Chapter 4 Dodger Stadium

Our trip was full of little nuisances that were a pain to deal with but that's what you get when you plan the trip in 3 hours. I made the mistake of using Priceline to find a hotel in LA. I found a great hotel and it was clean and nice but when I checked in they only had a queen bed for 4 people. That was a problem.  So we made due for a night.

MJ at "Almost Disneyland"

We are probably the most awful parents in the world. We didn't have enough time or money to go visit any of the theme parks but we did want to visit the "Downtown Disney area to shop" Yup you guessed it. The morning before the game we drove down to the mouse kingdom. This was torture for the kids. You could see the park and the rides, you can hear the screams of delight from the Hollywood Tower of Terror and you had to tell you're kids Sorry... we just came to shop... I think maybe I was voted the worlds worst Dad right about now.

The line 2 hours before the game

After the disappointing trip the the park we decided to leave early and go to the Dodger Game. I'm not from California nor do I visit enough to know my way around the spagetti bowl of highways and interstates. Thanks to a great product of California namely my Apple iphone I have been able to drive while my wife navigates the google map on the device. It's really the same as our parents used to do it but with less confusion. Everything worked out great getting to the hotel using the same navigation model. We got on to the highway and off we went changing freeways for freeways getting closer to down town when all of the sudden the wheels came of the bus. The Highway signs did not match the phone directions. PANIC! The interchange was coming and I know we needed to change and did not have the foggiest idea of where we were going. So I did what every Man does and makes a split second decision and took the left highway and for some reason my wife announced her displeasure by the kind words of "What the Hell are you doing?" "I don't know" arguing ensued and I said "Well I'll pull of at the next exit and reset the iphone directions and everything will be okay." So I pulled of what I thought was an exit but wasn't and now I know I am headed in the wrong direction. My wife muttered something in my direction and I'm glad I didn't hear her.  Three miles later I found an off-ramp and pulled to a stop and without having to survey the area long decided there must be a safer place to pull over up ahead with less chance of being car jacked so I drove back on to the highway that I just had pulled off. After another few debates over directions my iphone became an airphone and landed somewhere around my feet. Did I mention 80 MPH is a slow speed for LA.   I had lost my co-pilot and felt somewhat upset that I was now solely responsible for getting us to the Stadium. I made some stupid comment about ending up at the ocean if I kept on this highway.

"Let's go downtown, We want to drive downtown right? You've always wanted to drive through the big city area." I pointed the car to a highway driving back toward the city and had only been on the road a few miles when a sign came up indicating the exit for Dodger Stadium. With a smug look on my face I looked out the corner of my eye at my beautiful agitated wife..."You got Lucky!" she shouted.

The Family at Dodger Stadium

Call it what you want. I like to think it was my instinctive direction finding ability.  The rest of the trip was pretty ordinary. We stayed the night in LA again. Woke up then next morning, left around noon and traveled all the way back to Utah getting home around 1 AM or so. It was a quick trip but it will be a memorable one non-the-less.

Chapter 3 M&M World

After walking a quarter mile in extreme heat the cool air conditioned store was a welcome awesomeness that can only be explained by "Holy Frik it's Hot out there!" When in reality the store was probably cooled down to a balmy 85° and I would complain at home because the air conditioner must be broken.

The M&M worlds should have been renamed the M$M world for Las Vegas. It's pretty much a rip-off of the World of Disney Store on a much smaller scale. Everything you might think that a Disney character has ever been marketed on had the M&M Characters on it. The real reason I wanted to go was to see the massive M&M wall with all the colors stacked to the ceiling with candy. You can bag your favorite color and proceed to wait in the checkout line only to get there an realized that the bag you filled is $80 and has about the same amount of candy that a Costco Bag of M&Ms have. Luckily I asked how much the Candy before I bagged it. $12 a pound. That's awesome. The funny part is you buy the candy then you walk out of the store into an oven where the hard candy shells melts in you bag not in your hands. We do this because of the experience marketers tell us and it sure works because at 10 PM at night that store was filled with kids and Parents all wanting a piece of M&M memorabilia. We were hypnotized also by the little blue and Red dudes because we picked up a few things on the return trip through Vegas. Here is the proof.