We drove the block the Westin. We had gotten it on Hotwire for $70.00 or so. Because we are five now, we do Hotwire more than Priceline as you can choose four people instead of the two like Priceline. But it also means we pay just a little more.
It was a little fancier than I was prepared for in my travel clothes at 2am Ohio time. A zillion JetBlue employees were checking in in front of me. Some of them knew each other, but lots didn't. They were all just talking and discussing. Then the one pilot asks one of the cuter girls to go to Disneyland with him the next day. So they all wandered off keys in hand to discuss their plans for DL the next day. I was next and began to check in when a bartender comes running up to the desk clerk and says, "I need security called right now!" The bar had been rather noisy, but we hadn't been paying very much attention as it's a bar and good bars are noisy and we were listening to the pilots try and flirt with the cute girls. But at this we give our attention to the bar across the super fancy lobby and sure enough there is practically a old west brawl going on in the super contemporary lobby.
The clerk threw my keys at me, gestured in the general direction of the parking garage and I got the heck out of dodge.
We found a spot in the garage and headed towards the doors to the hotel. We play the license plate game, as you all know, so despite the late hour, we were all on plate alerts. And that is when I spied this:
Here's the backstory: A few weeks before, at the height of my California planning, Suzy and I were text conversing as we often do. I texted her "Why am I obsessing over this trip?" She texts me a picture of Jack Black and captions it: "The real question is, why am I watching Yo Gabba Gabba by myself?"
This then brought on a long text conversation about Yo Gabba being popular with adults being the sole thing wrong with Californians. It's like Steve Martin. I love Steve Martin. And most of the time I get his humor. But every once in awhile he goes too west coast for me and I'm like, "What???" I know I'm midwestern, not east coast. But when it comes to humor I'm much more likely to get a New York joke than a Cali one.
Prior to leaving for Cali we made our girls watch some cult Cali classics that we thought would be fun. Like Clueless and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. It WAS fun, but they didn't 100% enjoy the humor. They didn't laugh at the right places. Kind of like people not getting why Princess Bride or Napoleon Dynomite are funny.
So I took the above photo to text to Suzy the following morning. Upon receipt of it she said that maybe the person with that license plate created Yo Gabba. I rejected this. It was on an old Nissan. No. It was just an ordinary Californian with a sense of humor that just isn't funny.
After my deep contemplation of what an enjoyment of brightly colored be-wigged adults meant to the world, I fell into bed at 1:00 am Californian time.
At 6:30 am, Boo was awake. Ahhh!!! 5.5 hours of sleep. I didn't feel too hung over. Just a little bit. Moments after awakening the girls school called and asked about attendance. I told her we wouldn't be in today or the next day (the last day of school). She was a little jealous.
Boo was STARVING. She must have mentioned breakfast 30 times from awakening to the time we got breakfast. I'm sorry kid, but it takes time to get up, shower, and repack the vehicle for real and get going. I Yelped a place on our way. It was called the Serving Spoon. It seemed a pretty icky part of town, but that's what you get near an airport. Plus lots of LA seems kind of icky to me. It's like this block is nice and classy, this block is scary. One block away. Very confusing for out of towners. But I trust Yelp. It has never steered me wrong. We pull into this tiny strip mall which again, was kinda scary, and into the Serving Spoon we go. It was soul food, a family owned, black power place. The art was really beautiful and the coffee ROCKED!
The people eating in there were mostly black men having some kind of business meetings. 3-4 men per table wearing clothes I can only imagine cost WAY more than anything I've ever worn. It's the kind of place that famous musicians write lyrics on napkins. That's how I felt. I felt big deals were happening around me, deals I couldn't begin to understand.
Mulan and I split an omlet. It was really good and we practically licked our plates. They put tomatoes in their potatoes and it was a revelation to us both. With the onions, it added this wonderful sweetness. I haven't done it at home yet, but I intend to. Yum!
The service was fantastic. Boo told the beautiful server "I want dunky eggs!" which means over easy (dunky means she can dunk her toast in.) The server started laughing and said, "I have never heard of donkey eggs, what is that?" It was sooo funny. We all knew that we were from VERY different worlds but instead of it being a problem, both the wait staff and we the guests loved the culture shock. I think we will forever call over easy eggs Donkey Eggs from now on.
Here's my food. They separated our meal in the kitchen for us which was really nice of them:
We all went potty in the funny little tiny potty and then we were back in the car to hop on the 12 lanes of the 405. We crossed 6 lanes of traffic to get into the speedy carpool lane. If you think 20 mph is speedy, that is. Thank goodness Donald is a good driver. He actually enjoys the challenge of the LA traffic.
An hour in Donald says, "We just passed more people than the average person would have seen in their lifetime 100 years ago." Obviously, we have no idea if that's true, but it FELT true.
I didn't think to take a photo in the middle of all of it, but here we are coming out of LA into the mountains.
Having just been to Spain, I was surprised by how similar the scenery of the two seemed. The yellow and brown rolling hills, the architecture, the temperature. Very, very similar to Spain. Even though California is so very different scenery-wise from the rest of America, it seemed to me this trip that it was so very American. Maybe it's that movies have defined America the last 100 years and movies are produced out of California. Maybe it's because so many dreams have come true in California. Maybe because you are allowed to be 100% unique in California, which is a very American concept. Again, having been to Spain which is just recovering from a dictatorship and has a mentality of sameness. Everyone and Everything in Spain obeys. It is a country that follows the rules. So a few months later to be in a place that looks scenery-wise eerily similar to Catalonia, Spain but insists on never obeying nor following any unwritten (and sometimes even the written) laws made a stark contrast for Donald and I.
