Finally got the internet up and running at our new place! We get our HHG tomorrow–thanks to a last minute cancellation.  We’ve been in our new place since 1 July, but we’ve been living out of our suitcases and hanging out on our air mattress. I’ll post more about the new place etc… in a different post.  This one is all about our trip from California after picking up our car in Los Angeles.

We flew out on 20 June and stayed near LAX that night.  The next day, we couldn’t pick up our car until mid-afternoon so we drove to Buena Park and checked in to our hotel early.  Once we got the car settled, we decided to use our 3-Day Hopper pass to Disneyland.  We wanted to get there in time to map out our other trips and see the parade/fireworks.  It was well worth it, as the parade is brand new this year (even better for us, as neither had been to Disneyland before).

The next day, we decided to drive up to Universal Studios in Hollywood.  Sadly, we only had one day to see Universal, but we definitely made the most of it! We mainly wanted to see the newly opened Wizarding World of Harry Potter inside the park and it didn’t disappoint.  As a huge HP fan, I was more than happy to spend most of our trip in that section.  But, there were some great rides outside of that area too, like Jurassic Park, The Mummy, and Transformers! It was such a neat experience (even though I’d already been to Universal Orlando).

Day 3 of our trip was back to Disneyland for some rides and more sights.

Day 4 wrapped up our Disney adventure with Disney’s California Adventure theme park.  We checked out the Tower of Terror, Grizzly River Run, and saw Radiator Springs from Cars.  It wasn’t the best Disney park I’d been to, but it was a fun experience watching my husband act like a total kid. I even convinced him to get some ears.

After California Adventure, we drove down to San Diego for the next couple of days of our trip.  We stayed on a Navy base which made our stay MUCH nicer. Our first full day, we went to the San Diego Zoo and celebrated 100 years of conservation there–even got our first caricature done.  As neat as it was (seeing pandas was the best part!), I still maintain that Omaha’s zoo is still the best.

The last day in California was spent at Sea World San Diego.  We took in some of the last Shamu shows and saw dolphins and beluga whales.  It was fun, but we were pretty over people by then and had to drive the 5 hours through the Mojave Desert to get the Vegas.

We made it to Vegas by 9pm that night and lucked out big time with a free suite upgrade at Excalibur.  The Mister really enjoyed the hotel.  It’s too bad we couldn’t stay longer.

We took two days to drive back to Nebraska then took a day off, before driving to Tennessee.  I’ll update again once we get settled. Hopefully that process doesn’t take too long.

Until then,

Cheers!

-A. xoxo