texas yesterday.  We are 2 hours from St. Louis. Jon slept at the park last night and the kids have slept a lot of this drive. I have been in and out of sleep. We had a couple of crazy lightning strikes that were scary close. But other than that, Jon has been driving like a man on a mission.

The kids miss Izzy. We all miss Izzy. We also are looking forward to seeing everyone and taking a break for a few days before getting back on the road. Looking forward to breakfast in the nearer future.

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Driving home-Day 1-Trip summary so far

As we drive along, I am enjoying thinking of all the great things we have seen and done. 

I asked the kids what their favorite parts of the trip were.

Justin--#1--Anaheim-Disneyland--Cars Land and Incredicoaster--He loved all of Cars Land and that was what got this trip started. "Mommy, can we go to Cars Land?"

#2--Cubs/Dodgers game.

#3--Grand Canyon National Park

Favorite food--Dodger Dogs

Jackson--#1--Disneyland--Splash Mountain and Radiator Springs Racers

#2-Cubs/Dodgers

#3-Palo Duro Canyon Jeep Ride/Pacific Ocean

No favorite food. He liked it all.

Sarah--#1-Disneyland--Splash Mountain and Incredicoaster and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

#2--Cubs/Dodgers Game

#3--Carlsbad Caverns National Park--Bats and Cave

Favorite Food--Big Texan Steak Quesadilla (She also ate a jalapeno pepper but it was NOT her favorite)

Jon--#1--Big Texan Restaurant

#2--Cubs/Dodgers Game

#3--Carlsbad Caverns National Park-Bat Flight

Favorite Food--He loved his Ribeye Steak at the Big Texan.

Rachel--#1--Disneyland--Snow White's Scary Adventures,  Mr. Toad's Wild Ride,  Cars Land, Pixar Pier--Loved all of Disney!! Loved especially how easy it was to get in and out and park hop! 

#2--Cubs/Dodgers Game

#3--Carlsbad Caverns and Petrified National Forest and Train ride to Grand Canyon

Favorite Food--Steak at Big Texan

We saw so much!  It is hard to find a favorite.

National Parks--

Alibates Flint Quarries-Texas

Petrified National Forest-Arizona

Grand Canyon National Park-Arizona

Organ Mountain National Monument-Las Cruces, New Mexico

White Sands National Monument-New Mexico

Carlsbad Caverns National Park-New Mexico

Excursions--Palo Duro Canyon Jeep Tour--Texas

The Blue Hole Natural Spring--Santa Rosa, New Mexico

Train Ride to the Grand Canyon--Arizona

Disneyland Park--Anaheim, California

Disneyland California Adventures, Anaheim, California

The Pacific Ocean--Sunset Beach, California and Huntington Beach, California

Cubs/Dodgers Game--Los Angeles,  California

Disney--I kind of wish we had done 3 days. But that really wasn't necessary. We saw and did almost everything we wanted to do in those 2 days. If anyone does Disneyland, I highly recommend paying for the Max Pass and the Park Hopper. Yes it is a price increase but it was well worth it!   We were very lucky that when we went, Star Wars Land didn't actually impact our trip. I thought for sure it would because I figured the crowds would be crazy. But because you actually had to have a separate reservation for Star Wars or you had to be staying on Disney property (which is out of this world expensive becaus because they only have 3 hotels), people just decided not to come until they open it up to the public. So that actually worked in our favor. Also we bought our tickets the night before on my phone which helped with our finances because it happened to be the first day of my new credit card cycle (yeah!).  But I might recommend buying them at least 24 hours ahead of time maybe not just 18 hours ahead. When we got them it said it would take 24 hours to see the tickets. This worried me for a minute. Then they were there. Right on the app. So no worries about that.

We also paid to park daily in the Disneyland parking garage. This was very convenient and not terribly expensive. It was $25/day but the convenience was worth it. We could have taken the shuttle from our park for $3/day but it didn't run exactly on Disney hours. We could have also Lyfted, probably for cheaper or for just as much, but it really was fine. I stopped drinking Starbucks and shopping for months to help save for this trip. So I was able to pay for Disney and Dodgers/Cubs out of that savings!

Restaurants--Big Texan Restaurant--Amarillo, Texas

50's Diner-Canyon, Texas

In-N-Out Burger-Arizona

Disneyland Restaurants--The Golden Horseshoe and Galactic Grill--I did not do my restaurant research for Disneyland. I was somewhat disappointed in myself for not being more prepared for this part of the trip. But it was nice to just go with the flow, and I had Disney Rewards Dollars to pay for the food inside the park. That was fantastic.

Hooters--Anaheim, California--Yes we ate at Hooters.

