After just over 3 hours on the nearly empty plane, most of which Bevin spent sleeping on my shoulder, we arrived at SNA in Orange County. None of that LAX business for us! Our flight got in about an hour before the Portland gang arrived though, so we grabbed a drink and played some Tak.
After everyone arrives we take our ride to the hotel with a California driver who clearly thought most every traffic law was more of a suggestion. But we survived, got to the Disneyland hotel, and then off to the park we go!
Our room is a 2 Bedroom suite that’s Fantasia themed! There’s cool art everywhere, including a mosaic in the master bath.
There are two parks at “Disneyland”, one is Disneyland proper, and the other is California Adventure. That’s where we went next!
Wait a second, we just got off a plane, why are we doing a ride that’s putting us back on a plane?!
Soarin’ is a motion ride that puts you up into this big half-sphere screen and takes you flying over the landscapes, while shooting scents that match the landscapes at at you!
Cool thing is that right now they’re doing the classic “Soarin’ over California” version, rather than the Soarin’ over the USA that’s normal, so all the scenes are from CA. And there are even more scents! (Pine forest, orange grove, ocean mist)
We didn’t take too many pictures through the afternoon because it was raining so hard and phones were tucked into pockets. But we grabbed a few!
Radiator Springs is one of the absolute best forced perspective things I’ve ever seen. It looks huge, it looks real. Photos don’t really capture it well. It’s really impressive. And it’s a fun little race-car ride too!
And because we’re all adults, and can do what we want, we went on the Little Mermaid ride, and sang along. Sha-la-la-la-la-la my-oh-my!
And that’s about it from our first 3/4-ish day at the park! We got… slightly damp. We had a great lunch, and a great dinner, none of which we took pictures of, and then went to the “fireworks” show, which is actually lasers and lights and water at California Adventure. Also not pictured, because it was cold, and damp, and we had our hands in our pockets.
A variety of similarly-colored water bottles. Also a cat.
I accidentally put down my new water bottle next to my two old water bottles, and realized that I seem to have a rather specific set of color preferences… Perhaps I should branch out?
Also, I’ve been trying since Guam to get my phone to capture the beautiful color of the Hydroflask I found there, called “Laguna”. (It’s the one on the left) It doesn’t come across here, but it’s very much the color of the beautiful blue water. More green tone than the camera wants to acknowledge.
After getting home from Guam last night we got up to go to work.
The rest of this week Bev is helping out at a different plant, located an hour away, and today I went with her and am going to get some work done from coffee shops. So I drop her off and find the nearest Starbucks.
Upon walking in:
Welcome to the Midway Starbucks… Expect battleships?
I mean, I guess atmleast it’s not the Bataan Starbucks? What are the odds though?
Fun trivia fact: did you know the battle of Midway was where over half of the Japanese carrier fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor was sunk?
Anyway, there’s your WWII factoid for the day. I’ll keep an eye out for zeros while I’m working.
We made it home! Almost exactly 32 hours after we left the hotel “this morning”.
What a Tuesday. Anticipating going to bed in a couple hours, this day will have been 34 hours long. Plus 4 before we woke up, and 2 more after we went to sleep for total of 40 hours between 12:01am and 11:59pm on Tuesday Dec 12 from our perspective.
A single day that’s 40 hours long and 9000 miles wide. Now there’s an experience you don’t get to have too often.
Hopefully at least!
Leaving on the last jet plane. Into the wild blue yonder dear friends, once more. I love flying at night, especially with how many neighborhoods around here are just COVERED in Christmas lights. The picture doesn’t even come close to doing it justice.
During our flight from Guam to Honolulu I sat next to a guy from Saipan who was leaving the islands for the first time. Hawaii was impressive to him, I can’t imagine what he’s thinking now, having gone through LA and landed in Seattle where he’s going to try and get set up. The island he lived on is slightly less than half the length of Guam, at only 14 miles. From the single high spot you can actually see the whole island he says.
And our Lyft ride home from the airport was 24 miles, almost the entire length of Guam.
Sometimes the scale of things just really gets you.
I hope that guy enjoys Seattle. I assured him he did NOT in fact have to worry about frostbite upon arrival.
Kitties are very suspicious. Eventually they figured out that they remembered us. At which time they immediately remembered that it was dinnertime. All is back to normal.
Kitties got up to some shenanigans while we were gone and got themselves into some places they’ve never gone before. Whoops! Learning for next time.
We’ll try and post a few more things in the next few days as we go through all the pictures from the other phones as well. But for now: we’re home, and ready for a nice sleep with actual lying down and such. What luxury. Almost like we’ve been upgraded to first class!
We’re currently in Honolulu airport, where it is once again Monday. Oh joy, we get to experience 4am Tuesday morning for a 2nd time, just what I wanted.
