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Saturday, July 28th, 2007

The Most Expensive Happiest Place on Earth

After 50 weeks and 21000 miles on the road we returned to the in-laws last Saturday July 21st at 5 minutes before midnight. 2 weeks sooner than expected.

First however I need to talk about the leading up to our return. 

A couple of months ago Allison’s parents told us that they wanted to invite us to Disneyland. All we had to do was pick a day. We chose Julian’s birthday and used the time to get the kids excited abut it, since they didn’t know what Disneyland was.  It turns out that Dan (Allison’s dad) and I weren’t all that excited, because we were both very skeptical how much we would enjoy it. I was mainly worried about the culture shock for us, not being able to drink and drive, have to buckle up (even the kids), not being allowed to ride in the back of pickup trucks, but also a lot of stupid rules and regulations out of fear of lawsuits. For example, Julian wasn’t allowed to go one of the safest slides I have seen in the last 11 month, because he wasn’t able to swim from 1 end of the pool to the other. With a waiting parent and at least 3 lifeguards this slide wouldn’t propose any hazard, especially since he has been on slides 3 times the height and speed. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against rules. After all I am German and I think we are the inventers of rules and regulations, but there is also a thing called common sense and another thing called law suites. So yes, I was a little disturbed at first, mainly because I had to keep telling the boys: “Oh no, we are back in America, you can’t do that here!” I must say however that the people enforcing all of those rules did it in a very friendly way. 

Allison & Julian, Allison's Parents and William in the Teacups

 

I was also a bit worried about Disneyland, because I didn’t want to spend 3 days there going on children’s rides and I was not sure if either one of the in-laws would go on the cool rides with me. Luckily it turned out that Dan seemed to enjoy them as much as I did and everyone had a great time. We had such a great time that we didn’t even have any family blow-outs like we did when we met in Costa Rica.

Maybe it was unnecessary to be worried about having a good time there, because after all, it’s “The happiest place on earth!” I was reminded of that when I watched a young mother screaming at her little girl: “Stop being crabby now. This is the happiest place on earth!”  And you must be happy if you are willing to spend 32 dollars on a pizza.  Or 10 dollars on a Big Mac, fries and a coke.  I don’t have any other explanation for those prices. 

Other rules that struck me as odd at Disneyland were: while it’s not allowed for pregnant woman to go on a 4 foot long waterslide, people go out of their way to make every ride as handicapped accessible as possible. And that’s actually a great thing, but that also means hoisting 600+ pound people on and off their electric scooters into a ride that catapults you several hundred feet in the air and freefall down to the ground. I guess it must be safer or a smaller risk of being sued to let the fattest of the fat go on multi g rides than the expected mother on a baby waterslide.

I also couldn’t help but notice that Allison isn’t quite right with her statement that Germans are some of the worst dressed peoples in the western world. While I don’t think she is wrong with this statement and I am certainly not the kind of person who dresses in a way to improve the image of the Germans, I must say, Americans are right up there with the Germans, when it comes to being dressed badly. I have no eye for fashion or style, but anyone who does must get headaches when watching people in Disneyland. 

Despite all that everyone had a great time and after 3 days there and a birthday breakfast for Julian with Goofy were also ready to head on.

The plan was to spend about another 10 days on the road to get from LA to Seattle. There were still a lot of things we wanted to see and 7 or 8 people we wanted to visit. We spent the first night in a State Park at the Pacific near Santa Barbara. We didn’t really like it too much there and decided to speed up the rest of the trip, because we had less and less motivation of packing in and out. So the next day we drove the “Big Sur highway” passing 2 towns we originally wanted to stop in. We made it to Stockton, spent the night in a motel and left early the next morning to hopefully make it to Medford, Oregon or maybe even a bit further.  When the place we wanted to stay was full, we were not in the mood for searching another place and decided to just keep driving. On this day we drove 800 miles. That’s by far the longest time we have spent on the road and almost 3% of our entire trip. Everything went pretty smooth, and we were even greeted by rain and gray skies right after entering into Washington. But with the rain came some car problems. Not only did the heater not work (we didn’t need it in Mexico), but it engine also started acting strange. The car started stuttering and for a while it seemed that we might not make it back that day and have the first serious breakdown after over 21000 miles and less than 100 miles from home. Luckily the stuttering stopped and we made it back at 5 minutes before midnight where the in-laws were very happily awaiting us. It was a great relief for them to see us (especially the grandkids) back home. The kids are also having a great time, because they get so much attention now and are reunited with all of their old toys that they didn’t get to play with for almost 1 year.

