Disneyland

Thursday 6 April 2006, 9:30 pm


Thursday April 6

Highlights: Carrizo Plain National Monument, Disneyland, the Phone Call

I get up around 6 am after not having slept much. Mary gets up around 6:30 am. Very early for both of us. We're sorry we didn't have more time to visit with Carol.

We are on the road by 7:30 am. Destination: Disneyland! We have season passes so we can even drop by for just a couple hours at no charge. We got gas at some no-name city along highway 99. I want to see if there are wildflowers in the Carrizo Plain National Monument between Bakersfield and Santa Maria. There are lots, on the northwest end near Soda Lake. But afterward, Mary didn't think it was worth the detour.

While on the 405 approaching Garden Grove, I got a phone call that some of the paperwork I filed a couple of days ago was incomplete. We have to find a Kinko's, print a form from the web, fill it out, have it notarized, and send it in. We'll work on all that tomorrow.

6 pm: We arrive in the Disneyland area after being stuck on the 405 for a couple of hours. We've made several wrong turns, and we are both tired, hungry and grouchy. There are no rooms available in Anaheim. We decided to pay the 10 bucks to park in the lot, go to Disneyland, leave when the park closes at 11 pm, and get out to some other lesser town where we can find an inexpensive room.

In California Adventure, we went on the Tower of Terror, the roller coaster we missed last time and whose name I can never remember, and Soarin' Over California. We discovered that the Taste Pilot's Grill serves a gluten-free hamburger. But we did not eat there because the park closed before we could get to it.

In Disneyland, we ate the gluten-free burger at Club Buzz. Then we went on Space Mountain while the 50th anniversary fireworks were going off. Lots of others had the same idea, and the line for SM was very long. We were told later that we'd missed quite a fireworks show. Hopefully we'll get to see it again later this year. After Space Mountain, we went into the Haunted Mansion, which was closed when we visited in January. I thought we went on one other ride, but Mary says no. We were both really tired and we still didn't have a place to stay. We left around 10:30 pm.

We stayed at the Super 8 in El Monte. We both slept well tonight.

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