Harolds Page: From the Mountains to the Ocean........

After a little bit of a drought, Ruth and I had a week with a couple of awesome adventures. On Saturday the 16th Snowbird was doing a food drive, and everyone who made a donation to the food drive was given a ticket to ride the tram. So we grabbed some canned goods and headed up the mountain. While it was a little chilly on top of the mountain, the views more than made up for the runny nose. I will let the pictures speak for this adventure.

We had a miniature adventure between our ascent up the mountain and our trip. We got to go to La Caille for Dillard's annual fragrance night. I guess Ruth's mom has been going to this event for several years, but this was the first time that the event has been held at La Caille. I wasn't very excited about the fragrances, but I have been to La Caille a bunch of times and always enjoy the atmosphere there. We had an enjoyable time at the event but we were all sure that nothing was going to smell right for a week because of all the strong fragrances that were in the air.

The next adventure came the next day, and was completely unplanned. Ruth's mom, who works for Jet Blue, said that they were adding an extra flight between Long Beach and Salt Lake for the week of Thanksgiving. Adding the extra flight made more room for stand-by flights, so Ruth and I, Marianne, Jerry, and Rachel decided we should make a trip to California. So we caught the 6:30 am flight to Long Beach and had a blast. Ruth and I decided to go and spend the day at Disneyland. Ruth's parents and Rachel wanted to go to the beach and go to an art museum, so we didn't see them for the rest of the day. We opted for the park hopper passes and got to enjoy the rides from California Adventure and Disneyland. It was a lot of fun being in Disneyland together again because it brought back a lot of good memories. We had gone to Disneyland with Ruth's family just before we got married. The big changes to the parks since we had been last were Cars Land, and a new version of Star Tours. The parks, including the fireworks display, were sporting a Christmas theme. There was even some fake snow along with the fireworks. We stayed in the park until about 11:00 pm, so I think we got our moneys worth.

The next day we had breakfast at the hotel, and headed to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach with Rachel. Marianne and Jerry wanted one more chance to go to the beach, so they chose not to join us at the aquarium. I was honestly surprised at how much fun we had at the aquarium. Once again I will let the pictures tell most of the story, but there were a few things I didn't get pictures of so you will just have to use your imagination. The first unexpected surprise was getting to touch jellyfish. I didn't know that you could touch jellyfish without getting stung, but the ones they had there weren't strong enough to have their sting felt. A little boy who worked for the aquarium told us that the jellyfish we were touching could sting, but it wasn't strong enough to penetrate human skin. Although the jellyfish looked transparent they were surprisingly solid to the touch. The second thing that just amazed me was some shark eggs at the aquarium. We were looking in a tank that had baby sharks and noticed that they had several shark eggs floating in the water. There was also four or five sharks eggs pressed up against the glass that had been opened up so you could see inside. At first I thought they weren't live sharks in the eggs, but there was. You could see the developing sharks moving, and each egg had a hatch date below it. I didn't think it was possible to open up the egg like that without killing the shark inside, but apparently they can.We also saw a sea otter who was stuck on spin cycle. It was cleaning itself so it just kept spinning in place so that it could brush up against the rocks in the tank. The last noteworthy thing at the aquarium that I didn't get a picture of was the flashlight fish. They could glow in the dark, how awesome is that?

After the aquarium we headed for the airport. It was kind of a quick trip, but we got to do a lot in the short time we were there. Now that you have taken the time to read through my ramblings, here is your reward, the pictures: