Our trip to WDW and USA

[Terkina]

21.February

Today our plan was to go into Mexico just to take a geocache. But that turned out to be impossible without taking the car with us to Mexico. We didn't want to do that since you can't take a rental car into Mexico. So we dropped that project.

Instead we drove to Alamogordo, New Mexico. Our original plan was to spend the night here. But since we arrived around lunch time we decided to continue driving. We went to Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation, Mescalero, New Mexico.

On our way to Mescalero we saw snow for the first time on our trip. It was now 34ºF outside. But the roads were snow free and dry so it was no problem driving. It probably had been more difficult driving there early in the morning because the sun wouldn't have had time to melt the snow from the roads.

After spending a little time in Mescalero we drove back to Las Cruces where we spent the night at a Motel 6.

 

[Terkina]

22.February


Today we drove from Las Cruces, New Mexico to Bowie, Arizona and from Bowie we took a little road through the Apache Pass and down to road 191 to Tombstone.

We stopped in a rest area beside the road and saw these guys

It's not normal to have so large motorhomes at home so we just had to take a picture. We saw a lot of these on the road during our trip.

If I remember right this is the view from Bowie to the Apache Pass.

And here is the road in the Apache Pass

Now we are out of the Apache Pass and on road 191 towards Tombstone

It was a beautiful view

My friend really likes Western movies so we had to stop at O.K Corral so he could see in real life what he has seen in the movies

We finally arrived at O.K Corral
We parked the car and went to have a look.

Tombstone is an old mining town that has been burned down several times and then been rebuilt. Tombstone has been called the town that refused to die. When the mines where shut down Tombstone was about to be a ghost town. But then they made a movie about Tombstone and Wyatt Earp which made a lot of tourist go to Tombstone to see the places from the movie.

Now they have rebuilt the old town like it was in the 1860. It's this place they now call O.K Corall. They have several shows here each day about Billy the Kid.

After spending a few hours in O.K Corral we drove to Benson where we spent the night.

 

[Terkina]

23.February

We went to Arizona Sonora Desert Museum outside of Tucson. The cactus plants was fascinating. The only cactus plants we have where we're from are small cactus houseplants that we have in our window sill. So it was fascinating to see them so big.

And here is a mum cactus with her baby cactuses

When we got tired of walking in the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum we went back on the road and drove right outside of Wellton, Arizona (not that far from Yuma, Arizona) where we took a geocache powertrail.

A powertrail is a lot of geocaches (often at least 100 geocache) placed a long a trail or a road with 528 feet between each geocache.

We found 54 geocaches and we searched for 2 geocaches that we didn't find. It started to get dark and by the time we were back where we started it was completely dark. So the last few geocaches we had to use a flashlight to find.

We spent the night in Yuma.

 

[Terkina]

24.February

Now we are half way on our road trip. We are 1 day before schedule.
Before we left Norway my friend made a route for us to drive and he found out which day we had to be in Los Angeles, California to be able to drive all the way back to Orlando, Florida to catch our flight back home.

Since we are one day before schedule my friend asked me if I wanted to spend one extra day at Disneyland Resort of course I said yes to that. So last night before we went to bed we booked two nights at Super 8 Anaheim.

Today my friend really wanted to drive through desert landscape. We could see on the map what road we should take, but we never found the road when we drove. So we ended up driving on I-8. We could see some dessert landscape and we also got to experience what it can be like out there if a sandstorm comes a long. It was only a little wind outside today. But it was enough so the sand blow on to the road so we could imagine that you can't see much of the I-8 if a real sandstorm comes.

We are now quite close to the border of Mexico. So we drove by a few border control posts.

We drove off I-8 and on to a road towards Jacumba, California. We found some geocaches a long the way.

One of the geocaches we found. We had never seen this type of geocache before so we had to take a picture of it

The front

The back where you remove the lid to find the log sheet.

We were stopping along the road to find some geocaches now and then. At one point another car stops in front of us and just watches what we are doing. We find the caches and continue on our route.

Not long after we notice a boarder patrol car coming in the other direction and before we know it it has turned around and are now behind our car. We don't dare to stop and find any more geocaches. So we cancel our project and just drive on towards Anaheim. After a while the boarder patrol stops following us. We think that the boarder patrol checked our license plate and found out it was a rental car from Florida and then just drove off without stopping us.

