Travel

Here it is, the last day of CHA! This show has gone really well for us and we now have an exciting venture in our future which I cannot make public as of yet. But as soon as I can, I will tell everyone!!! Promise!!

We have been away from home for a week and a half now and we aren’t due home until Sunday or Monday still. I am so ready to go home – this trip has been a ton of fun but its also been incredibly exhausting. I thought I would enjoy getting many nights of uninterrupted sleep. No dogs to wake me up in the middle of the night when they jump on the bed. Or those wonderful times at 2am when Angus wakes me up scratching at the door to go out, then there I am out on the sidewalk with him in the cold telling him to hurry up so we can go back to bed. None of that lately, but isn’t it crazy that I actually miss all that?

Yesterday after the show, we went out to Downtown Disney to the CHA party that was being held at the House of Blues. The food was really good and it was a lot of fun. The entertainers they had were awesome – everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Now we are back at CHA for the last part of the show. It’s 1:20pm and already the booths are all starting to pack up, a lot of people have already left and the show was much quieter today then it was the other days. We are going to help pack up the NSA booth then Brent, Scott and I are heading over to California Adventure Park to ride the Tower of Terror and the rollercoaster – woohoo!!! Too bad the park closes at 6 tonight.

One more day left to spend at Disney – tomorrow- then we head out first thing Friday morning for our trek back to Canada. I can’t wait…. Let’s hope we don’t run into any more car problems.

Here are some more pics of the show! Enjoy – we have lots more to upload too so check back soon!

These are some of the displays at the K & Company booth – they had one of the most gorgeous booths out of all of them!

Some of the Basic Grey displays

This place is enormous! I was warned that it would be overwhelming but still I didn’t realize how big it would be. I’m having a ton of fun though and the days are flying by – there is just so much to see!

Ok, so back to Sunday, the first day of CHA. We ended up walking the mile from our hotel to the convention center, then we had to find the badge registration, and find our way to the National Scrapbooking Association booth. We finally got to meet Scott – the owner of the NSA – he is so cool! I think he and Brent spent the entire morning talking about website stuff. I didn’t start to venture out to explore the rest of the place until the afternoon. KI Memories is really close to the NSA booth so I kept looking over there to see what was going on – and I could see Elsie Flannigan’s cute booth – very well done! Her new line is fabulous – we went over to take a look and Brent talked with the CEO of KI Memories about further promotion stuff.

I also found Heidi Swapp’s booth which was also quite close to us. I did a make n take with some of their new line of products and Heidi was right there showing us how to do it – very cool!

By 5pm, my feet were killing me – wearing heels turned out to be not such a great idea. We took a cab back to the hotel cause we both were too tired to walk. A quick trip back to drop off our stuff, then my good friend Kim met us at the hotel to come out for dinner with us. Kim lives in LA and we have been really good friends for about 5 or 6 years – we met on a message board way back and have been friends e ever since. This was our first time meeting in “real life” and she was everything I expected – fabulous! It was so great to finally meet her. We picked up Scott (from NSA) at his hotel on our way and we all went to Knotts Berry Farm for dinner at TGIF Fridays. Great food, great conversations, we had a blast!

It was an incredibly exhausting day so by the time we got back to our hotel, I was so ready to climb into bed. I think I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, which is unlike me, as I usually have to watch tv for an hour or so until I can fall asleep.

Monday we were up early again, and we did the walk to the Convention Center again. NOT fun – my feet were still killing me from the day before. I thought the Disney trams would be running and we could just hop on one that went over to their lot by the convention center. We walked all the way to the Disney gates, walked through the baggage check area, and to the other lot where the trams are and they weren’t running yet! So we ended up walking the long route to the convention center. Brent was so not impressed – I was not popular for the next while cause I was the one who insisted on going that way and it turned out to be even longer.

Another day at CHA!! I took the camera and went and took lots of pictures of the new stuff at the booths. There are still lots I haven’t even been to yet. I also went and scouted out all the new companies which are in their own section hidden away in the basement. Crappy for them. There are some great new things I found though, unfortunately no pictures were allowed to be taken in that section. I made lots of contacts though that I’ll be following up with when we get back.

