Southern California has a little something for everyone, whether it be amusement parks, surfing, mountains, oceans, Hollywood, or just some beautiful scenery. Northern California is uniquely different, and more about culture and scenery. Our first trip was in 1998, when Alicia was 9 and Dana was 8. The focus was Sea World and Disneyland. Since then, we have gone to California for either an extended weekend or for a full week. The state is so large that you can’t possibly see everything in just a handful of trips. This is especially true since we like to go back to Disneyland every few years to see what’s new.

California

Our third visit to Southern California was for a long weekend over Easter. Mäggi was fascinated with Hollywood, so we wanted to show it to her. We spent a day at Universal Studios, a day in Hollywood, and a day in Palm Springs.

 

Alicia was almost 19, Dana 17 and Mäggi 17.

04/04/07—04/08/07

Our second visit to Southern California was a full week. We did a number of things while we were there, none of which included walking into a Disney park. It’s not that we have anything against Disneyland, but I wanted all of us to experience other things that southern California has to offer.

03/20/04—03/27/04

We'd been to Walt Disney World. It was time we tried Disneyland. So, over a long weekend, we spent a few days in sunny southern California. We also went to Sea World in San Diego and visited a close friend of Madeline’s. It was a very nice trip.

02/11/98—02/15/98

This visit to Southern California was for a nice vacation after Dana graduated from Purdue and both girls were about to head off to Disney World for work. We spent five days in Disneyland and three in Newport Coast, and did a number of different things while we were there. We took Amanda with us.

 

Alicia turned 24 while there, Dana was 22 and Amanda was also 22.

05/17/12—05/27/12

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This was a continuation of our trip to Hawaii. We spent three days at Disneyland and then our final day at the Disney Studios in Burbank. Although we only had two full days at Disneyland, we saw lots of things that couldn’t be found in Disney World. Several attractions were decorated for the holidays, and we did a tour that took us through Walt’s footsteps at Disneyland.

 

Dana was 27.

10/24/16—10/27/16

This visit to California was to allow Dana to experience an Adventures by Disney trip. We did AbD San Francisco and then extended our trip for a week to catch some of the places we had to cancel on when we moved to Florida. We hit Lake Tahoe and Yosemite National Park, along with a couple of train museums.

 

Dana was 27.

07/20/17—07/29/17

We had a wedding to go to in Palo Alto, for Anne Marie Nicpon, a dear friend and junior bridesmaid in our own wedding 26 years earlier. It was great to go to her celebration, and we extended it to a very long weekend trip to a beautiful city and some of Madeline’s cousins and uncle. It was lots of fun, even though we had just been to California a month earlier.

06/29/12—07/04/12