San Diego Zoo was day two it's a large zoo and we had a great day, Californians were experiencing there week of winter and so both Seaworld and the zoo were very quite by their normal standards, lucky us this continued through for Disneyland as well. I think a lot of the animals were enjoying the cooler weather, but then others were huddling under their heat lamps. Cheetahs seem to have an eye for my children both these ones and the ones in Wellington get this look of interest in their eyes and start pacing trying to figure out how they could get them to fall into the enclosure.

We look around the historic San Diego plaza area and had a get Mexican lunch their before heading up the coast to LA, or more accurately Anaheim.

We had three days in Disneyland and went on every ride we cared to, there were hardly any ques so in some cases we went twice. Liam and Charles got trained as Jedi and Madeline got sound advice from Cinderella about not losing your shoe, as she tied her lace. Everyone was shattered by the end of day three.
Many tears were shed as we said good bye to the NZ based component of our party.
Our return trip took us back to Indio, where we did get the date shake this time and past the

Salton sea, more time below sea level to Organ Pipes National Monument. We had our first border check point on the way there. You would think we'd left the country the way they do the border checks just after you leave the national monument, they thought we should be carrying our passports but they didn't make us unpack our stuff to check for drugs and illegals.

We headed on to Tuscon and stayed in a nice campground near the city, visited Saguaro National Park and saw LOTS of the big cactus, and lots of other types of cactus too, Liam's becoming quite a cactus expert having done both these Junior ranger programmes.

One day to drive home for work the next day. We took a more direct route drove though a mountain pass rather than up the 'I' which would have been fine had Tuscon not received a snowfall, not common in the south of Arizona.

While we say a few sprinkles it wasn't till north of Globe that things got serious. We slowed for the conditions and traffic was OK. Thinks got worse and we followed a snow plow for a while. We saw several people unaccustomed or unable to drive in the snow, highlights being a rear wheel coupe seen 90 degrees to the centre line at times, and a Police SUV being towed out of a ditch by a passer by.

We passed many cars simply stopped going the other way but we crept on, now in very slow traffic. Our unconventional route took us away from the traffic and fortunately a drier road until we got to the familiar I40 just before the New Mexico boarder. A short stop for food brought darkness and more snow. Driving at night, in snow, on the interstate is not fun. It's not obvious where the road is but the other traffic seems to fly past at times.

That said we saw stranded Truck in the middle of the road and two cars on their roofs before we got home. A very long day in the car (14 hours) but we were safely home.