Another highlight for me was meeting Trudy Sigurdson – the author of one of my favorite books “Embellished Emotions”. She is from my hometown – Victoria – so when I saw her signing books, I went up to her and introduced myself. We talked for about 15 minutes, she is super nice! She signed a copy of her book and gave it to me. Woohoo!!!! The F & W Publications booth is right across from the NSA booth and they have authors signing books in their booth all day long, on a rotation. Since I can see them from here, I keep walking by seeing who is there and I have gotten a few more signed books! One author even gave me an extra book to give to one of our DT members to do a review on! Awesome!

After the show we went back to the hotel and ended up staying there all evening. I had to download and crop all the photos I took so that took awhile, then we went to bed a bit earlier. I am really missing my dogs. I think about them often and wonder what they are doing. My babies.
Now today – Day 10 – it’s still morning so nothing much has happened yet. Although I did go over to KI Memories, introduced myself to Elsie Flannigan, got her autograph and took her picture. I will post some pictures on here a bit later. Brent and I had a meeting with the Editor from the Canadian Scrapbooker Magazine – stay tuned for some exciting news about what we will be doing with them in the near future! So far the CHA has been very promising for us.

Here’s Elsie and the gals from KI Memories – isn’t the booth cute? : )

Trudy Sigurdson – author of Embellished Emotions. Awesome book! Trudy is super nice too!

A cute display we saw at the Just Jinger booth

I loved these little houses made by Doodlebug

K & Company’s new line “Girl Scout”

 

Day 4 (Wednesday)

Leaving San Francisco behind, we started our drive south around 9am. We took the #1 highway right along the coast as we thought the scenery would be nicer and we planned to make several stops along the way. First stop was Monterey we walked along their Fisherman’s Wharf which was similar to the one in San Francisco only much much smaller. They also had their own little colony of Sea Lions who were quite vocal and talkative. Brent spotted an Otter couple basking in the sunshine & floating around peacefully in the water off the pier. That was basically it for wildlife that we saw.

We drove along the water and stopped at a beach that had huge waves crashing into large jagged rocks – it really was quite beautiful but it was windy and on the cold side so I chose to sit inside the car where it was warm and watch from there, whereas Brent got out his camera and tripod and rushed right down as close as he could get to the water without falling in. He kept turning back towards the car to wave me to come down to join him on the beach so finally I did. It would have been much nicer out there if it hadn’t been so darn windy and cold!

Next up was a drive down the “17 Mile Drive” which is basically a $9.00 toll to drive through a wealthy neighborhood. Ok, it was beautiful along the water – there were about 4 or 5 golfcourses within this gated community including the highly famous (I was told) Pebble Beach Golf Course. But $9 to drive down this street?? Some of the houses were unbelievable, and some I couldn’t believe were allowed to be still standing. Hehe… There would be a ginormous mini castle and then next door an olive colored house from the 60’s that the Brady Bunch could have been inside of. We were in such a rush too cause the sun was already starting to go down and we needed to see this place in the light – plus there were viewpoints along the way and Brent wanted to take pictures so we were racing from one view point to another. The drive ended in Carmel, which has to be about the cutest little town ever!! We stopped at the beach there and it is definetly one of the most beautiful beaches I have seen. White sand, beautiful blue/turquoise water. However it was breezy and cold once again so after letting Brent take a few pictures on the beach, I hurried him back to the car so we could move on.

The rest of the night was basically the same – driving and more driving. We thought driving along the coast would be more interesting but for a lot of it, we were the only car on the highway and it was a bit lonely! We really did feel like we were in the middle of nowhere. For part of the drive, we were way up in the hills looking down at the coastline, driving along yet another windy and twisty road. A road you definetly do not want to fall asleep on!! (not that you’d want to fall asleep on any road, but you know what I mean).

First town (not even sure I’d call it a town…) we came to was Big Sur (that’s SUR) As we were driving through it, Brent says “I don’t know why they call this place Big Surf, there is no way anyone could surf anywhere close to here…” “Sur,” I told him “Big Sur – S U R” hehe. But yeah, this place was so tiny – it was right up in the hills, amongst the trees, and on either side of the highway there were some woodsy type of resorts. That’s it. Oh, and maybe a couple general store type places. It looked really cool and I bet a lot of nice retreats happen there….but not much else. It was literally one of those places that if you blink, you miss it. Really. We went through a few of those along the way. After hours of this, we were feeling very out of touch with civilization. All we had been seeing is hills on one side of us, and the ocean way down below on the other side. And cows. Lots of cows. Occasionally we’d come to a huge lot of land RIGHT on the water – prime real estate I thought, and what’s on it? Cows. Yep Cows. Cows get the billion dollar views. How nice for them.

