Cavemen

Oregon caves here we come...While it is 90 degrees outside, inside it's 42..Glad we brought coats...
What an adventures cave...there are 520 steps, sometimes you have to go sideways, duck to 45 inches, and watch you head at all times..The only wildlife we saw in the cave was a bat....It was a cool experience...

Thanks Papa for taking us....

End of First part of trip

My goal for the last day of our trip was to reminisce..on my hometown of Vacaville, and then onto Napa and Sonoma..It didn't go as planned..Alex and Anna-Maria could have cared less about my hometown except for making Moooing sounds for the "Cowtown". They loved the Jelly Belly factory of course and the cheese factory in Sonoma but their attitude was "Let's just get back to Nana and Papa's." Next time I'm going down with someone else who will enjoy shopping and touristing....

Left my heart in San Franscico..

San Franscico here we come..I had it mapped out of course..We started in Union Square..hitting the Westin St Francis hotel first..The back bank of elevators is an amusement ride on it's own..You start out looking out at another building and then bam you are in the sky overlooking all of San Franscico at a high speed..Scared Anna-maria to death...Off to China town next...love the little trinkets they sell at rockbottom prices..

Then it was onto Little Italy...We drooled over the smells of foccacia,pizza, and pasta..yum...

Peir 39 was next..Those seals have been there forever..That was always my attraction while growing up in the area...

Can you guess where we had lunch? Yep..have to say the food wasn't the reason we went..

After waiting an hour in line we hopped on the cable car for the up and down ride...Who can go to San Franscico and not ride the Cable Car?!

One more stop of the day before dropping Peter off at the airport..The Oakland Temple..It's my favorite of course...

Some people love to drive and drive and drive

The day after the wedding we started our journey home..First stop the Newport Beach Temple..Gorgeous!

Next stop after sitting a long time in LA traffic..Santa Barbara Mission...

Glad that's not my garden..ouch!

Short monk!
Not really an angel or a monk!

After the mission we started up highway 1...Next stop Elephant Seals near Hearst Castle..

We coasted into Big Sur on Empty and paid a fortune in gas...

The views were spectacular the whole way up the coast line..We ended the day in San Jose, arriving at our hotel at the same time as three tour busloads..Not fun...

Wedding bells

Ah..for the reason we started this adventure..Scott and Nikki's wedding..Peter's niece was married in the San Diego Temple. It was a beautiful sealing and of course the weather in San Diego did not fail us...

Anna-Maria and her cousin Megan were very cute "flower girls".. As flower girls go in a Mormon wedding....

Disneyland here we come..

I think you can guess our next destination..After a long drive down 99 to Anehiem, we played at the hotel till Peter's flight came in...Around 9:30pm we heard loud banging noises outside and realized the fireworks were going off..What a view we had from the hotel parking lot..Could not have been better..The next morning we arrived at the gates at 7:30am to be first in line..I had that day mapped out in my head..We finished Disneyland in less than 5 hours..didn't wait more than 15 minutes for a ride...not bad...

This is Anna-Maria before we started the jungle cruise...She wasn't as happy afterwards when she realized how boring it is..Especially since we just came off the Indiana Jones ride..That was scary..

Alex posing while we waited for Dad and Anna-Maria to finish Splash mountain..She loved it..

We went on the steamboat and were surprised with the Disney band boarding..Great entertainment..but I did tell him that if we didn't like the music he would be voted off..He stayed on..




Anna-Maria's favorite princess..
I made the family do the Small world ride eventhough it's not my favorite..I just knew Alex would find it annoying..It's a small world afterall, It's a small world afterall.......

Anna-Maria's new bestfriend...They loved their first experience at Disneyland..

Start of a long journey

First day of our big adventure..Alex, Anna-Maria and myself headed out of Medford for a long roadtrip down the westcoast..First stop was Sonora California, home of Goldmining. We stayed the night in an old Days-Inn with room features that dated back to the mining years..The next morning we headed to Colombia, a state park..Loved the town...If it wasn't for the outdoor plumbing it would be liveable..

After this town we headed south to Anahiem..Time to pick Peter up at the airport..Hmm..wonder what we are doing tomorrow?

Bat Cave

After picking up the kids from Grandma and Grandpa's we thought " Hey let's take a different route home" Through Chinook Pass and pass Mt Rainier...Along the way we stopped at Boulder Cave...A cave that has bats in the winter not the summer..Just as well it was so pitch dark even with our flashlights that I don't think we could have dealt with bats...Loved the hike and cave, didn't like the rain on the other side of the mountain, so there was no view of Mt Rainier today..Glad to have the kids back..I missed them..They didn't miss us..

Smithtower date

I love Groupon..Just the other day there popped up a coupon for the Smithtower observation deck..Peter has wanted to do it but we just haven't gotten around to going..Perfect...I surprised him yesterday evening..We were headed downtown anyway so I just parked near the tower..."Oh..why don't we go and explore the Smithtower since we are in the area"..It was interesting..It's just an empty room except for chinese wall art and some furniture...The views though are fantastic..Definetly not for you Mom...The Smithtower used to be the tallest building in Seattle...of course not anymore but it still has the last manuel operated elevator on the West Coast..We topped off the date with a picnic in the park eating delicious gyros...Great being kid free...photos from the trip are on the previous post..