The Lane's next BIG trip: Day 30. Las Vegas to Disneyland (Anaheim) . Saturday 18th January

The day Christine had been waiting for the last 35 years and started saving for 20 years ago had finally arrived. Disneyland was only 419 kms and 4 hours away. As we left Vegas we dropped by the 'Welcome to Las Vegas' sign. The highway between Vegas and Anaheim is the usual 4 then 6 then 8 lane highway and there was a lot of traffic heading in the opposite direction because it's a long weekend for Martin Luther King Day on Monday. The second most interesting part of the drive was seeing and then counting 170 000 heliostat mirrors at the worlds largest solar power plant, the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California. The most interesting part of the drive was trying to get the car back to Hertz with only a drop of fuel in the fuel line. We paid extra to have the tank full at the start of the hire and were told that it could be returned empty. So it was worked out, on the previous fuel consumption data, how much 'gas' was needed to Anaheim. We needed to buy a little bit more from a roadhouse 200 kms into the drive. The on board computer initially indicated that we would arrive with 20 miles of fuel left in the tank but after some faster driving up and down the mountains approaching LA the computer changed it's mind and said we would run out 10 miles short! But, as we weren't happy about the cleanliness of the car when we collected it, Andrew didn't want them to have anymore of our money/fuel so decided that he wasn't going to stop a second time just to add a gallon. Lucky, because his decision may have made Christine a bit hot and bothered as she pushed the car into the emergency lane in the 27 degree heat. Oh well, that would have been another part of the adventure. We arrived at Disneyland at 2pm and after a lengthy check in and information session at the Grand Californian Hotel we could relax and try to plan the final 5 days of our trip. Within the Disneyland Resort is Disneyland, California Adventure Park and 3 hotels, one of which is ours. After Andrew drove a couple more kms to deliver the the car to the Hertz office and then walked back to the hotel, we entered Disneyland wearing our '1st time to Disneyland' badges proudly. Christine and Andrew were nearly in tears. Christine because she had made it at long last and Andrew because he worked out that most of those 317 million USA residents (as described on Day 23) were also at Disneyland because it was a long weekend!!!!! Disneyland was also hosting the Tinkerbell half marathon, on Sunday, with 15000 runners registered and a 10km event on Saturday with 10000 runners. Those runners and their families were all at Disneyland. Andrew made some inquiries but was told the half marathon was sold out months ago. He would have been in the minority as the men only made up 3% of the entries. There was a Running and Fitness expo on and he managed to buy a new discounted Garmin running watch he had been trying to find the previous 3 weeks. We spent the late afternoon exploring as much of the park as we could with so many other visitors around. As it got dark we watched the parade and saw many of the Disney characters on beautiful floats. The kids were tired so they returned to the hotel while Christine and Andrew watched the fireworks over the castle and then tried looking around a bit more. At 11pm we returned to the hotel to get some rest before the next days adventure.