2/21/09 – Saturday
Breakfast – The Bakery, Disneyland Park
Lunch – In-n-Out Burger, Thousands Palms, CA
Dinner – Casa de Hayes, Scottsdale, AZ
We awoke Saturday and packed up Grandma and Poppop’s things so I could drive them to my least favorite place in the entire world, LAX. It was about a 40 minute drive, but I was headed that way because we were exchanging our rental car for a different one to drive to Arizona (don’t ask). I bid adieu to the Grandparents Griffin, got my new wheels and headed back to Disneyland. I think this was a well thought out strategy because seeing that we had a five hour drive ahead of us, I think Hunter appreciated not having to tack on another 1.5 hours back and forth from LAX.
I returned to the hotel ,and Emily and I decided we should continue our tradition of having baked goods at the Disneyland Park on our last morning before we depart. Hunter also enjoyed this tradition because it meant chocolately goodness was to be had. Hunter ended up having a cookie that was bigger than his head. We finished our treats, took some photos of course, and took the train one last time around the park.
Since we needed to go back to our hotel, we decided to get off again at the Tomorrowland train station and take the “fancy monorail” one last time. Lucky for us there were not many people on the platform so we were able to ride in the front car of the monorail. If you ever get a chance to do this it is way cool. We took the scenic ride back to Downtown Disney and said our goodbyes to all of our favorite things along the way.
After we returned we packed up our remaining items (Emily did an amazing job packing our things while I was in transit) stuffed it all in our smaller car and hit the road. Our destination was my parents’ house in Scottsdale, AZ. The drive was about 6 hours but lucky for us it was the scenic desert. *blank stare* We planned to have lunch a couple hours into our drive at In-n-Out Burger because it had been a week since our last fix. Again, lucky for us that we stopped at the busiest In-n-Out on the planet (or so it felt). We arrived, waited 10 minutes to order, and got our number, 78. They were calling order 42 at the time. Sweet! After I read Harry Potter cover to cover they called our number, and we were on our way. Just to emphasize how busy this place was, in the time it took me to order and get our food, Emily drove five minutes down the road to McDonald’s, got Hunter a Happy Meal, drove back, arranged him with it in the backseat, and still had five minutes to spare before I emerged. I was delighted when she told me our next stop was Starbucks.
The rest of the drive was riveting as well. We saw a few mountains, and oh yeah, cactus’ too. All we needed was an abandoned saloon and we would have been all set. Actually, we would have welcomed something that wasn’t flat. We made our way down the holiday road and somehow ended up in Scottsdale although it didn’t feel like we actually moved.
My Dad was kind enough to meet us at the rental car location and was allowed to pull into the return car area because the attendant knew if he didn’t we would have only needed to make a dozen trips to get all of our bags to where they needed to be. We got our stuff moved over and headed to the casa de Hayes where we were greeted by Grandma Jean and enjoyed a delicious home cooked meal. After dinner, we celebrated both Emily and my Mom’s birthdays, as my Mom’s happened to be that day. She liked her gifts and Emily was treated to THIRTY gifts selected and wrapped by my mom. She really got a kick out of that… if you know Emily, you know how she feels about presents. After exchanging gifts and some stories, we hit the hay.
