Day 30 ~ Driving to Los Angeles ~ The Hollywood Sign

Day 30 ~ Driving to Los Angeles ~The Hollywood Sign

Got all packed up to leave Sequoia.  Laundry is clean.  Glad to leave the “No Drinking Water” situation. 

Drove all day to Los Angeles. The roads were rural farm grounds when we set out from Visalia, but gradually became 9-18 lane Freeways as we approached Los Angeles. 

We stopped at a rural gas station along the way for gas and toilets.  I saw they had straw hats there for only 8.00.  The kids had been eyeing hats along the way.  They like hats.  Always have.  Harrison had a cowboy hat he didn’t take off for about 3 years when he was 3 years old.  Then he wore a firefighter one after that for a couple of years.  So it is always funny to me, and kind of endearing, that they still look at and want to buy themselves a hat where ever we go.  Harrison had almost bought an 80.00 hat at Crater Lake, but we left without knowing that is what he wanted.  Besides, I probably would have tried to talk him out of it, if it wasn't something special.  Then Natalie wanted this straw hat with a stylish band in the very upscale Ansel Adams gift shop for 80.00.  I told her that wasn’t a good value.  Walmart had the same things for 8.00.  She could make her own creative bands for any hat like that she chose to buy at Walmart.  So the kids were very excited about finding the 8.00 hats because they are smart enough to know that hats exactly like that were being sold for 80.00, and they almost bought one.  It was like an “ah ha!” moment. 

I bought some peaches from a roadside vender there too.  They were almost the same price that Walmart was selling them for, but I liked the idea of giving the hard working Spanish speaking lady the money instead of Walmart.

Driving was tense, of course, as we got closer and closer to Los Angeles.  It was a zoo……and only a Sunday! How bad would Monday morning be on the way to Disneyland?  Mike had Googled directions to the Hollywood Sign.  I just wanted to see it and take a picture of it.  Unfortunately, when we got to Hollywood, the directions took us to a park with some kind of observatory.  I will have to Google this later because I don’t understand how you could see the sign through the observatory, but not on the Hollywood Hills from where we were.  In a nutshell, this park was a one way street with tons of traffic and only street side parallel parking.  There was no way we could even come close to getting our camper parked, so we went on to look for the campground without seeing the sign.  Very disappointing.  But in 30 days we have only had two disappointments, The Road Going to the Sun in Glacier National Park and the Hollywood Sign.

Mike was a champ driving in Los Angeles.  He is just one of those people, who is just good at everything…..except organization.  That must be why God gave us to each other.  I truly don’t know how he managed, but I have observed over the past 28 years that when his back is up against the wall in strange places he has never been before, it is almost like he is a machine and the gears turn in his head and his movements are concentrated and executed.  We made it safely to the campground through the spaghetti bowl of freeways. 

We had originally planned to go to Downtown Disney on Monday to get the lay of the land.  Then go to Disneyland on Tuesday.  The problem with that was we needed to leave early on Wednesday morning in order to get to Hoover Dam and have their tour before we had to move on Thursday morning.  Disneyland is 3 hours behind our time, so  Disney wouldn’t close until 2:00 AM on Tuesday night.  We wouldn’t get back to the camper until 3:00 AM…….Then we would have to get up early on Wednesday????  Wouldn’t work.  So we switched the schedule to Disneyland on Monday, and Tuesday being the recovery day from Disneyland before we moved on…..But then we wouldn’t get to go to Downtown Disney and get the lay of the land before we had our big day…….A day that  cost too much to just get there late and leave early.  So……..

Once we safely made it from Los Angeles to our Campground in Pamona….(a suburb of L.A.) I didn’t really want to go back to Anaheim through traffic to find Disney.  However we didn’t really want to do a cold turkey run tomorrow and chance getting lost or some other unexpected event.  I said that Mike could just decide whatever he wanted to do.  He said he would let the kids decide.  Natalie said, “Well, I don’t understand why this would be an issue.  (Remember she isn’t driving!)  I think since we are here, we should go to Disney.”  Mike laughed and indulged her.  Because he is Mike and that is just what he does. 

When we turned the corner, we knew by the wonderful landscape that we were in Disney!

There was heavy traffic, but we drove right to it.  Got parked at Downtown Disney and, OH, HOW OUR SPIRITS SOARED.  We are Disney-aholics.  Truly, we felt like this was the closest we had come to home in the past 4.5 weeks!  It was familiar even though it was different.  We walked around to all the shops, bought our tickets for tomorrow, and peeked into the Disneyland Hotels that we longed to stay at for the night.  We ate at a Mexican Restaurant.  We loved it.  As the sun went down, we decided we had better get going so we could better find the campground, while it was still light and get ready for an early morning on Monday. 

Lego Store is still an important stop for Harrison. BUT for the first time we walked out without buying anything......

Flower Fountains

Flower Fountains

Nat was thrilled to find a Frozen store.

The California Hotel

The Beloved World of Disney Store - Just like the one in Florida!

Merchandise for sale during the 60th celebration!

Posing in front of the Disneyland gates while Dad buys tickets for tomorrow.

Glimpse of the train station.....

Monorail

Tram to the Parking Lot......Important Information for Tomorrow!

Dinner

Beautiful Disney

All Made from Legos

Original Disneyland Hotel

 

Since we didn’t have “going back” directions and were winging it…One of the freeways we had to merge onto was on the wrong side of the nine lanes of traffic……Mike missed it and got lost for a few minutes.  I was in agony.  I had no idea how we would ever find our way out.  We don’t even know the names of other places around where we needed to go for reference points.  Mike figured it out from an old Statefarm atlas we have been using.  In no time, we were back on the road we needed to be on.  I don't know if this scenario would have turned out so swell, if Mike would have been less Mike-able. 

Up next:  A day at Disneyland!