All You Can Eat Tickets at Dodger Game--Dodger Dogs were delicious!

Donuts Plus--Orange, California

Blakes-What-a-Burger--New Mexico

Pizza Inn-Carlsbad, New Mexico

We ate at McDonald's once (so far) in Oklahoma on the way.

We made several Walmart stops and ate a lot of food "at home." Many of the RV parks we stayed at had community grills we took advantage of instead of grilling at our sites.  So we would grill there and take it back, or like in Needles, we grilled and ate right by the pool. We ate chicken, pork, steak, hot dogs, hamburgers, tacos, lots and lots of ham and turkey and salami sandwiches. We are kind of sick of sandwiches.

We figured out how to use the oven so now we can even bake cookies or make pizza. We used the air fryer a lot and made tater tots, fries and wings at several spots.

Jon and I used Lyft by ourselves for the first time. Kids stayed at the RV park while we took back the rental car in Anaheim.

We rented 3 cars (for a total of 9 days) and we managed the other 11-12 days either walking or taking the motorhome, or driving in a limo to the Big Texan.  Most of those days were driving days anyway.

Jon drove over 4,000 miles. I drove, maybe 5 in the motorhome and maybe 100 in Carlsbad in the rental car.

This was definitely more than a vacation. It was an epic adventure. And it continues as we motor through Texas to get to Wichita Falls tonight. Hoping we don't have to deal with storms tonight as they are in the forecast.

We are about 60 miles from Wichita Falls and the wind is definitely picking up!! Radar shows a few small storms on the radar. We should make it to Wichita Falls before anything too heavy hits. It was showing more in Oklahoma on the radar.

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Carlsbad, New Mexico-Day 2-The Caverns

We headed to the caverns again this morning to do the cave tour. We decided to hike in and take the elevator out.  This was recommended by several people we talked to.

So we began our descent around 11am. The hike down is extremely steep. We entered in the same entrance that we watched the bats exit out of last night.  We saw lots of cool formations as we walked down. And of course this was the coolest (temperature) of all of our hikes at 56 degrees. But, we were moving so we didn't get cold at all.

The hike down took us to "The Big Room," which was the main thing we had planned on seeing. It really is amazing and beautiful and dark. The pictures will not do it justice. Stalagmites and stalagtites everywhere. Draperies and columns. Just beautiful cave formations. It was certainly magnificent. We finished around 1pm with an elevator that took us up 750 feet out of the caverns. Better than being lowered and raised in a guano bucket and then climbing wooden stairs in and out, which is how people enjoyed the cavern in past years.

We are headed back into Carlsbad and the campground. Will likely swim today and get ready to leave tomorrow morning.  Still 103 degrees.

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Carlsbad, New Mexico--Carlsbad Caverns Day 1-Bats

We left Roswell and made it to our final sight-seeing destination of Carlsbad, NM around 11 this morning. We hit up Walmart and picked up the rental car. (yeah!)

We are staying pretty far out of Carlsbad, but the campground is a KOA and is quite nice. There is a pool and we definitely took advantage of it because of the extreme heat again.  100 degrees is hot no matter what.

We drove about 45 minutes to Carlsbad for the evening to check out the bat flight. We got there way early, so we checked out the gift shop and book store. Sarah pretended to be a caver in one of the exhibits. That was funny.

We headed over for the bat flight program around 7pm. It would start around 8pm.

During the bat flight you are not allowed to take pictures of any kinds. But before hand I took lots of pictures of more prickly pear cacti, the natural entrance to the cave, and the cave swallows,  which are birds that fly around the entrance of the cave. The ranger told us that as soon as the cave swallows went into the cave we could expect to see some bats start coming out. We watched the birds disappear and just like that, about 3 minutes after the last bird went in, the bats started to fly out. At first it was just one bat at a time, then ten, then hundreds of bats. We had to be super quiet when they came out. It was amazing. The bats just kept rolling out of the cave. The ranger said there are approximately 300,000 bats in this colony. I couldn't even estimate how many we saw fly out of the cave, but we watched them fly for about 25 minutes. The sky was just covered in bats.

The view from the national park was beautiful too!  We will head there again tomorrow to walk down into the caverns! 56 degrees year round down there!!

Then our journey home will begin on Saturday. We will be heading home via Wichita Falls, TX. 

We have had a wonderful trip!  But we are all ready for our own beds, and especially to see Izzy!!

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Pictures of the Drive

For some reason, I can only upload about 4 pictures per post. Here are some from the drive today.  From Alamogordo to Roswell via Ruidoso.

