Our mini vacation

We had a great time on our road trip.

We started out on Friday morning and drove to San Luis Obispo where we walked around the downtown area for about an hour. I found the cutest shop that had some awesome jewelry, wish I could have bought some but I did get some ideas for stuff to make. We left there and drove the short distance to Pismo Beach. Em packed food for us so we spread out our blanket on a wall overlooking the ocean and made sandwiches and ate. It was so beautiful and exactly what I had in mind.

It didn't take too long to drive from there to Santa Barbara where we spent 3 or 4 hours walking up and down State Street. We found the most awesome vintage shop where we both got a little something for ourselves. It was called Retroville and they had such a nice way of displaying vintage things without it feeling like an antique store crammed full of stuff.

We had dinner in Santa Barbara too. Many years ago we went to this restaurant called The Palace Grill and we both have good memories of it so we went back there. It's a great place with a great reputation. They have a great tradition of having their guests sing along with a song and the servers walk around and toast everyone's glasses. After that the owner came over and introduced herself and asked how dinner was, she was so nice! When the server asked if we wanted coffee she said just a little one, so he brought her a little coffee....

From there we drove down to Newport Beach to pick up Robert. Robert Plant that is. The real reason that we made the trip in the first place was for my sister to pick up a painting she bought. It's about 4'x4' and red and white.

We got to our hotel across the street from Disneyland around 10:30 or 11:00 on Friday night. Neither of us slept very well but were up and in the park at 8:15 on Saturday morning. We headed straight for Indiana Jones and only had to wait for 10 minutes! We pretty much stayed in Adventureland, and New Orleans Square for most of the morning. Adventureland is both of our favorites.

The haunted mansion was awesome! It was redone for Halloween with The Nightmare Before Christmas. It was really cool! We went to the haunted mansion earlier in the day and again at night. It was so cool to see the pumpkins all glowing.

My favorite rides are Splash Mountain and Pirates of the Carribbean, it's a toss up, I like them for different reasons.

We of course tried on many hats....I would have loved to buy a classic one with my name on the back but really, what would I do with it once I got home....

Movin on over to Fantasyland, we went back and forth to Frontierland and Fantasyland a lot because we used the Fastpass a lot. It was great! We were able to do everything we wanted to because we utilized it.

I hate it when I forget to keep the camera in landscape when I record video. Pardon the fact that my sister is sideways.

Some of the longest lines we waited in were for the shortest rides! Snow White, Peter Pan and Mr. Toads Wild Ride are so cute!




It's an oldy but a goody, Star Tours is not the most technologically advanced ride but it's nostalgic.

This one is of space mountain, I always forget how good this one is! We did this after the fireworks and we were so exhausted! I'm too cheap to buy the pictures that they take so I took a picture of the screen.

The fireworks show was amazing! They were all timed to the music and they were each a different kind of firework that went with whatever was happening. Here are a couple videos of them.


This one was really cool! It was about the villains, they did this really cool thing when the soundtrack for the haunted mansion came on where all around us a bunch of bright fireworks sthot straight up in a circle so if felt like when the floor goes down at the beginning of the ride.

This one was the Pirates of the Carribbean, it was so cool, they mimicked a pirate fight with fireworks that made it feel like a battle was going on. The last bit of this clip is of the ones that were going over us like cannon fire.

Ok, it's taken me three days to piece this together and I think I'm done. All in all we had a great time! We were in the park from about 8:15 in the morning until around 11:15 at night. We got to do and see everything we wanted to and some twice! Em's favorite ride of the day was the teacups and I think my favorite ride was either the haunted mansion or Splash Mountain. I really loved the fireworks though too!

On Sunday we headed out and on our way back up highway 101 towards home. We stopped in a little town called Ojai (pronounced oh-hi) and walked around a bit. I wasn't really all that impressed with it. We stopped in Pismo again and had an early dinner at this great little hole in the wall seafood place. We walked on the beach and both got caught off guard when a couple waves came in too fast. The last leg of the trip was long but we made it!