Road Trip - Part 1 Santa Monica and Venice Beach

This summer we decided to take a road trip up to visit my Dad and Stepmom and Grandma in Washington and other family members along the way that we haven't seen in ages.  The plan was to stay in hotels the way up and with family on the way back down.  The idea of 4 kids in the back of the minivan for hours on end each day didn't scare me, I couldn't wait to go.

 

I realized very early on that just because mapquest might say the route will take 5 hrs, it can easily turn into 10 hrs.  I planned on taking potty breaks, snack breaks, sightseeing breaks, etc, but I honestly didn't even think about the traffic, especially in California.

We drove to Santa Monica the first day.  That day we hung out at the beach.  I thought the water would be too cold for the kids to get in too much, but they jumped right in and had so much fun.  Even Kevin, who is normally a little more timid, was right in there. I'm so glad he learned how to swim right before we left. Darci ran in a bit, and then decided she would have more fun digging in the sand, so she spent most of the time trying to build sand castles and digging holes.

We rode some rides and walked around the Santa Monica Pier until it was dark.  The weather was perfect, even a bit chilly.  They have concerts at the Pier every Thursday night so there were a ton of people.  And oh my goodness, there were tons of bikes.  There were clusters and clusters of parked bikes and bike after bike riding on the sidewalk.  There was almost as much bike traffic on the sidewalk as there was car traffic in the road!  The kids all started the trip with a few dollar bills to spend and of course, every shop we went in they wanted to spend it all, so I had to keep reminding them that our vacation just started and they don't want to spend it all at once!

I was pleasantly surprised to find that our hotel was right across from the Los Angeles LDS Temple.  It was HUGE sitting up on that hill and beautiful.  I actually booked the hotel thinking it was in Santa Monica, but it was just on Santa Monica Blvd in West Los Angeles.  I had been told the area wasn't too good, but it was ok, we didn't have any problems.  We emptied the van out completely that night just in case!  It was about a 10 minute drive to the beach.

The next morning we drove through UCLA campus - Tad had to see all the football stadiums on our trip!  Funny that he didn't mention he wanted to do this while I was planning the trip!  So a few detours later, we drove through Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, and Hollywood.  We saw Harry Potter, Spiderman, Micky Mouse, and Batman walking around, but no real stars:(  The streets were lined with lush green trees and bushes, I could only wish we had all of these green tree lined streets back home!

Then we went to Venice Beach to swim.  The water was a little rougher, but we still had fun.  I even got in the water and rode some waves with the kids.  Darci played in the sand some more.

We walked along the Venice Beach boardwalk hoping to see some snake charmers and crazy people.  I was actually quite disappointed in it.  Maybe its better on the weekends?  But its really not very family friendly and just not very fun like I imagined it would be with shops and cafes lining the boardwalk.  Nope, just a few guys trying to give away their rap CD's.  Oh well...

Then we left LA to drive towards Arroyo Grande.  This is where I didn't take the traffic into consideration.   It felt like we were stuck in traffic for EVER!  It didn't help that we were trying to leave the city during rush hour traffic either!  It was about 9pm by the time we finally pulled into our hotel that night!