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Las Cruces-White Sands

Well, our first snag in our trip. Which is pretty good considering how far into the trip we are. We got up this morning and Jon called to get the rental car. They didn't have any for early pickup. So we waited until 9. Still no car. 9:20. No car. Plan B. Leave rv park in RV to go to White Sands. I also wanted to go to Organ Mountains National Monument--Dripping Springs Natural Area, so I called and made sure we could drive the RV up, which we could. So we broke camp and let the manager know we would probably not be back, but please hold our spot in case we did decide to come back. He was surprised we couldn't get a car.

I was disappointed we missed doing Old Mesilla. We were there last night and didn't do it because it was late and the kids were cranky and we had already made them walk to the restaurant.

The views from Organ Mountains National Monument were spectacular. We did a 1.5 mile trail which was round trip of 3 miles to an anticlimactic "dripping" waterfall. It was pretty. I am glad we did it, but 90+ degrees was pretty hot for the walk.

We headed to White Sands. So, in a car we would have gotten out further, but in the motorhome, Jon didn't want to risk driving on sand. We went as far as we could go, kids played in the sand, but again, HOT. Although the sand wasn't terrible.

They thought it was cool but unfortunately we didn't get out past the brush covered sand, so they didn't get the full effect of the sand.

We enjoyed it though! 

Now we are driving to Roswell. We took the route throught Ruidoso. It has been a very pretty drive and not terrible through the mountains.  We are about 7 miles from Roswell now.

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Las Cruces

Today we rolled into Las Cruces, New Mexico. The Organ Mountains are just beautiful. We stopped at a scenic overlook on the way in that was spectacular.  One of the highlights of this stop was a giant roadrunner made of recycled materials. He was very cool.

We then drove 4 more miles to Hacienda RV.

I should mention, on the way we ate at Lotaburger. It was great!

The RV resort is very nice. Just no pool. Bummer. It's 98 degrees.

But we will manage.

We ate dinner at Andele's Restaurant. Delicious.

Kids were so not happy...we decided to make them walk to dinner. It was just a mile. They lived.

Very tired tonight. I will add more tomorrow.

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Tucson, Arizona

We are only spending the night here. It was 100 degrees today. We enjoyed the pool and some icecream after our 9 hour drive. Then we played euchre instead of shuffleboard. (100 degrees)

And check out the gorgeous full moon. No wonder the kids were crazy!

Tomorrow it is off to Las Cruces, New Mexico!!

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Sonoran Desert National Monument

Today we are driving to Tucson from Anaheim. It's over 400 miles. Thankfully we are 20 miles away from Tucson. We left Anaheim at 5am and were shocked at the traffic and backups already on the interstate coming into the LA area.

We ate breakfast in the motorhome around 8 just inside the AZ border.

As we drove we decided to take an alternate route to avoid Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa, etc traffic. We took I-8 and drove through the Sonoran Desert National Monument. It was so cool to see so many giant cacti!!  We are almost to Tucson.  We need a break from this drive!!

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Donuts for Dad!

We hit up a donut shop this morning! Donuts Plus! 

Apparently, LA is a haven for donut shops, so we found one a mile from Orangeland. 

Yummy!!

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More Cubs-Dodgers Pictures

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Dodger Stadium

Well when we were making plans I noticed that our rv park was minutes away from the Anaheim Angels stadium. So I checked their schedule and they had no home games. End of story.

Didn't even check Dodgers because I knew Jon wouldn't want to drive to LA.

Well he found out, while we were here, that the Dodgers were in town and they were playing the Cubs! So we looked at tickets!  We decided to move our plans around. We had thought Disney Thursday and Saturday and beach Friday. Well since we thought a game on a Saturday would be better traffic wise than a game on a Friday we went ahead and moved things around and went to the game Saturday night.

Our tickets were in an "All you can eat" section.  This included our ticket and all ghe Dodger dogs we could consume. Plus there was popcorn, nachos, peanuts, soda and water. The dogs were hot. The drinks were huge.  Everything else was prepackaged. Justin kept running up and getting more packages of peanuts before the game.

The game itself was a lot of fun as was the people watching in our section!

We got there about 2 hours before game time and had plenty of time to eat some of our treats. We carried some stuff into the stands but threw lots of our trash away before we went to the seats.

We watched person after person carrying trays of food stacked 3 high into the stands. The amount of trash rivaled a section of the track after the race. Actually, there was probably more trash in that section of Dodger Stadium per person than there is in our section of the track. Just gross. It was honestly a great circus to watch!

We sat in right center. Closer to center.

We were in the sun for the first part of the game but then we earned our shade as the sun faded.

