Epic California Trip--Getting There, Day 1 and 2

Planned a year in advance.  Anxiously awaited.  The Epic California Trip!

We had planned to leave on a Friday (a day early from the rest of the family) and visit my pretty-much-adopted sister Marion (former mission companion) near Salt Lake.  We were going to stay the night with her and then have an easy drive to St. George to meet up with the rest of the family on Saturday.  Great plan, right?  Unfortunately, a severe winter storm named Gandolf got in our way.  It came in Thursday night and hit Utah hard.  Parts of our route were completely closed on the Department of Transportation website and authorities were telling everyone to stay home.  Poo.

We left on Saturday instead.  That meant that we had at least a 10 hour drive, IF we didn't stop at all and IF the weather didn't make us slow down.   Ha ha ha ha ha.....

We left by 6:30 a.m. and had pretty good roads until we got closer to Utah.  But that doesn't mean we made great time.  My OBGYN had counseled me to stop and get out and stretch my legs every two hours so I wouldn't develop blood clots.  We tried to keep the breaks short but the kids were not ever very willing to get back into the car, especially poor little Vander.

He was excited that he got to face forward, though.  We turned his car seat around a month before his second birthday so the trip would be less stressful.  Annalee was bouncy-happy about getting to sit in the middle so she could see out the windshield.  We thought having them right next to each other would be a good idea--hey, stop laughing, you parents of multiple kids!

Yeah, they fought a lot.  Also, Annalee kept peeking at the food we'd stashed in the seat next to her and asking for it by name.  I wish this picture was really of her sleeping--she was faking for the camera.  Naps on this trip were few and short and it showed in everyone's tempers.  Still, we tried to enjoy the journey and had lots of fun experiences.

 

We tried to meet up with Nathan's sister Tara in Salt Lake but she was in a training all day.  We stopped in Spanish Fork at his sister Missy's house for a quick potty break.  The kids really didn't want to leave their cousins and the tv and get back into the car!

Right after that the snow ended and we were able to speed up.  We stopped in Cedar City and had dinner at a substandard Sizzlers.  Ugh.  Very disappointing.  By that time, the rest of our family was already in St. George and wondering if we'd ever arrive.  We wondered too.  Our car was covered in white salt from the roads--you couldn't even tell it was supposed to be red.  We found a car wash before we left town.

 The town itself was beautiful, still done up for Christmas.  We tried to take a picture of the lights downtown but, you know....

We got to the Super 8 motel in St. George sometime between 8 and 9, I think.  The kids had a hard time going to sleep with all of us in the same room.  Mostly, Annalee.  She kept looking over at us to see what we were doing.  Even after we laid down in bed she was sighing dramatically and scratching the bed to make annoying noise.  When she figured out how much it annoyed Nathan she did it even more.  I put in ear plugs.

Sunday, Nathan got up with the kids and let me sleep in a little.  Then, while Vander and Daddy napped, Annalee and I went to church.  I found two meetings starting at 9:00 and joyfully asked Annalee, "Would you rather go to an English church or a Spanish church?"  She said she didn't care which, so of course I picked the Spanish branch!  It was so neat to be among people who reminded me of my mission.  It was fast and testimony Sunday so I even got to practice my public speaking Spanish after Annalee bore her testimony in English.  (Since helping Nathan with his Spanish class last semester I am a lot more conscious of the mistakes I make.  So, even though I am probably speaking better than I ever have, I am more aware of how awful my Spanish is.  Ignorance is bliss.)  Halfway through Sacrament meeting Annalee decided that she DID care whether we went to an English ward or not!  But she liked Primary, where they said everything in both languages.  We left halfway through the third meeting so we could help Daddy pack and check out of our hotel.  The rest of our family was long gone, on the road.  That's okay.  Naps are IMPORTANT!

 

The scenery as we left Utah and headed into Arizona (I didn't even realize beforehand that we were going there) and Nevada was stunning.  I made Nathan take some pictures which, of course, don't do it justice.

 

Maybe it was just that we were finally leaving behind all the snow!  (Because of the storm, it was colder in St. George when we got there than it had been in Nampa when we left!  Disappointing, to say the least.  Of course, at that moment it was even colder in Nampa because a cold front had moved in that stayed for over a month with record low temperatures.)

We took a detour through Las Vegas because Nathan and I had never been there.  It was shocking to come over a hill and see the city, still miles and miles away, standing alone in the desert.  It rises up as abruptly as a sneeze and fades just as quickly.  I don't know why we didn't take a picture of it--the city that has no reason to be there.  I thought I'd be able to find a picture on Google that someone else had taken but I guess no one was impressed by it the way we were. 
We drove down the strip.  Wow.  I don't know how we'd ever be able to pick a hotel!  Everything was larger-than-life, over-the-top.  Even more than Disneyland!  Nathan and the kids were whipping their heads from side to side, calling out, "Look at that sphinx!  Wow!  A pirate ship!  Look over there!"  Which was a little frustrating because I was driving and the only thing I could really look at was the taxi in front of me that desperately wanted me to crash into its bumper.  I was surprised by how long The Strip was--it took us forever to drive.  I've always heard people talk about "walking the strip" but that would take a long time!  The most astounding thing we saw was mobile billboards.

 

This isn't one of the ones we saw.  They were all too awful to take pictures of, mostly advertising how you could get your own personal "GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!".  But this is the idea: a big 'ole truck with a skinny sign whose purpose for existence lies in wasting gas, making bad traffic worse, and causing eye pollution as it roves up and down the strip.  Some of them even had speakers hooked up, we discovered as we waited at a stop light.  Wow.

We stopped at a Jack in the Box on the edge of town to change a diaper, use the facilities, and let the kids run around the parking lot.  It was still cold enough that we needed coats but it was nice to run around where there was no snow.  We were directly across from the airport, so Vander was in little-boy-heaven watching very large, very low planes fly overhead every few minutes.

Sometime that day Nathan hooked up our secret weapon: a dual screen dvd player!  I had been saving up points from taking surveys for months, so I only had to pay $20 for it on Amazon.com.  The kids were giddy over it.  Unfortunately, during the day it wasn't the panacea that some people touted it as in reviews, but at least it helped.  (At night they were hypnotized by the only light in the car.)  I had signed Vander up for a library card before we left so we could check out a lot of videos for the trip.  All I really remember is that I am never letting Annalee watch Angelina Ballerina again.  What a bratty mouse!

We ate an entire box of Cutie tangerines that day in anticipation of having to turn over our produce at the California state line.  Instead, the traffic slowed down to a crawl for miles, only so a smiling guy could get paid to wave everyone through without stopping when they got to the check point.  Ah, California, land of laws so stupid they can't even stand to enforce them.  We stopped in Barstow at Barstow Station, a cool collection of gift shops and fast food places made out of old freight train cars.  Vander showed us the folly of eating so many Cuties with a horrible, horrible diaper.  We ate Panda Express, bought some over-priced candy, and hit the road again.  We got to The Anaheim Desert Inn and Suites waaaaay after the kids' bedtime.  (We'd had to stop at Target right before we got there to replace the earplugs that Annalee had played with and lost in St. George.)  Thankfully, my parents had paid for a suite, so we gleefully deposited the kids in the other room and they crashed.  Then I crashed.  Then I nagged Nathan to turn off the tv so I could sleep!