The funniest sign we saw on our journey was a pig crossing sign. Just like the duck crossing ones, that show a duck and a duckling, well this was beside the highway and had a pig with a smaller pig!!! LOL!! It was the funniest thing, I wish we got a picture of it. So does that mean there are wild pigs in the area? Or just some domestic pigs that like to take walks across the highway?

Alright back to our thrilling drive. We were both hungry and by now we were getting quite worried that this would be a replay of our first night in San Francisco when we couldn’t find anything open to eat at. But this was even more worrisome as we couldn’t find ANY place -restaurant, grocery store, even fast food. There was just nothing around on this long drive. There were a few times where we grumbled to each other that we should have just taken the I-5. Finally though we drove into San Simeon – it was like an oasis in the middle of the desert for us. On either side of the highway, were about 3 hotels on each side – just hotels that’s it, but we noticed that with each hotel, there was a restaurant!! Woohoo!!! We drove through to see if there was anything else, but as soon as we passed this mini strip of hotels, we were back into darkness. After a quick u-ie in the middle of the road, we were on our way back towards the hotels. We settled on one called The Cavelier – it looked quite nice so we went in. This was the best decision we made of the entire day! The staff and service was fantastic! The food was delicious, the meals were huge and the prices were surprisingly low. We were quite impressed with the place and very glad we stopped. San Simeon turned out to be a bit larger than we originally thought. Once we kept driving for a few minutes, we came to another strip of businesses and then a residential area too.

More driving for a couple more hours, we were both very tired all of a sudden. Well, I was tired the whole way and no matter how hard I tried to stay awake to make sure Brent was alert (he was driving) I kept nodding off and then Brent would say something and I’d jerk myself awake again. lol. We decided that enough was enough and we needed to pull over to get some sleep. Ok, so where is a rest stop when you need one? Of course, nowhere to be found. We drove and drove looking for a rest stop and nothing. More grumbling about how we should have taken the I-5. Then finally, we spot a sign that said “Rest Stop, 14 miles” RELIEF. I think it was the longest 14 miles ever but we finally reached it. This time we were prepared for our camp out in the car. We had our sleeping bags with us (our good thermal ones) and instead of leaving them in the trunk like we did out first night on the road, we hauled them out and used them. Brent was also kind enough to adjust the 2nd suitcase which was in the backseat so my seat would fully recline, this helped ALOT for my sleep. The only problem with being at the rest stop was there were lights everywhere so they all shone right into the car. We solved the problem with our large navy blue fleece blanket we had with us. We strung it up across the windshield – tucking it under the visors, and with the help of one of my hair clips, we managed to block out all the light, plus it helped keep some of the warmth in the car. Another small problem, or rather an annoyance, was this huge truck behind us had its motor running all night (must have been a refrigeration truck). The sleeping bags worked though and we were both warm all night. We woke up at about 7am and started driving again. Something we didn’t even think about was the possibility of getting stuck in traffic closer to LA. Yep it happened, we were at a slow crawl for what seemed like forever. Especially since it was quite hot in the car by now – sun shining right on us. We drove into Anaheim at 10:30am.

Disneyland, we have arrived. Well sort of. We don’t actually get to go to Disneyland until tomorrow but I was so excited just to see the street sign “Disneyland Drive”. This was probably one of the highlights of the entire day, cause after this everything went downhill and it turned out to be an awful day.

