California Vacation ... first stop.

The Family Vacation

Several months ago, Patty and I started dreaming about our summer vacation. Over the years, we have worked to have time away with our three children. These special trips have produced great memories that will go with us throughout our lifetime. We have had some unique experiences like climbing Dunn River Falls in Jamaica, snorkeling in Burmuda, salmon fishing in Alaska and the traditional beach vacation in Hilton Head. In the spring of this year, I started the hunt. Where should we go? What could we do? I dreamed about a quiet week in St. John or St. Thomas sitting by the beach doing nothing. Patty, on the other hand, kept saying that she had to be in California for a business trip and that we should take the kids along and have a West Coast vacation. I fought that thought for weeks, but I eventually gave in and began searching out experiences in California. We knew that the conference was the third week in July so we looked for a place to rent leading up to the conference. Traveling to California can be a major expense, but we had collected enough frequent flier miles for all five of us to fly to California. That sounded great, but then I was reminded that you could not fly when you wanted to. In fact, the only dates that were available were July 3^rd through July 21^st. Whoa … you mean that we will be on the road for nearly three weeks. Whew. That’s a long time.

Oh well, we got the tickets and began planning the trip. I started looking for places to stay on VacationRentals.com. We used this site early this year and it was great, but this time I could not land on a specific place. I searched and searched all up and down the state but nothing felt right for us. Either we could not afford it or it just was not the location that we needed. So, we decided to go the hotel route. We mixed it up from AAA.com, HiltonHonors.com, to Hotwire.com and Priceline.com.

We left Augusta on the evening of July 2, 2009. Our first stop was about five miles from our house. Yes, we stopped at Zaxby’s and had dinner. Then, we traveled on to the Sheraton Gateway near the Atlanta airport. If I remember correctly, we used Hotwire.com for this room and it was $65.00 per room. That night we had two rooms. Throughout the trip, we mixed it up from one to two rooms according to the price and features of the hotel.

Our flight left Atanta at 6:00 AM on Friday, July 3^rd. I love flying American Airlines out of Atlanta because their terminal is to the left of the ticketing counter. In other words, you don’t have to get on a tram to go to a concourse. It makes life a little easier. We stopped briefly in Dallas and then on to Orange County. When we stepped off of the plane, it was 9:00 AM Pacific time and a beautiful 72 degrees. WOW. This is why people live in California.

We made it to the car rental place and they did not have the van available that we rented. They upgraded us to a brand new Buick Enclave. It did not have as much room as a van, but overall it was very nice. The first thing that we did was to pull out the trusted GPS. We typed in Hollywood and followed the directions to tinsel town. We drove through the well known streets like Rodeo Drive, Wilshire Boulevard, Sunset Boulevard, Melrose Place and so forth. We had lunch at Houston’s and had a nice server named Michelle. Our kids will tell you that her name was Melissa, but that’s another story.

During lunch I kindly asked her if Los Angeles had a China Town and did it compare to China Town in New York or San Francisco. It was a innocent question, but my kids have not let me forget it. You see, the server was Asian. They felt like that I assumed that she would know about China Town because of her accent. No, I felt like she would know about it because she lived there. They declare that her name was Melissa and believe that I called her Michelle because of Michelle Kwan. Now, who do you believe?

We drove through the streets of Hollywood and then made our way to Venice Beach. This is the place where all of the people with unique personalities hang out. It was crowded and very interesting. Tattoos, body piercing, skate boards and open air weight lifting areas lined the shore. They even had a place where you could get a prescription for medical marijuana. There must be an epidemic of glaucoma in Los Angeles because there were a number of people using well-medicated.

We left Venice Beach and headed to Aracadia, CA. We checked into the Embassy Suites and had dinner at a Mexican Restaurant down the street. In retrospect, this was one of the best hotels of the trip. We loaded up and went to the Rose Bowl for Amerifest 2009. It was a DCI / Fourth of July event. If you don’t know what DCI means … Drum Corp International. I love DCI (little know fact).

One Sunday, we went to Mosaic Church’s 11:00AM service in Pasadena. A former Stevens Creeker, Steve Saccone spoke. We are very, very, very proud of Stephen and his work in Los Angeles. By the way, Stephen has a new book coming out in the fall, Relational Intelligence. We spent the afternoon at his house with his wife, Cheri and son Hudson and another former Creeker, Tyfanni Chaney. Tyfanni was on staff for several years before moving west.

We loaded up the car and headed north to Visalia and to Sequoia National Park. Stay tuned.