California

When we were first married and our children were young we traveled by driving to out vacation destination. In the winter of 1984 we decided that Disneyland in Calif would be our choice of vacations for the winter it was about 1500 miles or so one way so it was to be a two or three day trip. We had vans that we traveled in not the mini vans of today but the big conversion vans with lots of horsepower and no gas mileage, we had just bought a new Ford 150 van and we were ready to break it in on the maiden voyage. With my wife and two small daughters ages 5 & 3 we set out on a two week trip to Calif via Las Vegas. It took us two days to get to Vegas and being as naive as we were didn't think about it being New Years Eve. Lodging was at a minimum and we never did get a place to stay. As we toured the city it being early in the evening we decided to travel out of town for a place to stay after seeing some of the sights. Our first stop was at a casino to see if we could help with the finances of the trip, as we walked unto the floor we were met by a couple of security guards in suits and no smiles saying that it was a $500 fine to bring children onto the floor. I guess we didn't want to play anyway and decided maybe it was time to look for a place to stay. The next day we made it to California and enjoyed Disneyland, Universal Studios, and a number of other interesting things to see. When we decided to make our way home we took the southern route through San Diego and Phoenix up to Denver and on to SD. We weren't very old when we did this, we saw allot of interesting places and took a million pictures or so it seemed, now as I sit at home some evenings and get the albums out its hard to believe how much fun we had as a family traveling across the country, great memories that only get better with time.