The morning got a late start because we were enjoying snorkeling and swimming in the bay. I do wish we had pictures of that, but we really don’t like to be the people with the GoPro firming everything, rather than enjoying it. The bay is lonely though we were 100-152 yards off the beach, and the water was never too deep for me to stand up. (and thus for Bevin or Caren to use me as a platform if needed.) The water is clear enough that you can just look down and see the fish swimming around, but it does get truly spectacular when you get the goggles on and see it from below. I’m certain there are plenty of videos of snorkeling in Tumon Bay available on YouTube if you really want to see!
Since we got a late start we weren’t able to do the breakfast at the hotel and had to wait to get lunch. This turned out to be excellent because their lunch had some great items, includinga local dish called Kelaguen that they did a very good job of, in fact the best version we’ve had since arriving!
After lunch Caren and Bevin and I went to the Guam Aquarium. We weren’t expecting much, based on the reviews and seeing the entrance (it’s in a mall) but it was really pretty great! I think they have the longest walk-through aquarium tunnel I’ve ever seen!
Bevin named the turtle “Dragon Ball Sea”. Its real name was Napu, which means “waves”. We wondered which it would prefer. We saw these outside in the ocean! The absolute grumpiest looking fish ever.Caren declared this to be “that Star Wars looking fish”. Accurate. This fish just sat there staring at us. And then turned and stared as we walked by. We figure he’s a cousin of the aggressive one in the bay that bit Caren on the foot…
Our last day was going to be just mostly sitting around, perhaps some swimming, but some early morning internet sleuthing uncovered a few extra family graves, including one that was quite important to Dave: Auntie Bita.
Unfortunately he never knew anything else about her, so we could never find her. Didn’t even know what the true relation was. It’s possible she was just a family friend. All we knew was that her headstone had ten picture in the upper right. She was a very important figure in his childhood though, and he was very much hoping to find her.
Well Marcia and her Ancestry account did!
As soon as Dave saw the picture he knew this was the right one!
It turns out that “Auntie Bita” was actually Great-aunt Rita, and she’s buried just a few headstones down from her sister, Dave’s paternal grandmother, Maria Taitano Aguero. We literally walked right by her last time we were at this cemetery and didn’t notice the picture. (Dave had remembered seeing a picture of a dark headstone, so hadn’t looked at this one.)
The two in the foreground are grandma and grandpa Aguero, as they’re standing at Auntie Bita. We were so close! Dave telling us about Auntie Bita.
One further bit of research that was accomplished in the morning was finding out the actual neighborhood that Dave’s grandparents used to live in! He remembers it being across from a schoolt we had visited all the local schools and not found in. Narrowing down the search grid to about 5 blocks though we were able to determine what is now a park/playground used to be a school, and we found his grandparent’s house!
The old Aguero house.
When we drove by someone was in the font yard, so Dave hopped out to talk to him! It turns out that the guy’s parents are neighbors, and bought the house from the Agueros! He and Dave chatted for a bit while we watched the neighborhood roosters run around. (they’re like squirrels! They’re just everywhere!)
We did a little more last minute souvenir shopping and picking up some things we needed before heading back to the hotel.
Last sunset over Tumon Bay
Eventually we went back to Meskla, clearly our favorite restaurant since this was our third trip, and had nome more delicious quasi-local food.
After dinner it was back to finish packing and turn in so we could get up at 4. Bevin and I went on a walk down the beach though. It’s really quite lovely out there in the dark, but there were a surprising number of loudly drunk people. There’s some kind of flying fish in the bay though that only comes out at night, and skips along the surface like a skipping stone. And tons of little schooling fish that come right up to the tide line.
Unfortunately it’s even harder to get pictures on the water at night, so you’ll just have to take our word for it. 😎
Bevin, carrying her somewhat enlarged bag stuffed with goodies, headed to the airport… The sign at the airport says that KFC serves Kelaguen. Which can be chicken, but is definitely not fried…Still getting used to being on a 777 and being so high up. It’s quite a plane!
We survived the flight from Guam back to Hawaii without too much difficulty. It was a bit ahead of schedule due to 100mph tailwinds and cut about an hour off the time.
Flying over Kauai on our way to HonoluluThe first Starbucks in over 2000 miles, bit of a novelty. (there’s technically exactly 1 on Guam, in the Westin hotel lobby.) Not sure if the return of Starbucks implies we’re back in civilization, or have left it behind…Our plane home. There is no glass between me and the 777, the terminal is open-air.
So here we sit in Honolulu, 12 hours after leaving our hotel, waiting for our 11pm flight, and 11 hours away from touching down in Portland. On this flight we have the entire middle column of the 777.