For the past couple days we have been hearing some grinding sounds coming from one of the back wheels. It has just been getting worse and Brent thinks it is the brake pads. We went to a couple auto places to see how much it would be to have them checked and possibly replaced. Then Brent said he would just do it himself (big mistake), so we went to an auto parts store and he bought a few tools and a new set of brake pads. Our hotel let us check in early which was really nice, so we unloaded all our stuff into the room then Brent hoisted the car up on the jack, and started taking the car apart in the hotel parking lot. Well, it was just the back wheel, which he took off. Then he took the brake pads out and they were so worn down, it was like metal on metal, which explains the grinding sounds we kept hearing. Problem, once he got the old pads out, the new ones wouldn’t fit in right, they were too thick and the piston (I think) would not retract back into where it was supposed to be. Brent was so frustrated! He tried for hours to get these stupid things in right and it just would not work. He even put it all together again with the old brake pads and we went to Walmart to get a clamp and then to Home Depot cause Walmart didn’t have the right size. Turns out Home Depot didn’t have the right size either, but he got one to try. Then he took it all apart again, fiddled with it for the rest of afternoon and it still wouldn’t go together right. So all day he spent on that stupid car, or those stupid brake pads actually. The car even fell off the jack twice! Once the tire was lying flat underneath it and we thought for sure it was going to be punctured, but amazingly its ok. Brent was so frustrated and angry, and sore – his back was already strained and he probably has done more damage to it now. We also couldn’t get our internet working properly in our room so while he was working on the car, I was trying to get us hooked up to the internet. It was wireless so there I was sitting in the parking lot with the laptop on my knee, beside the car with the wheel off. I bet the hotel staff just loved us.

So the internet is working now, the car is put back together but with the old brake pads. Brent called Midas and they will fix it for us tomorrow morning. We have to take it in at 7am and they said it will take between an hour to 2 hours. So once it’s fixed we will walk over to Disneyland.

After our bad day, we went and sat in the hottub for awhile then headed over to Knott’s Berry Farm for dinner at Mrs Knott’s Chicken Restaurant. Yum!! It brought back many memories from my childhood when we would go there. It was just like I remembered it. However Knott’s Berry Farm has changed a lot – there seem to be way more rollercoasters now than I remember. We didn’t go into the park, but we could see them all since they were so tall.

I hope tomorrow is a better day. I have been waiting so long to come to Disneyland, it’s been 14 years since I have been and I am really excited! I’m almost too excited to sleep! Almost.

Monterey – at Fisherman’s Wharf

The beach at Monterey that Brent really loved.

One of the golf courses along the 17 mile drive

The Lone Cypress on the 17 Mile Drive (this is quite a famous tree and is used in the logo for Pebble Beach)

Outside of Mrs Knotts Chicken Restaurant at Knotts Berry Farm

Our last night in San Francisco but I can happily say that I saw enough. It’s a cool city but I didn’t fall in love with it like I have with other places. The only things I would have liked to do that we didn’t get to do today was visit Alcatraz and ride one of the trollies.

We started our day with a trip to Fisherman’s Wharf – what an incredibly huge tourist trap, but nonetheless, we had a good time. The sun was out but it was a bit hazey and down by the water it was a little on the cool side. I was hopeful (for warm California weather) and wore flip flops and no coat. Yeah, not the brightest idea. I hadn’t even thought about how much walking we would be doing and how much my feet would hurt after a few hours. Lesson learned for when we go to Disneyland – not to wear flip flops.

We walked all over – went in and out of the little shops lining the street, watching a couple hundred sea lions basking in the sun by Pier 39, and we ate lunch at the Boudin Bakery where I had clam chowder in a bread bowl, and Brent had chili in a bread bowl. It was SO yummy! I haven’t had such great clam chowder since I was in Boston MA years back. Brent wouldn’t even try it cause he doesn’t like clams, but I don’t like clams either and I still love clam chowder! Oh well, he just doesn’t know what he’s missing….

We also wanted to see the part of Lombard street that is the “Curviest Road in the World”. I’ve seen pictures of it and well, it really did look much cooler…in the pictures. I’m glad we saw it, I guess I just expected it to be much more exciting then it turned out to be. It wasn’t too far from Fisherman’s Wharf so we walked up there – UP there. Wow, the street we walked up was so steep. I have never walked up such a steep hill as this (except the times we hiked up mountain sides). We were such typical tourists – both of us holding our cameras, pulling out numerous maps trying to figure out where we were going. At least everyone around us was doing the same thing so we fit right in.

After several hours of walking around and seeing the same crappy tourist souvenirs in all the stores, we left and drove out to Ocean Beach – a beautiful beach with tons of sand. Brent took some pictures and we hung out there until we left to meet our friends for dinner. My friend Jen, who I was best friends with throughout my teenage years now lives in San Francisco (she works for Adobe/Macromedia). We met up with her and Peter (her husband) for dinner. Oh and they also took us to this store called Fry’s – this huge electronic/computer store – Brent really liked it there! We had an awesome dinner and the restaurant was sort of closing up around us. We were talking up a storm and hadn’t even realized how long we had been there and how late it suddenly was. I haven’t seen Jen for 3 years so it’s funny how as soon as I saw her it was like no time had gone by.

