Kings (and Queen) of the wild frontier

[TrueBlue]

Kings (and Queen) of the wild frontier

Pre Trip report

The cast
Me - Marion - 44 years old (but age is just a number right?!) My passion is travelling and would love nothing else than to take 6 months out of my hectic personal life and tour the good old USofA.

DH - Ramsay - my long suffering 41 year old hubby. Just takes things as they come and goes with the flow. So laid back he’s almost verticle. He works hard and enjoys his holidays as much as I do. I think he would prefer a holiday where he just lays by a pool all day but he does enjoy his Florida trips too.

DS - Callum - 17. Loves theme parks and the scariest rides he can find. He doesn’t have any fear of very much (except spiders). Callum is in his final year at High School and going onto college in August to study Coaching and Developing Sports. He’s a very sporty person and extremly fit but is also a typical grumpy teenager at times

DS - Scott - 12. Well what can I say about the youngest of the family. Scott is in his first year at High School and is a very sociable boy. He’s a bit like me as in loves travelling and seeing new things and places. He loves Florida and Disneyworld and is looking forward to visiting Disneyland in California

Here is some of our family photo’s taken over the past 2 or 3 years………………...

So that’s the introductions over with and now on with our planning!

When we came home from our last Florida trip in October 2013 I said to Callum that he could choose the next holiday. The choice was between Florida and California and it would be part of his 18th birthday present. I have always wanted to tour California and was chuffed to bits when he chose to do the West coast tour. I have been to the west coast once before but it was over 20 years ago and we stayed for a week in Anaheim and a week in Vegas. I can’t remember much about it so this will feel like my first trip.

I did some rough calculations and knew there was no way we could afford to go the following year so we set about planning for 2015.

I decided to spend 2014 ploughing all my time into building up my business (which I succeeded in) and pay off my credit card bill (again which I succeeded in) and start pricing up things like flight prices, hotels, car hire etc etc etc.

Fast forward to August 2014 and I started to look at flight prices. I didn’t think we could go in the summer holidays because of the flight prices from Scotland but thought i’d have a look anyway. I put in some dates with British Airways and was delighted with the prices that were appearing on my screen. I thought there must be a catch somewhere and didn’t want to build up my hopes but I checked about 5 times and the same price kept coming up.

I pinged a text over to Ramsay to get him to double check if he could get the time off work. He had a quick look at his diary and the man from delmonte said ‘Yes’ - happy happy happy.


Sooooooo on the 10th August 2014 I booked the following flights :

28th June - EDIN - LHR
29th June - LHR - LAX
15th July - LAX - LHR
16th July - LHR - EDIN
Price was £615 per person - bargain! (well for us anyway).



This is the start of our school holidays in Scotland and we’ve never been able to go away at this time of the year before. Even our flights to Orlando in October are more expensive than this.

So I drafted up a rough plan of where we wanted to visit before booking hotels. We went with the following :

Santa Monica
Morro Bay
San Francisco
Yosemite
Lone Pine
Las Vegas
Anaheim



After this we had to decide how long to stay at each place. This took a couple of days as I couldn’t make up my mind. Eventually the decision was made and I set about booking hotels.

The most important place on our itinary was Yosemite and I knew it would be quite difficult to book any accomodation inside the park if we didn’t book up quickly

So now I had our plan in place I set about booking our hotels. I have booked the following

1 night at Wyndham Santa Monica at the Pier - Santa Monica



Continued...

[TrueBlue]

Part 2...

1 night at Inn at Morro Bay - Morro Bay



3 nights at Chelsea Motor Inn - San Francisco



2 nights at Yosemite Lodge at the Falls




1 night at Best Western Plus Frontier at Lone Pine OR Comfort Inn





3 nights at Signature by MGM Grand - Las Vegas



5 nights at Howar Johnson - Anaheim

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I then went on and booked a room at the Travelodge Terminal 5 for our overnight stay at Heathrow. Got our room for £22 which was fab!

[TrueBlue]

So between August last year and January this year I didn’t have too much more planning to do. I read trip reports on the Dibb and watched trip report videos on Youtube. One was amazing (I’m sure they are dibbers too). It was so well put together and their trip was almost identical to the trip we were doing so it was a big help for me (thanks Phil, Emma and Ben)

I started buying in little bits and pieces for the trip like shampoo, tea bags (as you do), sun cream and loads of other bits and bobs that we can take with us. I also started a facebook group. Basically it’s just a place where I can post about all my plans and share them with friends and family that are interested in our trip so I don’t bore anyone on my page that isn’t interested.

So christmas came and went and before I know it we’re into 2015! We’re going to California THIS YEAR!
I started looking into things we were going to do when we were in each place.

