Hitched and Rolling

This morning we woke up on a quiet neighborhood street in Santa Monica. Sleeping in a residential area is not prohibited per se, but it’s not comfortable either, because there is always a feeling that someone might knock on the window and ask what you are doing. It feels.. frowned upon, and therefore is not peaceful. That being said, it worked for us. 

Today had an action packed agenda, and all in all it was executed quite well. We woke up, picked up Grant from his friends house about a mile away, ran Duke hard at a fetch field, dropped him off with a dog sitter (who I don’t think spoke English but neither does Duke), and headed to Universal Studios to meet my cousin Lara. We got the parking lot around 9:45 am where we got in a line of cars entering the park, with a plan of meeting Lara at 10. At around 9:48, still in a vehicle line, I got a text to the effect of “the website is down and it needs to be up”. 

That will wake you up! I put the van in park and climbed in the back connected to my phones hotspot and started working, and Bre hopped into the drivers seat with the rest of the vehicle like none the wiser. Luckily the issue turned out to be very minor and by the time we rolled into our parking spot 15 minutes later I was ready to enjoy the day at universal, with everything work-wise operational and back to life. 

We met Lara at the entrance of the park and headed down a series of escalators to the Jurassic Park ride. This universal, unlike the one in Florida apparently, does not really have any roller coasters, it’s more just themed rides with an occasional moderate thrill factor. 

Grant had not been to any kind of amusement park or roller coaster venue ever really, and was kind of apprehensive about the whole process but ultimately really enjoyed the rides, and actually seemed to enjoy the more “roller coaster-y” rides the most, which leads me to believe he would enjoy a traditional amusement park. 

After the park we headed down to Orange County where Lara lives and had In-n-Out Burger for dinner. At the end of the night we got to see Lara’s house which she has just redone. The house is really spectacular and she did a wonderful job. In the morning we met my Aunt Nancy in Laguna Beach before continuing our trip south to San Diego