Our California vacation.

Yes, for ten entire days, we ventured out of Santa Fe. We took our vacation in July; we hadn't been on a real vacation for several years, but when California decided that it would treat all people equally under the law and end discrimination against gay marriage, as positive reinforcement my partner of 27 years and I decided that the state of California is where we should drop some serious tourist dollars.

We took the Amtrak train from Lamy, NM with our two children to Fullerton, California. We visited Anaheim, San Clemente, Irvine, and San Diego. We went to the San Diego Comic Book Convention; Disneyland; Sea World; and the last game played by the women's Olympic softball team before they headed to Beijing. We also got married. As Shelly's dad said, after 27 years we hope it will last. But that's for another post.

Here are some of our pictures from California. (Above is a view from the scenic lounge car on Amtrak's Southwest Chief.)

The Comic Con was an overpopulated city of a place. We were very happy when my daughter found a familiar face, the wonderful comic artist Ryan Claytor, whom we had met during his tour through Santa Fe. He's talented and also extremely nice. E. loves his books and art. He was also kind enough to look at some of her work and made an impression with his suggestion to work on the concept of the establishing shot. We attended panels; walked through the fifty thousand vendor displays; watched people dressed as characters, such as the original Starship Enterprise bunch, as they wandered around hoping to be photographed; looked at the lines at portfolio review; and came away thinking: wow...that event is just plain Too Big.

Here's the San Diego County Clerk's Office. The people who work here couldn't be nicer and more helpful. We found that as a whole, San Diegans are laid back, polite, efficient, and a pleasure to deal with.
We also spent three days, yes three days, and yes we survived, at Disneyland. More about that below.

This is the "vending machine" at the Monsters, Inc. ride. Sugar, Salt and Fat and Blort were our favorites.

Here I am with Lucy on the morning of...oh no, wait, that's just how I felt. The picture is actually of a character named Max, who is either the nephew or son of Goofy. Lucy is holding Pluto. I kept getting the two confused but really, you shouldn't do that. To kids, they are infinitely different.

One of the excellent amusements is a session with Disney animators. Our older daughter enjoyed this very much.

This is a restaurant in Frontierland. It is kind of neat how everything in Disneyland is colorful, well tended, and clean. A person could get used to that; it's a bit troubling when you reenter the real world.

But we didn't do that for a while.

The Tower of Terror. A little advice.

Ok, here's the Tower of Terror. This is by far the most effective scary ride that we tried during the whole Disney experience. The effects are excellent; the "cast" is excellent; even the wait is scary. Very well done. But if you don't like the thought of being dropped four stories down an elevator shaft, and things like that, maybe don't visit this one.

Here Lucy play acts terror in the "hotel" "lobby." Little did we know that soon enough, we'd be about this terrified in reality. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. And when the "elevator operator" says, "any last requests?" this is the request you should make: LET ME OFF THIS FRICKEN RIDE.

Here, all safe and sound, Lucy cools off on a Waverunner.

Main Street, USA.

We will admit that we kind of liked Main Street, USA. Here is Lucy with The Mick.

Frequent water breaks are a necessity. You see how clean everything is on Main Street?

It was rather challenging for the Disney characters to sign autographs. My main question is, why would you want autographs from people in character suits? This slowed down the proceedings quite a bit. However, we were lucky that Lucy met her favorite character....

...Pluto!

We sat right in the front of the double decker bus, top row, so we had a very good view of Main Street goings-on and the Disneyland Castle.

The Dumbo ride was in place when Disneyland first opened in 1953, and there are plenty of reminders at the park of good old Dumbo's iconic status.

Lucy loved the Dumbo ride, but in fact we all did; the sensation of flying, the gentle motion and calming speed, the quiet above the park activity, makes for one of the must-dos of any visit.

The Main Street parade is worth seeing, too. We had just come out of Frontierland and there was the Disney Parade. We were lucky that we happened upon it.

This float stopped and the dancers from the Broadway play Lion King stopped and sang The Circle of Life.

One of the rides we used to cool off was Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters, as you could use the Fastpass to get in, and the A/C was always at full tilt. The Fastpass is an excellent thing. Mmm hm. Turned out that we did well at the Toy Story ride, which has a similar premise to this one...shooting at objects...but the Buzz Lightyear version is older and so this one maybe kind of eluded us. Emma got the highest score in here. We recommend both rides, but the Toy Story ride (not this one; sorry I didn't take pictures there) ended up being our favorite Disneyland experience, other than the interactive movie with Crush from Finding Nemo.

This was pretty early in the morning, after we emerged from the Finding Nemo submarine ride (you can see one of the subs in the background). Do NOT go on this ride if you have even a trace of claustrophobia.

The girls found plenty of Penny Squishers on Main Street, and greatly added to their collection. Other than two small stuffed animals, these were the only souvenirs they showed interest in at Disneyland. whew