On our first night in Santa Monica we don’t plan on doing very much, just dump our luggage in our room, change our clothes and head out to the pier and have something to eat while taking in our surroundings. I’m really excited about being in Santa Monica and I really wish we could stay for more than one night but we’re running with a tight schedule so no can do - maybe the next time ?



Our next day (tuesday) we hit the pacific coast highway on our way to San Francisco but stopping off at Morro Bay for a night. Not sure what to do when we arrive but on our travels to get here we plan on stopping off at various tourist points.

Next up is San Francisco. We are staying at Chelsea Motor Inn which is on Lombard Street. We chose this hotel as it comes with free parking and it looks comfortable enough. I’ve bought 3 day hop on hop off bus tour tickets as it was 3 days for the price of 2. So hoping to just use these to get us around the city for our 3 days here.

I want to spend some time at Fishermans Wharf, Alcatraz, walk over the Golden Gate Bridge, drive down the crooked part of Lombard Street, China Town, Walt Disney Museum plus i’m sure i’ll think of other things to do in the city.

Yosemite National Park - I know this place is vast and out of the world gorgeous but I haven’t properly researched yet what I want to do here. We are staying at Yosemite Lodge at the Falls and there’s places to eat here. We want to do some of the walks but still not decided on what one’s yet. We have 2 nights here which I hope is enough but if not i’m sure we shall return when we visit again in years to come



Lone Pine - we are stopping off here for 1 night on route to Vegas. Don’t plan on doing very much as I don’t think there’s much to do. There is a country and western museum what houses lots of props from all the movies that’s be made in the area. This town (if you can call it that) sits at the foot of the Alabama Hills. There’s some saloon type bars so i’m excited for seeing these. As far as I know there is only a couple of hotels here and i’ve booked both of them as i’m undecided on which one to stay in. I have booked the Best Western Frontier and the Comfort Inn. I’ll probably cancel the Best Western one as I think I prefer the look of the Comfort Inn. I’ve only paid a £1 deposit on both and they have free cancellation. I’m looking forward to chilling out at the pool and hot tub for a while and just take in the scenery





Las Vegas - i’m not looking forward to our drive through Death Valley. It’s a place i’ve always wanted to visit but as it’s getting closer i’m getting more nervous incase the car breaks down or something. It’s a long drive through Death Valley (I think about 4 hours?) so i’m hoping it goes by quickly and without any incidents.

We’ll check into our accomodation for the next 3 nights - the Signature by MGM Grand. I booked this because we have a balcony and it’s more like apartments instead of a hotel room so we’ll have a bit more space. I’m excited for visiting Las Vegas as I know it’s changed so much since my last visit in 1993 when I stayed at the Excalibur. They were in the middle of building the Luxor when I was there so will be nice to see it complete.

For Vegas i’m planning on doing an aeroplane trip to the Grand Canyon. It’s a 7 hour tour which picks us up and drops us back at Vegas again.





As we have the car we’re also planning a trip to Hover Dam and Lake mead too and can’t wait to visit all the hotels on the strip

On our way from Las Vegas to Anaheim I stumbled upon this place whilst doing some research - Calico Ghost Town. It looks interesting and since we’re passing by anyway we thought we could stop off here for some lunch, photo opportunites and a good look around






We end our trip with a 5 night stay at Howard Johnson Hotel which is about a 10 min walk to Disneyland Gates so with a bit of luck we won’t be doing too much driving at the end of our trip.

There is quite a few restaurants round about us too so that’s a bonus.

I’ve bought 5 day Disneyland passes even though i’ll probably won’t be in the parks for 5 days. I just thought it would be better for us to take our time and come in and out of the parks over the 5 days whenever the fancy takes us.








We’re hoping to drive into LA (I believe the traffic is horrific though) to do a hop on hop off bus tour of LA and Hollywood area. Will just buy our tickets when we get there

I have also booked a local photographer for a few hours to take some family photo’s of us. He seems really nice and used to be a Disney photographer so knows the parks inside and out. He’s going to take day time and sun set photo’s for us and this will be between Disneyland and California Adventure parks. His price is amazing - only $175 for about 3 hours plus we get all the photo’s on a disc to take home with us.

So that’s about it - my countdown is coming down nicely and in 3 days time i’ll be able to purchase our Alcatraz tickets then it’s just a matter of buys some $$$’s (hope the exchange rate improves soon! ).

[letty]

Sounds like a fantastic trip. Would love to do the West coast ( have been to Vegas , Grand Canyon,Hoover Dam ) .
Hoping in the next couple of years we will get round to it

[joanna23]

Really looking forward to your report. Safe travelling and have a fantastic time. It sounds amazing!

[P&S]

Have a brilliant holiday

[smedley]

Happy travels today! Your trip sounds great, and similar to ours in some ways, looking forward to hearing all about it.

[Merligan]

Wow, it all sounds amazing.

Looking forward to the trip report to get some insight into what to expect as we go next year.

xx