Our Little Trip

With Doug’s surgery coming up first part of next month, and him finally feeling better after chemo/radiation, we decided to take a little trip and have some fun as a family.
This post might be a little long!! Sorry! But we had so much fun!
We set out for SoCal and we wanted to use up points that we had saved up that were going to expire.  So we first booked our hotel for 3 nights using our points. 
We drove down I-5 and once you pass Sacramento there isn’t much to see or anyplace to stop until you get to Santa Clarita near L.A. It’s all farms and agriculture for 6 hours!

At one of the rest stops there were some facts about this part of Central Cali.  Over 200 different crops are grown here, and about 30 of them are exclusively grown here and nowhere else in the world.  25% of America’s food comes from right here!
We saw so many trucks with tomatoes, onions, limes, and a variety of other food.

Our first stop was at the William S. Hart Ranch & Museum . William Hart was one of the first and most famous silent movie cowboy star and actor. It was free and they give tours of his “mansion” that was at the top of the hill overlooking LA. One of the park’s workers told us we needed to climb the trail (pointing to where the trail was) and get up to the top for the mansion tour.
We started up the trail, and the trail soon disappeared and it really was seeming very odd that this was the trail up to the mansion?  If so, the trail was not very well travelled! 

And it was steep!  And it was HOT!  Only 105 that day. (We happened to go to SoCal during one of their worst heat waves). 

We even saw a herd of bison.

We had to figure out how to get around the huge cactus bushes. Hannah and Jacob were in flip flops.

It was quite an adventure getting to the top of that hill!  We finally made it though and had to rest for a bit before going on the tour.

It was a nice house and a nice air conditioned tour for about 30 mins. 

After the tour, we went back down – on a different trail.  Does this trail (road) look like it’s a little better? 

Yeah, we thought so too!  Certainly gave us all something to remember – hiking the “trail” up!
After our adventure, we went to LA and went to the California Science Center which is a really fun museum. 

We had been here before, but it had been a few years.  We really like this main atrium area from below and from top it has a nice view.

Meghan and Marissa rode the “tight-rope bike” but Jacob and Hannah were too little. :-(

We even saw Grandma Petersen – or at least we thought it sure looked like here when you look at her fast!  She even had a walker just like Gma Petersen has!

We went outside the museum and the kids had fun lifting up a truck using leverage. 

Then it was back to the hotel where the kids swam and watched TV.

The next day, we surprised the kids by taking them to the main event of our vacation:

The screamed with joy and amazement and surprisement! 

Yeah! They really did!  It was so fun!  We got a ocean view cabin and it was a new ship and the kids were so surprised!  It was the best little trip ever!! 

Oh wait, I think I was wishing out loud there……..  We went to the port of LA and walked around the “villiage” there and rode a small train that takes you up and down the port and watched a dancing fountain.  The whole time, we could see the ship in the background and Hannah had wished she didn’t see the ship because it reminded her of how much fun she had on the cruise and now she just wants to go that much more.  Marissa said the same thing.  Jacob stared at it and imagined the people walking around were in OUR CABIN!  And Meghan was remembering eating all the ice cream round the clock and Shelley just sighed wanting to go on another cruise and Doug just cried.
After we all were depressed that we were not going to board the ship, we went to a maritime museum, and played in the fountains.  Every 10 mins the fountain would have a show to music and lights. (Since it was so bright and hot out, we couldn’t see much of the lights, but we were told they were cool)

We walked past tons of fish markets and Hannah loved watching the crabs and lobsters.

We stopped into Ross while we were waiting to eat, and it was the messiest store I have ever seen!  I just had to take a pic, but I only had my cell phone cam so it’s not a very good photo.  But you get the idea. This was the CLEANEST aisle I could find.  The WHOLE store was like this!

The next day really was a surprise.  We told the kids were going to another museum but we really were going to Knott’s Berry Farm.  The last time Doug was there was about when he was 13 or 14.  We had never gone and it was time to try Knott’s. 

We were very very pleasantly surprised!  We loved it! Just as much or more than Six Flags.  Maybe because we have been so Six Flags so many times, that this was different.  Knott’s had some really unique rides that we had never been on before. The park was very very clean, ALL the rides were going and it was not busy at all!  (Just HOT)
We stayed there from 10am –10pm and had a blast!

Hannah saw this balloon guy and it reminded her of the guy in the movie “UP”. He looked like he was about to float away!

And this photo is a small fountain with lots of pennies and coins in it. Whenever we go somewhere, the kids collect “pressed Pennies” – I’m sure you’ve seen the machines at tourist places. Well, we didn’t want to go allt he way out to the car to get some pennies, so Shelley (yes, I said Shelley) went into the fountain and got out some pennies!  I wasn’t fast enough to get a pic of her!

Check out this roller coaster – it’s call the Pony Express and you ride horses!  It shoots you out of the chute all at once – no chain clickity click hill to climb.  It was a lot of fun!

Of course we loved the water rides…Hannah got the wettest!

Here is Shelley’s and Marissa’s favorite ride:

Takes you to the top and then drops you.
We saw an ice show and several other shows which were nice.

Hannah’s favorite was Montezuma’s Revenge (which is the same as Tidal Wave and Marriott’s Great America).  Shoots you pretty fast out towards a big loop, then up a straight up hill, and then goes backwards through the loop again.

We rode the steam train and Marissa was acting goofy (it was late – around 9:30pm)

We rode the underground mine train and saw the famous Knott’s mine:

They have a very good log ride there, similar to Splash Mountain at Disneyland.  Knott’s is very themed, like Disneyland is. It’s all themed with the Wild West in mind.  The log ride has several dark areas and I was taking photos of them so I could see what was in the dark that they didn’t want me to see. I was holding the camera above my head, and in one area heard a booming voice yell “SIT DOWN!!!”  They could see the light on the camera and they thought I was standing up!
You can see the camera here (that they were seeing me in) on the top right of the photo.

Xcelerator was awesome! Jacob loved it as did Doug.  Hannah was sad it was one of the few rides she couldn’t go on yet.  It starts by shooting you out at 82 MPH in 2.3 seconds!  Yes, that’s 2.3 seconds! Then straight up 200 feet (20 stories) and then back down and around again.  It was very scary! Jacob was shaking as we were sitting in the train getting ready to go. But at the top of the crest, he said “this is cool!” and he loved it!

It was time to go home all too soon.  The day went by quick but we were ready for bed!
We had to get two rooms since there are 6 of  us, and when mom wasn’t looking this is a TAME version of what Meghan and Marissa were teaching Jacob and Hannah:

The next day was Six Flags Magic Mountain.  It is pretty far inland (about an hour from LA) so it was really really hot..and pretty crowded especially for a Tuesday!  Some rides had a long wait, and others we didn’t even have to get off because there was nobody in line. We didn’t stay all day, but did have a good time there too.

Too soon, it was time to head home.
Back through the farms…even a few oil pumps along the side of the road too.

All in all, we had a great time at a low cost!  We were able to use points for the hotel, most of our food, Knott’s tickets and we already have Six Flags season passes, so we barely spent more than we would have sitting at home running the A/C playing games on the computer and watching TV!
Later that week, we finished off our “vacation” by seeing the new Harry Potter movie.  We found out that if you go early, (10am on a Saturday) you can get in for half price! )
Now, if we could have only been on that cruise ship!!!