Christmas 2019: Part 4 of 4 Orange County

We finished our three-week USA Christmas tour in good old Orange County.  We were hoping to find warm sunshine there, but it wasn't quite as warm as we would have liked.  We were all in various stages of fighting this gnarly cold/flu thing, so that was a bit of a bummer too.  But we enjoyed a lovely stay at a resort on Monarch Beach and some visits with good friends, and of course yummy food!

A nice welcome at our resort on Monarch Beach!

Beach games

Enjoying the pools, but mostly the hot tubs!

Celebrating T-man's 13th birthday with an ice-cream cake from Baskin Robbins, a pancake breakfast, playtime at Chuck E. Cheese and tennis at the resort.  

With some of our favs, the Mitchells!  

And to cap it all off a private lights and music show at 10 Hammond on our very last night.  We had never seen this now famous display, and the Rydells were such awesome hosts greeting us with hot cocoa and light bracelets to enjoy the show.  We had a nice visit with them, perfect way to end our trip!

Managed to squeeze in one last university tour at USC literally just before boarding our flight at LAX.

Christmas 2019: Part 3 of 4 Death Valley

Death Valley National Park has long been on my wish list.  But there never has seemed to be a good time to visit.  It's just not a place to go in summer, and we aren't ever in the area other times of the year.  It's also not that close to where we usually visit in Northern or Southern California.  But as we had a bit of extra time after our family Christmas visits we decided to schedule it in.  It sure was an adventure right from the start!  What should have been an 8-hour drive from the bay area to Death Valley took an excruciating 16 hours!  16 HOURS!  There was a bit of snow at the higher elevations and it just brought traffic to a standstill.  Many people turned back, but it was just a parking lot, quite literally, up there on the pass.  We stopped in Bakersfield to grab chains just in case, informed by my previous experiences going to Lake Tahoe during the winter.  We didn't end up using them, but their requirement gave us peace of mind.  The completely crazy thing is that once we reached the pass and got through, it was totally clear, so why the stopping?!  We couldn't see any reason why it all just came to a stop.  I was glad we were prepared with chains, a full tank of gas and lots of snacks.  We arrived quite late into the night at our hotel, a really nice resort in the middle of the national park.  By this point we were all starting to come down with a really bad flu/cold thing.  Death Valley is incredible and we enjoyed seeing such extremes in beauty, but truth be told we were all pretty exhausted with illness and travel.  We will need to return again someday.