Month: August 2015

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Disneyland!!!!! What a perfect day!

Amy Kline
It was truly a magical day! We had such a wonderful time and made so many great memories today. I think the kids were at the perfect ages, old enough that we didn’t have to take a stroller or diaper bag, but young enough where everything seemed amazing and real. They loved the rides, loved the shows and parades, and could keep going until after the fireworks.
We started out really early. Since we only had one day in the park, we chose to go to the original Disneyland, not the California Adventure. I wished we could have gone through that park too, but we just didn’t have time this trip.
The boys loved our breakfasts at the hotel, and they filled up with their mini Belgian Waffles. 
We walked the few blocks to Disneyland and got in right when they opened. I had purchased our tickets online and they just had to scan the barcode in the email. We had the paper tickets as back up just in case.

Since we were there right away, we were basically able to hop right on to the Jungle Cruise. 
Our jungle tour guide was hilarious! We were probably his first or second tour of the day so he was fresh, but he made everyone laugh the entire time with lots of groaner puns and wordplay jokes. 
Next we went to the Indiana Jones ride, the Pirates of the Carribbean ride and then the Haunted Mansion. They were all super fun and just scary enough for the boys to be exciting, but not too scary to get tears.
Since we were on a roll, we headed over to Splash Mountain. We waited about 20 minutes for that one and it was a fun one. Disney takes a picture of your face as you go down the “waterfall”. Carson’s face is priceless!
We wandered over to Tomorrowland, so we could go on Star Tours, and attend the Padawan Academy. We got there just as the Padawans were being picked but unfortunately neither boys got picked.  It was fun to watch anyway 🙂
We waited in line for at least an hour for Star Tours. It was an awesome ride, but Jeff got a little motion sick from it, just like he did on our honeymoon. So when we went on the Teacups a little later, he watched and took some pictures of us.
According to the apps that we downloaded, the lines were getting pretty long, so we decided to do some activities that didn’t require waiting in lines. We went to Tom Sawyer’s Island and explored. Jeff has great memories of doing this when he was a kid and I think he still had just as much fun as our own boys did exploring the island. 


We continued to explore the classic rides. We, of course, had to ride the “It’s a Small World” ride. All we needed were a few softballs to chuck at the dolls by the end of the ride and it would have been perfect!
We continued to ride all the old rides like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, the Pinoccio one, and Snow White. 
We didn’t make it on the Peter Pan and the Alice in Wonderland rides though. But we did try to pull the Sword out of the Stone.  Apparently none of the Kline boys are the Once and Future King.

Carson loved the Storybook Land Canal Boats because he thought it was hilarious to be swallowed up by the big blue whale. The boys got chosen to sit on the front of the boat so they got a really good view of all the little storybook scenes during the ride.

The boys were still going strong so we went back to Tomorrowland and rode the submarine ride, and then rode the two rides with the Buzz Light Year theme. 

The sun was starting to go down so we darted back to Adventureland to climb the tree house which used to be the Swiss Family Robinson’s Treehouse but is now called Tarzan’s Treehouse.  Then we went to the Magical Tiki Room (after I had a Dole Whip, yum!).  Those birds are seriously creepy but hilarious! I don’t think the boys were too impressed with them though.

 The parade was just getting ready to start and since we chose not to sit and wait at the curb for hours, we were very lucky to get a spot at the top of a small set of stairs and actually had a great view. The light parade is so amazing and fun! It was a beautiful end to a perfect day.

 We also stayed for the fireworks and got to see them set off with the It’s a Small World as the backdrop. Everyone was standing however, so we had to each hold a kid so they could see the projection on the buildings. No hands for pictures. It was pretty cool how they tied in all the Disney movies, both new and old, and finished off with “snow” falling all around us (in 90 degree weather).

We could have stayed and gone on a couple rides that we missed such as Peter Pan, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and Space Mountain (which was closed most of the day). But we were all super tired and still had to walk back to our hotel room.

It was truly a magical day.

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Grand Canyon to L.A.

Amy Kline
After we single-handedly ended the drought at the Grand Canyon (you are welcome!), we packed up our soaked tent and lawn chairs and headed out during a lull in the rain. The ravens made a visit to see if we left them any tasty treat. We were told that the ravens are pretty aggressive around food and will swoop down on you. They were the only animal we were warned about in the campground. Apparently there aren’t bears nearby and bobcats and rattlesnakes and other scary creatures don’t live on top of the canyon.
Once we headed southwest of the Grand Canyon, the weather cleared up and the it got hot. We stopped at a rest stop to dry out the tent since we would be staying in a hotel room for the next 3 nights. The trees definitely looked different already and we didn’t even get into the desert yet. 
As we were putting the tent up to dry, a worker came up to us to tell us that we couldn’t camp there.  Ha! We couldn’t even get the tent to stay in one place, because it was so windy!
Plus there was no way I was sleeping on the ground with this sign only feet away.