The game had some exciting moments on both sides. We watched the Dodgers hit a homerun into our section, 3 rows directly in front of us. If they had shown it on TV you would have seen us. That ball hit so had I could here those stands rattle. Although it was a Dodgers homerun, it was still awesome.

One of my favorite game moments was when they brought in their closer. The crowd went wild. I guess he had like 11 saves in a row (baseball people is that the right way to say it?) and the Dodgers were on a 9 game winning streak! That was all about to end!

The top of the 9th, Dodgers 1, Cubs 0.  Kris Bryant gets hit by the very first pitch and heads to 1st base.  Rizzo is up to bat. He hits a homerun into right field!  Cubs are up by 1 run!

Bottom of the 9th, Pedro Strop comes in to close for the Cubs. He gets 2 outs and has 1 to go!  One man on the base and the go-ahead run at the plate...he strikes him out! 

Cubs WIN! Fly the W!

Kids enjoyed the game and the crowd and of course the food! The win was icing on the cake!! 

Today is Father's Day! We will be lazy and do laundry and clean up today. Tomorrow we head home via Tucson, Las Cruces, Carlsbad Caverns, and Wichita Springs, TX.

Happy Father's Day to Jon, Papa George, and Papa Jerry and any other wonderful dad who might be reading!

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Pacific Ocean

Today we started out heading to see the ocean! I had 2 things I wanted to do on thos trip! Disneyland ans the Pacific Ocean.   Today we checked off Pacific Ocean! We went to 2 beaches. We went to  Sunset Beach, CA and we went to Huntington Beach! We found Sunset Beach to be much more commercialized than our NC beach! However the west coast homes on the ocean are much closer to the beach and much more on top of each other. Sunset Beach was mors of a private residential area. But it was still fun! Kids enjoyed a little bit of playtime!

Next we drove down the Pacific Coast Highway just a bit to Huntington Beach. We actually were at the dog beach! The kids also loved that! The water was a tad chilly at about 64 degrees. But was fun to splash in for a bit.

There were also squirrels all over the rocks that were at the top of the beach. They were very cute and fun to watch!

The other thing we noticed were the surfers! They looked like birds floating in the water when we were driving by.

I hope the next time we are out here we spend more time at the Pacific!

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Disneyland

Disneyland Trip--

We managed to see a lot on our trip to Disneyland! This post is mainly for my benefit. But for those who read notice that we got to ride Snow White's Scary Adventures and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride,  which are no longer in Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World.   So I was VERY excited to ride these! I was sad that Peter Pan's Flight didn't have a Fastpass so we didn't ride that one, but as you can see we rode plenty and had a ball!!

We did miss out on a few things, but we didn't need to add anymore days. We actually did about 13 hours on Thursday and 10 hours on Friday. The kids and I could have kept going, but Jon was spent. 

It was still magical and quite fun to experience a different Disney!

Disneyland Railroad

The Disneyland Story: Presenting Great Moments with Lincoln

Pirates of the Caribbean

Haunted Mansion

Splash Mountain (2)

The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh

Davy Crockett's Explorer Canoes

The Golden Horseshoe Stage

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (2)

Pinocchio's Daring Journey

Snow White's Scary Adventures

Dumbo the Flying Elephant

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

Matterhorn Bobsleds

Storybook Land Canal Boats

"it's a small world"

Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage

Hyper Space Mountain

Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters

California Adventures

Monsters, Inc. Mike and Sulley to the Rescue!

Guardians of the Galaxy-Mission: BREAKOUT!

Mater's Junkyard Jamboree (2)

Luigi's Rollickin' Roadsters

Radiator Springs Racers (2)

Grizzly River Run

Soarin' Around the World-California

Incredicoaster (3)

Jessie's Critter Carousel

Toy Story Midway Mania

Jumpin' Jellyfish

The Little Mermaid-Ariel's Undersea Adventure

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Disneyland Day #2

Pure exhaustion.  Enjoy the pictures!

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Disneyland

Well, we managed to go about 12.5 hours on our first Disney day! 

We did a ton. We started at Disney's  California Adventures and headed to Cars Land. We loved Radiator Springs  Racers!!  It was one of the reasons Justin wanted to go to Disneyland! 

After some Cars fun we headed over to Pixar Pier where we rode the Incredicoaster (Sarah, Justin and I rode it) and all of us rode Toy Story Mania which is just like WDW and we love the one there!

We were debating on Guardians of the Galaxy. It is a drop-zone ride. I expected it to be like Tower of Terror in WDW, but it was quite different. So yes, Justin, Sarah, and I were brave and rode it. It was fun as well.

Then we headed over to Disneyland Park!

There are some things that are very similar to WDW but others are very different.

We did a bunch. I will make a list later. Now I am exhausted.

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