We leave first thing in the morning for our drive down to Anaheim, but we will be stopping along the way in Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara and some other places along the coast. Most likely we won’t have internet until Thursday night so probably no more blog entries until then.

Lunch at Boudin Bakery

The hill we walked up

At the top of the “Curviest Road in the World”

The sea lions

The Golden Gate Bridge in the distance

Wow, my own Blog. Finally I have joined everyone else and started my own Blog. Anyway, today is September 21, 2006. My Grandma’s birthday- Happy Birthday Grandma! It’s also Brent’s mom’s birthday too! Happy Birthday Suzanne! Oh- and isn’t it the first day of fall too? Or is it the last day of summer….. Its funny cause last week it was still scorching hot and now its so much cooler and rainy. The wonderful
Vancouver rainy season has started.

 

Never keep chocolate in the house. Actually never keep sweets of any kind in the house. I swear they call out to me until I gobble them all up. There is a bag of glossette raisins over on the table and I can hear it whispering my name. They aren’t even that good, yet I still find myself making a detour to the table everytime I get up. Bad chocolate. Is there really such a thing as bad chocolate? Yes, yes there certainly is.

 

I am so proud of Angus. He (and Zoey too) have been so good for so long now- no accidents in the house. They actually TELL us when they want to go out. What a concept!!!! Angus has a habit though of waking us up in the middle of the night (and it always seems to be me who ends up taking him out). He paces back and forth in the bedroom and then goes and scratches on the door. But at least he is letting us know!!! And its so much better then a year ago when we were in the condo and he’d just lift his leg on the corner of the bathroom door. Yeah, wasn’t that lovely. We have to keep all the doors in our house closed at all times because of Gracie the peeing cat. Yep, that is how I refer to her now: Gracie the peeing cat. She pees on beds. ANY bed. She especially loves ours though. She was doing so well for about a week and we were letting her sleep in the room with us. Then all of a sudden, I find a huge wet spot on the duvet. ERGH! I immediately threw the duvet in the washer. I know, its probably not good to wash the duvet, but it costs like $50 bucks to have it drycleaned. The other couple times I washed it, it was fine, but this time it must have gotten snagged on something in the washer cause there is a hole ripped in it. We didn’t even notice it until we found all these feathers and fluff all over the bed. hehe.

 

Angus is on the couch right now looking at me. He is so damn cute!! I just love him to bits.

 

Woohoo- tonight there are new seasons starting for good shows- ER, CSI, Grey’s Anatomy. Well, I don’t really watch Grey’s Anatomy. I wonder why I just said “don’t really”, its more like “not at all”. LOL. I think I’ve watched about 5 minute portions of the show a few times between channel surfing. I’m going to start watching it though, I’ve heard its an awesome show. At least now we have PVR (Like Tivo) so I can tape all kinds of things and watch them later.

I can’t wait for Desperate Housewives to start again- just LOVE that show, LOVE it.

 

So we went on a trip last weekend up North. A camping trip. Are we crazy??? Yeah, I guess we are kinda. I was so used to the nice weather we had down here that I wasn’t even thinking up North = COLD. I was so used to wearing shorts and tank tops at home, that I even packed capris and t-shirts to take camping. LOL. Its a damn good thing that I also packed lots of sweatshirts and fleeces, cause I was wearing 2 shirts, and 2 fleeces to bed everynight. The first night we woke up to find the tent covered in ice. Yes, ICE. We were sleeping in a friggin IGLOO.

We were also in the middle of nowhere at a campground we found down a logging road. It was beautiful though- right on

Cariboo
Lake. I never even heard of

Cariboo
Lake before. We were 30 minutes down the logging road from the nearest town. If you can even call it a town. It had a population of 300. Town of Likely- consisted of one general store, and a pub located inside of the Likely Hilton Hotel. Certainly unlike any other Hilton I’ve seen. See the pic below.

 

Ok, gonna sign off for the moment. Stay tuned for more stories of our Great Northern Camping Trip!!!

Those damn glosette raisins are chirping again……

 

posted by Jess @ 1:31 PM