December 2004 trip to California & Las Vegas
Day 7

Cast of Characters: Same as Day 1!

Tuesday, December 28

We had opted for the internet access at the Hilton, and had been checking the weather forecast every day.  Hmm, there's rain scheduled.  There's more than just rain, there's lots of rain.  Okay, well time to leave then!  We used the in-room TV menu to check the bill (it was right) and then the express checkout slips to check out.  Wow that worked well, nothing like not having a line to wait in!  We went back to the Target store to pick up stuff for the road (water and snacks), filled up the van and off we went.  Once again I was driving, this time only to Baker and then Scooter would take over  And yep, wouldn't you know it, almost as soon as I got behind the wheel it started raining.  And raining.  And raining.  Wait a minute, isn't this the desert?  What's all this rain doing?

So we turned to The Highway Stations, where they play some music and have road and weather reports pertinent to the basically the highway between LA and Vegas.  Oh, great.  Rain all day.   Flash flood warnings.  Wonderful.  So the drive back took a long time, although not  a long, long time like the drive TO Vegas had taken.  We switched drivers at Baker, at the Alien Jerky store where Scooter has to stop every time.  They've added something new to their collection - a space trooper car.

Okay, so we had figured we'd be in around 2:30 and we got in around 4:30.  Still not too bad.   We made our way to the Howard Johnson Anaheim where we were to spend our last night in Anaheim.  We were given a nice room in the main building, and we got ourselves settled into the room.  The room was "older" and I'm sure hasn't been refurbished yet, but it was still quite comfortable.  Although it was a little warm, and the temperature was turned right down... it just didn't cool down any.  Oh well.  Now the original plan was dinner with the inlaws and then possibly the park.  But FIL was now sick too, so it was sounding like it would just be Mom and I for the evening.  Hmm, maybe dinner at the parks would be good!  But nope, that wasn't to be either.  It was raining just too hard, and so Mom and I decided that we'd head across the street to Mimi's across the street for dinner.  But first Scooter and I drove back to his parent's place to pick up some stuff we had left there while we went to Vegas, said Hello to the inlaws, and then made a quick stop at the grocery store for milk for Mom and some liquor to take home (still can't get used to buying liquor in a grocery store).  As we drive by Mimi's I notice that there's a huge crowd inside and they're lined up out the door.  Okay, so maybe we won't have dinner there.  Scooter dropped me off and went home to his parents for the night, and Mom and I decided to order in pizza.  We went with Papa John's, since there was a menu on the desk in the room.  Well they didn't have the size of pizza we wanted to order so we went with 2 smaller ones.  They were out of one of the toppings we wanted.  They no longer had the size of drink that was listed on the menu.  We should have taken the hint and cancelled the order, but we didn't.  An hour later our pizza arrived.  It was terrible.  We ate some of it, and then the rest of it was thrown out.  Note to self: never order from Papa John's again!

We heard some loud noises from outside, and I thought that it was kids fooling around.  But no, it wasn't quite right.  Wait a minute, I know that sound!   Fireworks!  The rain had let up for a bit and they were going ahead with the fireworks.  We went out and watched the fireworks - they were so pretty.  I'm sure they would have been even better from inside the park when we could hear the music to go with it, but they were still mighty nice from across the street.

We turned on the TV for the news - oh, more rain coming.  And there's thunderstorms in the area (I knew that, I had seen some lightning earlier but didn't realize this was unusual for the area).  Oh, and there's a tornado warning.   Lovely.  Alright, well we'll try to sleep - have to get up early in the morning to get to the airport!

Coming up:  On time & Air Canada = Ha ha ha, right.