Two Hams on the Road

Sunday, March 15, 2015

We are camped El Chorro Regional Park near Morro Bay, California.  Here’s the view out our back window:

I didn’t show you our view at Anaheim.  The back view wasn’t much:

But out our side window, you could see the Matterhorn at Disneyland (in the center of the picture).

We really enjoyed this park.  They had a nice laundry and a neighbor who was a professional dog sitter.  She took great care of Obi so we could spend two days at Disneyland.  The park also had a preferred rig washing company, so the truck and trailer got a good scrubbing.

There was a shuttle to the parks, which was about $5 a day, much less than parking and ran every 20 minutes.  Just about as good as at Disney World.

We had a day of catching up on chores, 2 days at Disney and then we went to see a Frank Lloyd Wright house, Hollyhock House.  They’ve recently restored part of the house and that’s open for the first time in years.  We enjoyed it, but only were able to see the dining room, living room and library.  One guest did note that all of the books in the library were easily reached.  I hadn’t thought about that, but a lot of libraries have a lot of shelves that are hard to reach.

Steve and I hadn’t been to Disneyland since 2001, when Purdue lost the Rose Bowl.  Steve had managed to see California Adventure at some point.   I don’t remember much about our last trip and was amazed to see the differences.

Much is the same, but for example, in the Small World ride, there are Disney characters.  The first one I spotted was Peter Pan, with Tinkerbelle nearby.  I spotted him because he was “flying”.  Next I spotted Cinderella, with some mice.  Now Cinderella and Peter Pan were the normal Small World dolls in appropriate dress, but Tinkerbelle and the mice were different.  Aladdin and Jasmine were on a flying carpet and Woody and Jessie were in a Wild West segment. 

And Ariel had her own scene:

The castle at Disneyland is much smaller than the one at Disney World:

But the outstanding event was the Aladdin Show at California adventure.  I assumed this would be similar to the 15 minute Beauty and the Beast show at Walt Disney World, but I was wrong.  It was an hour long, Broadway worthy production including an elephant and flying carpets.  I only got a picture of the elephant.

We loved the show, even though it made Steve miss his fast pass to Tower of Terror.  (He was able to get another.)  Disney has a Broadway show of Aladdin and if history repeats itself, the Broadway version will be even better.  Maybe they’ll bring it to Chicago, but the flying carpet will be hard to duplicate in most theaters.  (Just a note:  We’ve seen both Beauty and the Beast and the Lion King on stage and they are excellent.  If you get a chance to see them, take it.)

We hung around Morrow Bay today and this was my lunch view:

We had lunch with an old friend from Purdue, Tom Tengdin.  He lives near Morrow Bay and had noticed on a ham radio site that Steve was nearby.  He emailed and we were able to meet up with him.  It was great to see him again.

We’re headed for Hearst Castle tomorrow, so I need to head for bed so we can get an early start.

Deb