Disneyland Journal, Part 1. Going To Disneyland? Don't Start In Prescott.

As I sat down to try and blog about our recent Disneyland vacation, I realized that trying to recap it all would take a whole lot of time and I would leave stuff out and the post would be eons long, so I decided to do it a little different. I will give a running journal of our days, one day at a time over the course of the next couple weeks. This way, I can cover everything and get more pictures in and hopefully keep the posts manageable. We will see how it goes. With that said, the first day of our vacation went as such:

10:05 - Kissed Kate and said goodbye as we left her with Shannon's Aunt Charlene in Prescott. Stopped and went back and kissed Kate again.

10:09 - Got all the kids loaded in the van and then couldn't help it. I went back in and kissed Kate again and tried not to cry.

10:13 - Realized I had left my Dr. Pepper in the refrigerator and went back in to get the most important traveling item I had. Would rather forget all hair care items than my Dr. Pepper...Just checking if you are awake out there.

10:15 - Kissed Kate a third time and finally get out the door. At this point I lost an argument with Shannon about whether we really needed to leave Kate at all. She would be fiiinnnneeee!!!! Oh well, here we go.

11:15 - Braden is car sick. I am pretty sure he doesn't really know what car sick means. To him, I think car sick is that he is sick of being in the car. However, we are on a curvy mountain road (if you want to go to Disneyland, never start from Prescott, AZ) so we let him out of the car for some fresh air. He gets back in and goes to sleep. When he awakens, all is fine.

11:45 - Not being on an interstate is proving problematic. Shannon is starting to really need a restroom. However, the "towns" we are passing through on this back way are proving not to be ideal bathroom locations. I love my hometown, but imagine trying to figure out where to use the bathroom in Duncan if you were passing through. By the way, Duncan would have been the biggest town we passed through if it were on this highway. We did see one promising place, Big Mama's Roadhouse, but the sign underneath saying, Bikers Welcome, tipped the balance in favor of not stopping.

11:55 - Pass through Yarnell, AZ. Prior to this trip, I didn't know there was a Yarnell, AZ. I mention this only because Shannon saw that they had a museum which had a big sign announcing, "We Have Brand New Dead Things!"

12:25 - Pass through Hope, AZ. It took 20 seconds and at the end of the town, a sign stating, "You are now beyond Hope." This had special significance for us as Shannon had still not found a suitable bathroom. Also, we had passed no less than 15 RV parks during this stretch and realized the movie, RV, is not that much of an exageration. Hallelujah, I-10 is only 10 minutes away.

12:45 - Reach Quartzsite, AZ. Stop at McDonald's and Shannon finally gets to much needed bathroom, except...line is out the door. Could someone explain Quartzsite to me? Thousands of senior citizens gather each winter to park their RVs five feet from each other and go look for rocks...That's it as far as I can tell. Town doesn't even appear to have a pizza restaurant firmly attached to the ground, but has the largest RV dealership I have ever seen. I am sure it makes sense to someone, I am just not that someone.

2:30 - Shannon again is needing a restroom. She started with four water bottles in the front seat. You do the math. However, rain has begun to fall in CA (yes, we had made it to CA) and traffic on the Interstate has begun to crawl. We covered 10 miles in 1/2 hour. None of those miles happened to have a bathroom.

6:30 - (This is the last entry with Arizona time. The local time in CA was 5:30, we shall now refer to everything in the pacific time frame.) We finally reach our hotel. If you do the math, that is 8 hours and 15 minutes in the car. Sure glad we were able to break up that 9 hour drive from Thatcher to Anaheim by stopping in Prescott over night. Very glad at this point Shannon won the argument about bringing Kate.














6:30 - Arrive in Disneyland. Logan very very excited and our first ride is....The Disneyland Railroad. It had been raining all day, but had blown over. However, still pretty cold. In our previous trips we had never made it on the train and so this was all of our kids' first ride on the train. Result...Braden loves it and demands a verbal contract that we ride it 5 times every day that we are in CA.














7:30 - Logan had said he wanted his first ride to be the Dumbos. He changed his mind when he saw the train, but the Dumbos were then officially next on the agenda. As we get on the Dumbos, it begins to rain again. Did I mention it was cold?














7:40 - We sit down in the Village Haus to eat dinner. My favorite part of Disneyland is...I spent $18 for my kids to eat Mac and Cheese. I don't complain about the prices because it is what it is. But the irony of this particular meal, knowing that Shannon is usually able to get a box of mac and cheese that will feed all three for 50 cents, is not lost on me.

8:40 - Fireworks start. This is the whole reason I paid for tickets for this day. It is the only day they will have the fireworks and I love them. Amazingly, they did not get rained out. For the first time ever, Braden actually watches the fireworks without freaking out. Plugged his ears, but watched them. Logan however, hated them. I held him as he cried a bit and he buried his face in my shoulder. He was so scared that he...fell asleep on my shoulder. What do I expect from a four year old who just spent 8+ hours in the car. What this does mean is that I get to carry him all the way back to the hotel. My back was a little tired when we got back. Oh if I had only known what was to come.