Trip To Disneyland 2021

We had planned a trip to Disneyland to happen in June 2020 and we were planning to go with Jim's sister Beth and her kids and Jim's mom.  Due to COVID we had to cancel...we originally postponed to November and then ended up canceling the whole thing.  A big disappointment, but we had never told our kids so they didn't have any idea.  Then in mid-June, when the mask requirement for vaccinated individuals went away, Beth planned a trip for August.  Because of the short notice she wasn't sure that we could join them, but we quickly looked into planning and we were able to get everything booked and time off from work.  We kept it a secret for about a month, just in case we had to cancel again, and then about 2 weeks before the trip we told the kids.  The mask mandate came back for vaccinated people, and Beth seriously considered canceling, but luckily we convinced her to still go.  

Sunday morning we started our trip.  We stopped in the Salt Lake valley and got gas and lunch at Costco and then went in a store called Scheels and rode the indoor Ferris wheel.  They also have an aquarium with tropical fish and lots of other photo ops.  

We continued on our way to St. George to spend the night.  There were thunderstorms all over, but we didn't drive through much rain.  When we were about an hour from St. George traffic came to a halt.  A thunderstorm ahead had produced lots of rain and hail and flash flooding had occurred.  Water had run across the freeway causing them to close the freeway.  We were already past the exit that some were taking to avoid the closed road.  We saw cars on a side road and they were very muddy, so it may have been better to sit and wait like we had to.  After about 45 minutes, the road opened again, we were delayed by about an hour.  We ordered a pizza to pick up in St. George and when we got to the hotel we ate, watched the olympics, and swam in the pool.

The hotel had a cool indoor/outdoor pool

The next morning we got packed up and headed to a favorite park in St. George.  It was getting hot fast so we played for a while and rode the train.  Then we got on the road, headed for Anaheim.

We got off the freeway in Las Vegas to get gas at Costco.  There was a big line for gas but the attendants kept it running smoothly (gas at Costco was about 50 cents a gallon less than anywhere else).  We decided to drive down the strip to see the casinos.  We had never deviated from the freeway there, so it was pretty neat to see the casinos up close.  

We stopped at the south end of Las Vegas to get In N Out burger for lunch and hit the road.  We quickly hit traffic.  We crawled along for miles and the only reason we saw for it, besides tons of traffic, was a truck that had caught fire.  The trip from Las Vegas to Anaheim is not great anyways and Jim hates it.  Emmett had made himself sick with worry about it and had decided to use headphones and a tablet to zone out as much as possible.  When we finally got to Anaheim (260 miles from Las Vegas) our car said we had averaged 39 miles per hour.  This made the trip at least 2 hours longer than we were hoping for.  We were greeted by a very nice hotel where we cooked some spaghetti and green beans for dinner and went to the pool.    

The pool was on the roof of part of the parking garage

Drying off by the fire after swimming