Any crazy, wild, teeny-tiny idea you have: try and sell it in California and it just might sell. Like Rob Kardashian starting a sock empire. Really? I'm sorry but that seems a silly idea. But he lives in California and there are NO silly ideas in Cali. You want to build an amusement park centered around a whistling mouse? Go ahead and build it in Cali and it may just become the most well known empire ever.
It reminded me of the famous Winston Churchill quote:
"Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all other possibilities.
And that is what makes California great. Because great things come from being allowed to be creative. And in Cali, creative reigns supreme, as was obvious from the multiple trucks with very, very interesting company logos on them.
I was loving this day. I love myself a good road trip. The purple little flowers all over the brown hills with the spiky yellow and white yucca flowers was delightful. The sky was bright, bright blue with fluffy, streaky white clouds. And our car had sirius radio which we thoroughly enjoyed. Boo was watching Alvin and Chipmunks with headphones on so the rest of we four were allowed in total peace to enjoy the breathtaking scenery and music.
We started this day at the airport which is at sealevel. By midmorning we were at 3,000 feet and the yellow and purple and deep green stopped abruptly. Instead there was brown lumps that Mulan proclaimed looked like baked potatoes. You would think this would be ugly but really it's fairly enjoyable. I don't have any pictures, however, as it is ugly in photos. It doesn't even look like earth. I think George Lucas secretly made Luke Skywalker from California, because Tatooine looks like that. We had thought it'd been inspired in Spain, and certainly the architecture is from Spain, Gaudi to be exact. But the countryside seems pure Cali.
At 4,000 feet you reach the central Cali plateau where all that delightful food we all love is grown. I love this part of Cali. So, so fertile. Where else can you go and have grapes, avacados, tomatoes, olives, oranges, cherries, strawberries, etc, etc all grow in one area at the same time? Amazing.
And even the center of the roads are pretty:
Miles and miles and miles of the most beautiful farm land with those flowers in the center of the road. So very peaceful.
The orange groves smelled like oranges even in our car. Ariel said it was like Living with the Land except actual land, not hydroponics. And I loved that there were beehives in between every field. So wonderful!
I've picked oranges off of trees before, but I've never seen actual orange season. They would have a truck go by and drop off these:
Then they had another truck with a portapotty on it and what I assume the foreman and helper. And then everyone else followed in groups in their cars.
Very cool.
We also drove by lots of windmills. I know I've seen windmill farms in Cali, but we didn't see any on this trip.
We wanted to get in on the action and so stopped by a side of the road fruit stand. There was no one manning it and a doorbell that said, "Ring for service." We dutifully rang the doorbell. When the lady came we asked if we could pick an orange from a tree. She seemed confused but gave her consent.
We headed over and all took our turn:
When we got back to the little stand to buy some oranges the lady had disappeared and would not reappear. So we took our 4 oranges and headed off. I guess in the long run we didn't steal a car, but we did steal 4 oranges from a confused lady.
Boo had stepped in something dead on this little stop. And had also turned a corner into viciousness. I'm not sure what made her so cranky, but happy little Boo was gone. Donald and I tried to eat the absolutely amazing oranges but they were so drippy with yumminess it was challenging in a car. Boo and Mulan refused to have anything to with the oranges. Boo because she was being a cranky-butt. Mulan because she doesn't like to get that messy.
We turned to go directly towards Sequoia and ran into a wonderful little strawberry stand. Mulan and I hopped out to get some.
I have a feeling this girl was exactly Mulan's age and I asked Mulan if she would be willing to run one of these stands. She and I both thought that she probably would. Especially if she got to keep half the money.
I have picked strawberries and know that it is hot, backbreaking, not at ALL fun work. But Mulan wanted to give it a quick try.
And I, of course, took the opportunity to get a great shot. Mulan felt that if her options were to run the stand vs. pick strawberries than the stand won hands down!
They also had cherries here. I opted not to buy any as normally we aren't cherry people. I think Donald wished I had as really everything is delicious in this little plateau so why not cherries?
Those berries were the best fruit I've ever had in any country, any fruit. And they were $2.00 a pint.
Next we stopped at Kaweah Lake. I mostly spent this entire stop cleaning Boo's shoes. There wasn't a formal source of water so I used the irrigation spouts that, of course, turn. So I got rather wet. That child was really annoying me at this point. But I did get them clean. And we took a few nice family photos.
As you can see, this is where the hills truly turn golden. The golden state.
It was 77 degrees. And then we headed up, up, up.
I'm sure we can work through it. I've been doing the WW points super plus plus. Or whatever the 12 version is called. I really like it. Much better than when it originally came out. I could NOT lose weight on it that first year. But they lowered my points by 3 per day and have tweaked the AP's and now I'm back to loving WW. Not as much as I love apple pie, but enough to happy with following it. 
I did sleep the last hour. I have a super awesome blow up neck pillow and blanket but I'd had to give the blanket to Boo. So I tried to have my sweaters make due but it wasn't the same.
Don't you just love all of the people who feel they are more important than everyone else? Seems to be a pretty common thing these days.
We all have a specialty in life, sadly my Disney knowledge is not very profitable for me. 