That was our little adventure of the day

We got to our Super 8 motel in Anaheim around 03.30pm. We got our room and was ready to leave for Disneyland one hour later

I thought we were only going to be in Disneyland for one day. So my original plan was only to visit California Adventure and get to see the new Carsland.
Well now that I got 1 full day and 2 half day I decided to visit California Adventure on the two half days because on the one full day we were going to be there California Adventure was going to have early EMH that we couldn't use. So if we had chosen to go to California Adventure when they had early EMH we wouldn't be able to get FP for Radiator Springs Racers.

I decided that we should go to California Adventure this evening because then we would get one full day at Disneyland park and 2 1\2 days at California Adventure park.

When we got to the parks it was a huge crowd outside the parks. It was a very long line to the ticket boots. But we decided to go and get tickets anyway. We had to stand in line for at least 1 hour just to get the tickets. We got our tickets and off we went to California Adventure

I don't think we did any attractions. We only walked around taking in the atmosphere. We got FP for World of Color. It is a really nice show.

 

[Luvchefmic]

whoa honestly I'll bet the border patrol DID run your license plate, glad they didn't pull you over when you first started telling us about them I thought, Oh boy there could be trouble down the road for this I know they are illegal on Disney property as you mentioned

I have mixed feelings about geocaches, one part of me feels like the hunt could be fun another part feels like since 9/11 we all can't be too careful, know what I mean ? Anyway glad you didn't have alot of explaining to do to law enforcement


Arizona is a beautiful state I stayed there at a friends house near Wounded Knee ? don't really remember it was over 40 years ago I had my license about 6 months and took my first road trip form NY to CA but do remember how pretty AZ and NM were have never been to DLR I would have jumped on that opportunity too, loving the report

Ruthie

 

[Terkina]

whoa honestly I'll bet the border patrol DID run your license plate, glad they didn't pull you over when you first started telling us about them I thought, Oh boy there could be trouble down the road for this I know they are illegal on Disney property as you mentioned

I have mixed feelings about geocaches, one part of me feels like the hunt could be fun another part feels like since 9/11 we all can't be too careful, know what I mean ? Anyway glad you didn't have alot of explaining to do to law enforcement


Arizona is a beautiful state I stayed there at a friends house near Wounded Knee ? don't really remember it was over 40 years ago I had my license about 6 months and took my first road trip form NY to CA but do remember how pretty AZ and NM were have never been to DLR I would have jumped on that opportunity too, loving the report

Ruthie

I can understand why you have mixed feelings about geocaching. It's so different in the USA than in Europe. In USA people quickly starts to wonder what other people are up to. They don't do that in Europe.

 

[Terkina]

Disneyland Park
Today we visited Disneyland Park. We walked to and from the parks each day. It was a nice walk from Super 8. The only downside was that they haven't put up signs towards Disneyland when you walk. So we had to use the map we got from our motel to try and find the parks.

We went on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. I didn't like that ride.
We also went on Alice in Wonderland. It was nice.

The rest of the time we strolled around the park and watched the live entertainment.

We saw the Jambalaya Jazz in New Orleans Square

We also ran into this gang. They were so much fun

And we watched the Mickey's Soundsational Parade.

The park closed early so we went back to our motel when the parade was done.


We liked the two Disneyland Parks a little better than WDW because:

• we could walk to and from the parks and our motel
• you got a lot of attractions and shows in short distance from each other

I think that WDW is better for wheelchairs because most of the rides are main stream now. And at every attraction in WDW there were always a CM outside the attraction to tell us where to go if we couldn't use the main entrance.

At Disneyland and California Adventure there were no CM's outside most attractions so you had to find out for yourself if you had to use the exit to enter an attraction or if you could use the main entrance.

 

[Luvchefmic]

Never been to DLR but really hope to get there someday I would love to walk down the original Main St where Walt actually did Sleeping Beauty castle looks so pretty

I really like the way they have the Partners statue surrounded by a gate or fence it makes me so mad at WDW when I see people sitting on the base and then they get up and walk away and you see their empty popcorn cups napkins etc left there and in the flowers so rude

 

[Terkina]

26.February


We had breakfast and packed our things into the car and checked out before we walked to California Adventure. We got there right after 09.00am. We thought the parks opened at 9, but it turned out that they didn't open until 10.00am. So there we stood in line waiting with A LOT of people.


