Some more of the trip that included my first trip to
Disneyland. We spent the weekend of December 26 and 27 just hanging around my aunt and uncle's house enjoying spending the time with our cousins along with going out to see the lights around Semi Valley.
Monday and Tuesday December 28 and 29 I am not sure here which day was which but we spent one day at Magic Mountain where I decided I did not care for riding coasters that much so I spent a lot of the day attending shows with my mom. The summer before our trip she had fallen down our stairs after loosing her footing on the first step. As the result of her fall she had broken her tailbown and one other lower vertibrae so she sat on a doughnut pillow made for her by one of her nephews who worked in a furniture and seat covering place at least for in the car in order to keep pressure off her tailbone. Riding a coaster was definently out of the question for her. I can say that I much preferred Disneyland and would have rather had a 2nd day there.
The other day we went and drove around Hollywood and later went to one of my Nana's (mom's mom) cousin and her husband's house for dinner. They lived in Beverly Hills. We got to go out and pick fresh oranges in their backyard. He took us for a drive in his cadallac to see the light around Beverly Hills. This would be our last chance to see him as he passed way not even 10 years later of a sudden heart attack. We have been blessed with her coming out to surprise Nana and Granddad at one of their milestone anniversary parties which my mom told her that she could have let her (my mom) know and we would have picked her up at the airport instead of her taking a cab almost 12 miles to the farm as we called Nana and Granddad's place and still do even though one of my cousins and her family live there now. She did agree not to call and get a cab to take her to the hotel she had reservations at and to let us pick her up the other days that we had things planned out at the farm instead of taking a cab those days. My mom could not convience her to just stay one night at the hotel (because it was too late to cancel that night) and then to come out and stay at our house for the rest of her visit. Nana's cousin was actually closer in age to my mom than to my Nana so it wouldn't have felt like an older relative staying with us. I was able to meet up with her and her 2nd husband when I went on a conference as part of a campus ministry group I was part of both as a traditional and later as a non traditional student finishing up my degree in university. (On that trip they came and met me at the hotel I was staying at and took me out for dinner at a pizza place nearby the night before we left to take the charter bus home after things wrapped up instead of waiting till the next morning due to predicted bad roads we would be facing on the way home from Salt Lake on into Montana). Sadly the orange trees were lost in the Northridge earthquake though the house was spared major damage.
Wednesday December 30 we loaded up the station wagon and said good bye to the cousins along with my aunt and uncle. We were heading North towards San Francisco and Sacramento. That night we would stay at another one my dad's aunt's place that she shared with one of her daughter's, son in law, and 19 year old granddaughter in Santa Clara. I ended up staying in the granddaughter's room, my brother and sister slept in the living room of the main house and my parents in the living room of the guest house where the daughter and her husband lived. We liked this aunt that we had never met before a lot better than the aunt we met earlier in our trip that we still talk about the peas she served for dinner. This aunt while what people would call a tea totaller sole strongly believed in being a good hostess that she had a huge long locked closet so full of every type of alcohol imaginable that while we were there that evening the neighbors came over to borrow a bottle of something when they got unexpected company. She thought nothing of it just introduced us all to the neighbors with this is my nephew and said my dad's name his wife said my mom's name and their children and said us kids names, walked into her bedroom and got the key and went and unlocked the closet door got the bottle the neighbor wanted to borrow and handed it to them. The next morning the granddaughter asked if she could do my hair as she was a student at the beauty school so we stopped by the school on our way out of town and she did my hair.
December 31 New years Eve. We drove to and around San Francisco where we saw people throwing pages of their calandars out of office windows. My dad commented that if he lived there he would be trading our manual transmission station wagon in for an automatic because even he came close to grinding gears a few too many times. Considering that my dad was used to operating 12-15 speed trucks that you have 4-5 speeds on each setting of a secondary gear shift this was saying something. We went to Fisherman's warf and enjoyed some clam chowder at a resturant as well as drove over both the Golden Gate Bridge before going onto Sacramento where would would spend the night with another "Cousin" and her husband who were stationed at McClellan Air Force base. This "cousin" and her husband were actually friends of my mom's 2nd oldest brother and his wife that they met while both my uncle and him were serving in the air force. She continued to spend time with the family even after the death of her husband who was an only child. She was originally from Austria while my uncle's first wife who passed away in late November 2001 of cancer was born and raised in the United Kingdom. She drove from Florida where she was living for my aunt's funeral.
January 1, 1988 we said our goodbyes and prepared to travel home planning on driving straight through back to our house in Montana with once again my parents switching off while us kids too turns staying up with them. Which was to mean my dad would be doing most of the driving and only letting my mom drive for short stretches while he caught a fast nap. The plan was to take Interstate 80 to the Junction with Interstate 15 and then to basically take the same route we had taken to California home. Adventure number one just outside of Colfax we started seeing signs letting us know that chains would be required over the pass. Since driving with chains is slow going my dad decided to wait until as long as possible before getting the chains out and putting them on the tires of the car to go over the pass. At Emigrant Gap there was a roadblock where they were making sure people not only had chains on but had snow tires as well. My dad still hadn't put on the chains but when he showed his Montana commerical driver's license and that we had chains and even offered to pull off and put the chains on the officer on duty took one look at our tires and went well normally we wouldn't let you go over without snow tires but since you have all seasons and obviously being from Montana are used to driving on snow and icy conditions have a safe trip and bid us farewell. My dad did take the time to put the chains on after asking if there were spots he could between there and the pass only to find out while there were some they were extremely narrow spots. I honestly think he was taking advantage of the fact that there was a building nearby for mom and us kids to go into rather than trusting all of us to stay perfectly still in the car as he attatched the chains so as not to rock the car.
Our license plate and vehicle description was radioed ahead to those on the other side of the pass along with the time we were heading in that direction. When I asked why my parents told me it was so that they knew if a vhicle did not make it across the next check point within a certain amount of time to go checking that they had not gone over the edge of the road or had a breakdown somewhere. We easily made it over the pass and my dad removed the chains as soon as he could legally remove them. We continued on our way through Reno Nevada and thorough the Northern Nevada Dessert onto Salt Lake City where we were able to see a lot more than we had on our way down it being during the daylight instead of the middle of the night. My parents decided to stop and get a hotel room at Bringham City Utah just north of Ogdan as they had gotten the Idaho and Montana Road reports to find out that there was a blizzard expected to hit West Yellowstone and figuring that we would be going through there around 3 am decided that since no one had to be back to school or work until the 4th that it would be best to get a room for the night besides mom's back was bothering her. We were able to get a nice two room suite complete with a kitchenette at the hotel. We continued the rest of the way home on Saturday January 2, 1988 arriving home in the mid afternoon where we got to work emptying the car and sorting laundry into all the correct piles so my mom could start laundry or at least tell us which load to grab and what setting to use. Much to her dismay I have not passed laundry sorting in her book as the only sorting I do is towels, my husband's jeans, and the items that have to be washed on knits most of which have to be either hung or dried flat instead of sorting towels by whites, bright colors and dark colors, and the knit and gentle loads by whites and colors with a seperate load for the items that are pinks, oranges, and reds. I don't have time for that besides isn't that what color catchers or color grabbers were invented for so I don't have to sort my laundry any futher than tempature and agitation setting on my washer. I will get to my 2nd trip to Disneyland in the next few days but I hope that you enjoyed reading about the trip that included my first trip.
to all!
