I am finally going to write the post that I was supposed to have written in November? Oh! Why yes, that was awhile ago! Since it is almost Christmas, I thought I should publish my November post then and link to my sister’s two posts on our trip to the Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Please note that I may not end up with as many photos as she has in her posts because most of mine were people ones (such as my family) and due to various reasons I am only showing ones without people in them at the moment (unless the ‘people’ are me in my sunglasses or something else…)
This was the first picture I took on the trip, and it was taken while we were still in Washington. Where, I'm not quite certain, but it was definitely somewhere along the highway.
For the whole trip (excluding the last two days which were just drive, drive, drive) I wrote a letter to a friend each and every day. Seeing as I still haven’t found a button for her scarf (which I am sending with the letters) she hasn’t actually read them yet. However, I’m hoping that when she does, she enjoys them even if they were just the result of some mad scribbling before I keeled over and conked out for the night before the next day of adventure. It is from those that I will be drawing most of my memories for this post because seeing as I didn’t write this immediately after coming back (due in no small part to going for a sleep over that week and then losing my camera) I don’t have all the details fresh in my mind like I did when writing the letters.
- Oooh… definitely going to be a desktop background at some point.
Despite the fact that most of my pictures ended up being of people once we reached Anaheim, I took quite a few landscape-type shots while in the car. I’m not a big photo person like my sister Z (who went through an obsessive stage where she was all about the macro feature), I don’t take ages to get the perfect shot but I do have to admit a couple pictures did get deleted or weren’t added to this post simply because they were blurry.
That... is the sun.
When I reread the letters to my friend so that I could check something, I came across a short P.S. that I had forgotten writing. I wrote in one of the letters that I noticed: My passport photo looks unhappy… very cross.
Thinking back on it, it does! Why are people not allowed to smile in passport photos? I’d have looked so much better (especially if I’d been wearing my sunglasses but that definitely wouldn’t have been allowed, no matter how fancy they were). Such is life.
- Those are mountains. There is no possible way they could be hills.
When we crossed the border and pulled over so that our family could hit the restrooms, I noticed something and immediately labelled it as antique.
Guess what it was?
A genuine old school pay phone! I hadn’t seen one in awhile. My younger brother had said that morning that he thought an antique was something that no longer worked and I was convinced that that pay phone was not functional. After all, who needs a pay phone if you have a cell phone (even though I do not but usually the person I am with does).
When we stopped at the hotel we enjoyed ourselves immensely. My youngest brother’s chief wonder was the television in the room that had all the cable channels. So he watched a show called, “Overhaulin'” (as guys do) and then a variety of other vehicle related things. The television also reminded the rest of us why we didn’t (for the most part) watch television. Those pull-your-hair-because-they-are-so-annoying commercials.
- The first picture I took in California
The second hotel we stayed at was in San Francisco but we didn’t like it as much as the first hotel (it was infinitely nicer), though the second one wasn’t half bad. It was also where my Mom wasted the rest of my internal memory, so I had to delete my blurry “art” photos. However, I finally did run out of memory not even two hours after we left San Fran! Can you tell this was my first road trip? This was only mildly upsetting because my Dad said that we’d get a memory stick for “Apple” (my little green camera) as soon as we got to Anaheim, so I was happy. However, I was faced with something that was much stranger than running out of memory on my camera. A tough sausage! Now, all sausages I’ve had the pleasure of sinking my teeth into and selfishly keeping to myself have been easy to bite into. I had expected the same with this one. This one turned out to be quite unlike the delicious, occasionally spicy sausages I know and love. First, it had cheese on it and if that isn’t enough to make someone like me blink a couple times and make sure they read that correctly, it was tough to bite into. It took me five seconds to get my teeth into it, when it should have only taken me two, three if I am being generous with time. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a picture of the wonder-sausage.
Did I take a picture when we reached Anaheim? No. My first picture was the one below that I took as soon as we were inside Disneyland.
- The horse without the carriage
After I took the picture I showed it to my Dad immediately and he asked why I only put the horse in it and didn’t I think that the carriage was important, too? My answer was that all I really cared about was the horse (I have a long-standing obsession with horse things, which induced me to reread one book on horse history five times and then a book on the Canadian horse twice). Since I am distracted by horses, I would like to note that on the way down to Anaheim I made a game of counting every horse (or deer, or coyote, or llama) I saw. Of course, I can’t remember the final count of the horses that I reached but on a non-road trip drive down the highway, my last high score was sixty-four if I remember correctly. I’ll probably put up my score on the road trip version once I remember or have found where I wrote it down. By the way, if left to me, that horse would have been named Oswald McDrauggen or Senelosis Odio. Some many stories to write!