When the turnstile opened (they opened before 10.00am we got inside the park and now had to wait for Rope Drop inside the park. We decided to go in the line for FP for Radiator Springs Racers. The line was HUGE. We had to leave the parks by 01.00pm so if the FP return time was for after 12.30pm we decided to jump out of the line and go and explore the rest of the park.


We ended up getting a return time between 12.10 and 01.10. When we had got our FP we went to give TSM a try. The standby time wasn't bad at all 10 minutes when we got in line.


I don't like roller coasters. But still I agreed on going on Goofy's Sky School. It was awful. The only thing I got from the ride was a confirmation that I don't like roller coasters.

This is at the entrance to a bug's land

We just walked around taking in the atmosphere.

Picture taken outside of Cars Land

Outside Pacific Wharf

Then our return time for Radiator Spring Racers came and we went over to Cars Land just to find out that the ride was down They didn't know for how long it would be down but it would be down for at least one hour.

We had to leave the parks so we found a young couple that we offered our FP to. It turned out that the guy had relatives in Sweden and friends living in Tromsø, Norway. When we said that we live in Tromsø we started laughing and agreed that it really is a small world.

I was so sad when we left the park that wen a CM asked if we were taking a break from the parks and coming back later or if we were leaving for the day and after I had answered her that we had to leave I started to cry. I thought it was so sad that we were leaving because I thought we hadn't got to explore everything we wanted yet and I thought that I would never be able to come back to Disneyland or WDW ever again

When my friend asked what was the matter I told him and he said that we probably would be back now that he knows how much Disney means to me. Well I won't believe it before I see it


We got into the car and drove to Hollywood. We found a place to park the car and went to have a look at the Hollywood sign and Walk of Fame.

Look what we found at Walk of Fame

And of course the Hollywood sign

It now started to get dark so we got back to the car and tried to get out of Los Angeles. That wasn't easy even with a GPS. But we found our way out after taking some wrong turns and then we drove to Victorville, California where we spent the night.

 

[Terkina]

Never been to DLR but really hope to get there someday I would love to walk down the original Main St where Walt actually did Sleeping Beauty castle looks so pretty

I really like the way they have the Partners statue surrounded by a gate or fence it makes me so mad at WDW when I see people sitting on the base and then they get up and walk away and you see their empty popcorn cups napkins etc left there and in the flowers so rude

Neither WDW or Disneyland Resort comes close to how dirty and untidy Disneyland Resort Paris is. In the park outside of Paris people have been tagging in Downtown Disney and in the parks there is dirt and garbage everywhere. In addition people don't respect the smoking areas so they smokes everywhere. Even in the lines for attractions. It's awful. And none of the CM's seems to bother because CM's never tell people to stop smoking around the parks when a CM sees it.

So I thought both WDW and Disneyland Resort was very nice maintained and clean. And the guests are much nicer in the USA than in Disneyland Resort Paris.

 

[Luvchefmic]

I'd heard that about DL Paris, what a shame. I felt bad that you got so upset thinking you would never see DLR or WDW again but glad your friend understands and now I know you will too. Next time you do come over you will have to allow a night to come to my house (I am only about 30 miles from entrance to DHS) for an authentic Italian meal and to meet Maxine, I have always been touched that you said if you didn't live so far away you would have wanted to help with her when I got hurt

That was pretty amazing when you gave the FP to those people to find out living in the same town that is AMAZING !

keep the report coming

 

[Terkina]

I'd heard that about DL Paris, what a shame. I felt bad that you got so upset thinking you would never see DLR or WDW again but glad your friend understands and now I know you will too. Next time you do come over you will have to allow a night to come to my house (I am only about 30 miles from entrance to DHS) for an authentic Italian meal and to meet Maxine, I have always been touched that you said if you didn't live so far away you would have wanted to help with her when I got hurt

That was pretty amazing when you gave the FP to those people to find out living in the same town that is AMAZING !

keep the report coming

I would love to meet you and your animals some day

 

[Terkina]

I have to tell you something. Two of my cats have a tooth disease called Resorptive lesion or FORL. If a tooth is affected the only thing they can do is to remove the tooth. There isn't any cure for this disease.

