We stayed overnight outside Las Vegas the first night and used our gambling winnings (Erin is an ace at 21 and high-stakes poker like many MBA's are! Anna had the hot hand at the kiddie slots.) to do the way-overpriced tour at Hoover Dam.The next day we stopped at the "Calico Ghost Town" in the desert east of L.A. and it was surprisingly cool -- it's an old mining town which boomed briefly in the late 1800s before the silver all ran out, and now they let you tour the place, walk deep into one of the mines, take a train ride on an old mining car, etc.
Once in Costa Mesa with Erin's grandmother--the kids call her "Granny Ruth"--we spent time with her, took daily trips to nearby Newport Beach and Balboa Island, went up to L.A. to see a dinosaur and art museum and visit my friend Dave Rennie at Disney Studios where he is editing a film right now.
More pix -- here are the kids at the Newport Beach pier we always visit, getting the famous frozen bananas on nearby Balboa Island, and finally playing in the fountains at the Fashion Island outdoor shopping center (they can do that in California since it, ya know, never rains in Southern California, as the song says):