On day one, we walked for five hours (or maybe it was less, seeing as I’m just counting how long we were in the park and fidgeting in line counts as exercise to me) which gave me plenty of time to marvel and wish I’d taken a picture of that car that looked like the one from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I didn’t really take many pictures in Disneyland (if you don’t count the ones I took in sport mode of my sister and my younger brother in Autotopia) but I certainly took quite a few at “California Adventure”.
The second day we were in Anaheim we started out by going into Disneyland to go to Toon Town (my youngest brother loved “Gadget’s Go! Coaster” and I secretly so did I) and a couple other places to go on some rides we liked. Then we went on the monorail and you will now see a series of pictures that were the first thing that actually captured my attention as soon as we got off.
- I got the one on the second-highest pedestal
- I wanted this one so badly…
Do I love crystal things (especially crystal ANIMAL things)? Why… YES I DO! I got one of the small ones and dubbed him Robert (the first name that occurred, though now if I were to rename him I’d call him Senor Rofflair).
A Disneyland picture in the California Adventure section of the post.
The first place we went in California Adventure was “A Bug’s Land” and the first ride we went on was “Heimlich’s Chew Chew Train”. Actually, it was my Mom, sister, and my youngest brother and myself because my youngest brother likes Heimlich. When we went through the watermelon did we ever get sprayed! I enjoyed it seeing as Heimlich’s commentary was highly amusing and it’s because I had some of Heimlich’s lines from A Bug’s Life (which I haven’t seen in absolutely eons) running through my head through the whole ride.
My other brother and my Dad had headed to the “Tuck and Roll” ride and I got a couple of pictures of my brother with my sister’s camera (“Cherry” who is red) and then I took snapshots of them on the ride. My youngest brother’s expressions were highly amusing and my Mom and Dad, along with myself were calling instructions to him. “Turn the other way!…no…no… the other way!” or “Keep going that way!” or to each other, “Look at his face!” And this was usually accompanied by a lot of laughing. Then when Z told us about his antics in line we all laughed harder (like when they were told that if they were going in the same bumper car they had to hold hands, he immediately released hers).
- My Celtic zodiac animal is a seahorse
I had tried the carousel in Disneyland but it was too slow for my tastes and more for younger kids. For me, “King Triton’s” in “California Adventure” was much better, though not as good as the one at the Burnaby Museum back in Canada. Almost as if to prove I liked it more than the other one, I rode it twice. The first time was with Zoe and my brother, the second time was just me and my youngest brother. This one had lots of pictures taken on it, though they happened to be mainly of me and my seahorse or of him and his beloved goldfish. The second seahorse I rode was blue because there was a goldfish beside it and he absolutely had to sit on a goldfish. Too bad there wasn’t an angler fish because he would have loved that even more.
- The second seahorse
My sister rode a baleen whale even though I thought she should have ridden an otter. The other rides on “Paradise Pier” were mainly ridden by me and my other brother. The first being, “The Golden Zephyr” (which my youngest brother wants to go on next time). After that it was the “Jumping Jellyfish” ride (which was sort of like an abnormally fast elevator and my youngest brother was calling to me that I had to scream to show I was enjoying it. I didn’t but I liked it all the same). “Silly Symphony Swings” (which my sister had a highly entertaining expression on her face for the whole ride), “Mickey’s Fun Wheel” was amazing and we shared one of the swinging gondolas with three other people who were celebrating a birthday. Parties follow me wherever I go! We had a lot of fun and chatted for the whole thing. “King Triton’s Carousel” though I mentioned it first, was the last ride we went on.
The next day we went straight back to “Paradise Pier”. We rode our favorite rides and then I went into the “Toy Story Mania” ride with my youngest brother while most of the rest of the family went on “California Screamin’ ” twice (and later realized that that had not been a very good idea as we were ride rookies). After that, we went on “Mickey’s Fun Wheel” in one of the swinging gondolas (only my Mom and sister took a pass) and my youngest brother was very entertaining through the whole thing. However, it was a little too much for my Dad and my brother’s stomachs, so they got popcorn and my youngest brother and I didn’t get to go on again as we had wanted.
Outside the Whole Foods in Tustin
Then it was time to go for lunch and back to our rented condo where we were staying to eat and relax and then right back to “California Adventure”. We only had time for one more ride as it was a long drive back home, so we then grabbed souvenirs (mine being an awesome Jack Skellington hat). After we left, we went to the Whole Foods in Tustin before going back, having dinner, and then packing our things and going to sleep. The next two days were solid driving until we reached home (which we arrived at very early in the wee small hours of the morning). It was very tiring but also very nice. We didn’t do much sight seeing while in the U.S.A but I loved the whole experience nonetheless.
It was my first time out of my province, let alone out of my country… of course it would be exciting! :D Though the main thing I liked about it was that we had lots of orange juice and ordered sushi twice AND I was introduced to the genius that is clam chowder.
Not bad for my first vacation! :D
A Raven's Writing Desk 