I didn’t see any snakes or scorpions but I did see a couple lizards by the picnic tables. They were cute!
After drying our tent, the drive was pretty uneventful and pretty desolate.  We saw wildfire smoke in the distance near San Bernadino, and we stopped at an In and Out where the boys invented a new game where the boy in the front has four arms. In and Out was really Sit and Wait as the restaurant was packed during the lunch hour. The food was really really good for fast food though!
We finally got to our hotel about 5:30. It was the Super 8 in Anaheim and it was actually a pretty decent hotel. There was an outdoor pool, a place to do laundry (which was desperately needed at this point of our trip), and a continental breakfast where a worker was making tiny belgian waffles. It was only 2 blocks from Disneyland and perfect for this trip.
I’ll leave you with a photo of some beautiful palm trees that line the roads between our hotel and Disneyland. They were very tall and like little fireworks explosions against the blue skies. 

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Full day at Grand Canyon National Park

Amy Kline

We slept in, because everyone was exhausted. Thunder rumbling in the distance finally drove us out of bed. We drove to the Grand Canyon Village Visitor Center, but went directly to the Rim as the thunder got louder. The view is so far beyond description. There is no way pictures could ever capture the immensity of the Grand Canyon. It was very cloudy and there were clouds floating around inside the canyon, but we could see across to the other side when we first got there.

I discovered that my phone can take panoramic photos just in time. I think if you click on them, you should be able to see the full sized photo.

The clouds are below us floating around in the canyon. A ranger told us that even though it was cold and rainy at the top, it was hot and arid at the bottom of the canyon (up to 30 degrees warmer). The canyon is a mile deep, and an average of about 10 miles across, and 277 miles long. It can even be seen from space.
We had just enough time to walk down the path and get some photos before it started to sprinkle.
We went into the Visitor’s Center and picked up the Junior Ranger books, then walked around looking at the displays. It started to sprinkle. We went across to one of the other buildings, which was a fantastic book and gift store. We shopped around in there for a bit and then it started to downpour.  We hung out there and talked to another family that was looking at the puppets and it turned out the mother was also a school librarian from Wisconsin (Beaver Dam)! Small world! 
One of the requirements for the Junior Ranger program was to attend a ranger-led program, so we headed over to the resort hotel in the Village to learn about how the Grand Canyon was created and the different kinds of rocks that are in the layers. The ranger was fantastic with all the kids as we sat on a patio surrounded by pouring rain. There was about 30 kids sitting at her feet and many adults sitting on benches around the patio. The adults were busy talking and laughing (in English, French, German, Mandarin, Spanish). I was really impressed that the ranger was able to keep the kids’ attention with all the distractions.
I went to the rim, which was just past the patio,  and this was the view as it was clearing out for a minute. Otherwise there was just a wall of white beyond the rim.

Since it was so wet and cold (about 50 degrees), we had decided that it was not a good day for a hike.  We definitely made the right decision.  We walked around the resort area and found a cool exhibit in the main resort building. It was about Fred Harvey and the Harvey Girls. Fred opened the first restaurant chain in the US with restaurants at train stops in the West. The girls who came to work there became known as Harvey Girls and were legend has it that they helped “tame” the Wild West. The exhibit was just one room, but it was really interesting. Find out more HERE.
We tried to attend another Ranger program on the California Condor, but it got canceled. I’m assuming that we would get to see some Condor nests, but there was too much fog.  I took a selfie instead.
We went back to the Visitor Center so the kids could get their badges. It had stopped raining, but there was another batch of storms headed our way. 

Unfortunately we forgot to put our lawn chairs away so they were soaked. It was wasn’t raining yet when we got back to our campsite so I sat at the picnic table to upload some pictures, and check on facebook. A nice young couple came over and asked for help putting up their tent. They were from China and this was their first time camping. He was starting medical school in Iowa and they were hoping to stay in the US when he was finished. They said the air is so much cleaner here and we have a lot more freedom.  So even though it started pouring again, and we personally ended the drought by camping in the Grand Canyon, I still felt pretty lucky to be American and the have the opportunity to see so many places in our country.