Vacation Day 1: Newport Beach

I usually don’t read anyone’s travelogues detailing what happened on their family vacation, so I don’t expect you to either. Skim through, look at pictures, watch the video, and I will understand. I’m writing this more for my own memory than for anyone else.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

We woke up early in St. George and were on the road by 8:30am. We were really looking forward to getting to the beach after looking at the forecast. It was supposed to hit 77 as the high on Sunday afternoon, so you can’t blame us for being excited. I was up at 5:30 researching beaches close to our hotel in Anaheim, like a kid who can’t sleep Christmas morning.

We stopped in Barstow, California at McDonald’s for lunch, and the drive was pretty nice. We had checked out a bunch of DVDs from the library to keep the kids occupied. Also, Ellie got left behind. The drive was pretty uneventful until we got into Orange County.

After a little bit of confusion and a little bit of stress trying to figure out where we were going and how to get there (Manina’s co-pilot skills hadn’t been honed at that point), we got to our hotel and checked in. We met Spencer and Rachel and decided to head for Newport Beach.

We got to Newport Beach at about 3pm. The weatherman had been right, it was a beautiful day. We passed some bars walking to the beach, and they were packed with football fans watching the Superbowl. That left nobody but us on the beach. It was awesome, we had the whole thing pretty much to ourselves.

The kids played in the sand, chased birds, threw rocks, got wet and generally had a great time. Dolphins were cresting about 50 yards out into the surf. There was a light breeze. It was about as perfect as is gets.

As the sun was setting, we decided to walk out onto the Newport pier. It was beautiful to watch the sun dipping into the Pacific.

We were all famished after our long trip and afternoon at the beach, so we drove to a Chipotle and had a big burrito for dinner. We figured we would need the sustenance for the busy days ahead. We also stopped off at Wal-Mart to buy groceries so we could avoid eating at Disneyland and save ourselves from eating out all the time. It proved to be a great decision. When we got back to the hotel, we were very tired and immediately went to bed. This action of getting home and crashing would be repeated over the next several days.