Anyway the two cats was at the vet about 2 weeks ago and Esmeralda (one of the cats) had a tooth that now got FORL and it needed to come out.
She had to eat only wet food and not the kibble that she usually eats for several days.

Now she won't eat kibbles She decides to starve rather than eating kibbles I talked to the vet and she said that cats can't go without eating for long before the liver starts to take damage. And we don't want that to happen.

I have now taken kibbles in the wet food. And I'm hoping to take less and less wet food in the kibbles so she will start to eat kibbles again.

She will start to complain if I only have kibbles available for her when she is hungry. I tried to show her the kibbles and told her she could eat it. I took a kibble in my hand and gave it to her. Now she eats it. I take another kibble in my hand and gives it to her. Once again she eats it. I try to show her that she can eat from the food bowl. But she refuses.

At least now I know that she can it the kibbles if she wan't to. The problem is she doesn't want to eat it unless she is hand-fed.

I hope I can get her to eat kibbles on her own soon.

Lesson learned. The next time one of the cats need to eat wet food. Take the kibble and put a little water in it so it gets wet enough for the cats to eat it while they need wet food.

 

[DMGeurts]

Just stopping by to wish you a...

Loved the above updates... Sad about Disneyland Paris - I am not sure I will ever make it there - the girls might however, when they head to Europe in a few years to spend the summer with their uncle and family...

Sorry about your kitty - I am glad she is feeling better and only a little finicky now.

D~

 

[Terkina]

Just stopping by to wish you a...

Loved the above updates... Sad about Disneyland Paris - I am not sure I will ever make it there - the girls might however, when they head to Europe in a few years to spend the summer with their uncle and family...

Sorry about your kitty - I am glad she is feeling better and only a little finicky now.

D~

Thanks D~ I hope I can get my cat to eat kibbles again soon.

 

[Terkina]

An update about my cat. My cat Esmeralda was at the vet today for a checkup and to remove the stitches in her mouth. I also said that she won't eat kibbles. The vet suggested to try a different kibble. So we got a few different samples of kibbles.

When we got home I gave here some of the new kibbles and she ate So now the strategy is to mix the kibbles I got from the wet with the kibbles I normally feed my cats. Hopefully she we will be eating kibbles as normal again soon

 

[Terkina]

27.February

Today we started by driving on Route 66 to Barstow, California. We wanted to visit the Route 66 museum located there. But the museum is only open on the weekends at this time of year and since it was Wednesday today it was closed.

So we drove to Newberry Springs, California to Bagdad Cafe. My friend has seen this cafe in at least one western movie. So we had to stop here to take a look

After a visit at Bagdad Cafe we continued on Route 66 to Amboy, California and then we continued to Williams, Arizona.

 

[Terkina]

28.February

In Williams, Arizona it was cold. It was snow on the ground and below 32ºF We were not sure if we could drive to Grand Canyon so we considered whether we should take the train or drive our self.

We decided to drive our self because then we could decided how long we wanted to be in Grand Canyon and where in Grand Canyon we wanted to go.

It was no problem driving to Grand Canyon. The roads was snow free. We used our annual pass for National Parks that we had bought earlier on our trip. View got to see a lot of Grand Canyon. But the northern part of Grand Canyon was closed until mid May. We spent most of the day in Grand Canyon. It's a lovely place.

We took a lot of pictures of Grand Canyon. Here are a few of them.

After spending the day in Grand Canyon we drove to Tuba City, Arizona where we spent the night.

 

[DMGeurts]

Good morning Lillian!!!

I loved your updates... But for some reason your pictures are not showing up??? I hope you are able to fix them, because I'd love to see.

D~

 

[Terkina]

Good morning Lillian!!!

I loved your updates... But for some reason your pictures are not showing up??? I hope you are able to fix them, because I'd love to see.

D~

The pictures shows up fine on my computer. I will try to see if it works on another computer. What do you see instead of pictures? The HTML code or just a broken picture?