As for Allison and me, I guess we are sort of happy to be back. We are done with traveling for a while. It’s great to see the in-laws being reunited with the boys and we are looking forward to moving back to our house in Seattle in the middle of August, but it will be hard to get used to a life without the sun. So far I have only seen it once since we are back and we have only been cold. 

Even though we are back in the states, this is not the end of our blog, because we still have a lot of thoughts and stories that we want share and as long as the yodavan is up and running, we will have stories to share.

New Experience 117

Thursday, July 12th, 2007

It seems every time I am writing a blog I am whining about not wanting to drive more and not wanting to see many more things, because most likely we have seen it even better on our trip before. We visited over 100 places, had to pack in and out over 100 times as well and it is getting tiring and after the disappointment on the Baja we thought things would get a little easier in the States. Boy where we wrong.

It started at the border. We had to stand in line for about 1 hour at the Tijuana crossing and made it to the US without any problems. Even the US customs officers, who usually make so much drama, were all relaxed. The only problem was that there was no office where we could cancel our Mexican car permit and turn in our tourist cards. That’s a must, because otherwise we wouldn’t be allowed to return to Mexico in the future. So we had to drive back into Mexico, find the office to turn in our permits and stand in line for another hour to get back to the US. Again no drama.

After that we weren’t sure where to go next. All we knew was that we wanted to visit our friends in Vegas (we wrote about them in August 2006 in the blog called “My man Wolf” ) and spend 1 night somewhere between San Diego and Vegas. We stopped at a visitor center near the border and mapped out our route. Everything seemed to be a piece of cake until we noticed that the further away from the coast we got , the hotter it got and despite being at almost 5000 feet (1500 meters) the temperature reached over 100 degrees (38 Celsius) and we were told that it doesn’t cool down a lot at night. We had too many hot and uncomfortable nights in the Yodavan so we decided to drive back to the coast and look for a hotel. We finally found one in San Bernardino, just a few blocks away from the original Mc Donald’s. I must say, that after 11 months on the road this was the first time that I really felt unsafe. Our hotel was clean and had a small pool, but the area around it was not a place I would want to hang out at night. Being back in the States started out very strange.

The next day we started early to make the way through the desert before it would get too hot (Allison’s mom warned us that the temperatures in Vegas are 115 degrees (46 Celsius), but they actually got to 117 degrees (47 Celsius). This was the hottest temperature I ever experienced in my life and I loved it. We had little things lately that we haven’t seen or experienced in the last 11 months, but 117 degrees was definitely a new experience. In this heat you can’t even open the car without burning yourself. In the car it got so hot that some contacts of my stereo melted. The refrigerator in the Yodavan has a little cooling fan that comes on when it runs for a long time. This fan was on even when the fridge was turned off.

Las Vegas Temperature

Despite the extreme heat we had the best time there. When we arrived Daren greeted me with a cold beer to their air-conditioned house with pool. Yes they have upgraded. They had a spectacular house the last time we visited, but this one is ever better. We had 2 bedrooms to ourselves, nice yard, pool, cable and satellite TV, WIFI a fridge full of beer and good food and they even let us use their car with A/C. It was exactly what we needed. We didn’t go to any casinos, no nightlife, and no strip. We just spent time with Lynn and Daren ran some small errands and enjoyed the heat at the pool which we have used 3 times in a day.

Swimming in Las Vegas

I was also able to use the time to visit the Wolf again to fix some small problems with the Yodavan and once again we he did a great job and it runs like new again. So the next time you have car problems in Las Vegas you should go and see the Wolf.

We were sad to leave Vegas toward LA where we will meet Allison’s parents, who invited us to Disney Land. It will be great to see them meet the kids again, but Disney Land can also be a culture shock for us, since we are still used to parks where the rides are hand cranked.

I was (am) a little worried how we will adjust to life in the US after spending a long time in the third world, so staring out with extremes (Las Vegas and Disney Land) is just the shock treatment we need.

Up the Baja

Thursday, July 5th, 2007
It was tough to leave Ajijic – we had a great apartment, kids in a good school, a lot of free time and met some nice people to hang out with.  But our next stop was the ... [Continue reading this entry]