Last week, I had the opportunity to visit a state for the first time (which hasn’t happened in a long time). A project for 318 took me to a client in north-central Nebraska, which turned out to look a lot like southeast Minnesota. The towns we stayed in all had populations under 3500 people and all the people we met were very friendly.

In hindsight, it probably would have been quicker to drive, but we flew Air Tran to Omaha (via Milwaukee) and drove about three and a half hours from there. Lodging for this trip was the Super 8 in O’Neill and our Mazda 3 came from Enterprise. Not a perfect travel experience, but nothing too awful either. Side note: Budget at OMA rents all three current MINI models.

You know you are in a remote area of the country when the nearest Walmart is almost two hours away. AT&T’s cell coverage was surprising good, though, and it seemed like every restaurant had free wi-fi. We ate at all the local spots in O’Neill and Atkinston and I sampled the Nebraska beef more than once.

With Nebraska off the list, I’m down to 11 states left to visit. A drive from Minnesota to the Gulf Coast (via Kansas City) would cross off half of them, but I’m not sure when (or if) I’ll try that. Might be fun, though…

I’ve in the middle of a long training trip to California (more on that soon) and thanks to my brother and his wife, I got to spend Sunday at Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure. The weather was perfect – the sun burned off the early morning fog and temps were in the upper 60s with sunshine all afternoon.

Driving to Anaheim from the LAX side of town always seemed like too much work to me – today I took the 90 to the 405 to the 105 to the 605 to the 91 to the 5 to Disneyland Drive. Parking in the main resort parking area now costs $14, but I did get a close surface lot spot right next to the tram stop.

I arrived about 15 minutes before the 9:00AM official opening time, so I stopped at the La Brea Bakery in Downtown Disney for a chocolate croissant and some cranberry juice ($7.74) before going through the main gate on the Disneyland side.

The first part of the day was spent hitting some of my favorites: Space Mountain, Matterhorn, It’s A Small World, Alice in Wonderland, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and the Jungle Cruise. Not much new to report: they are prepping for the return of Captain EO, Haunted Mansion was back to the original, non-Nightmare version, the Rivers of America were drained and the Jungle Cruise had a new (for me) piranha feature towards the end.

I had lunch at the Hungry Bear Restaurant in Critter Country (chicken sandwich, fries and a coke, $11.94) and did some shopping for a shirt Colleen wanted me to look for that she saw last June. The stores on Main Street were fun to go through, although I’ve decided you need to buy what you want when you see it, as every store seems to have unique things and size selections on more common items can vary wildly between locations. And even though it wasn’t terribly busy for a Sunday, this place moves some serious merchandise.

In the afternoon, I did a “park hop” over to the California Adventure side and got a Fast Pass for Soarin’ Over California. That must be one of the bigger successes in DCA, since the return time was about five hours later in the day. I set off from there to the Tower of Terror, which was incredible (as usual).

Much of DCA is under (re)construction, which created some tight confines in parts of the park. Walt Disney Imagineering had a great center set up, though, called the Blue Sky Cellar, which contained lots of information about their plans for the next few years (World of Color, Little Mermaid, Cars Land, etc.).

I walked around Paradise Pier and hit some rides I had never tried (Golden Zephyr, Maliboomer) and one I had (California Screamin’). The roller coaster was super-smooth this time and didn’t give me a headache (thankfully). DCA now has their own Toy Story Mania (like the one at Hollywood Studios in Florida) and the line was ridiculously long here as well, so I skipped it.

I took a break from the parks and walked over to Downtown Disney and the Disneyland Hotel. The World of Disney store didn’t really have anything different from what I saw in the parks and seems to pale in comparison to the one in Florida. The new D Street store was really awesome, though, and I almost walked out with two nerd-tastic retro shirts (Space Mountain era 1977 and a sweet Tron design).

I caught the monorail back to Tomorrowland, walked through a few stores in the castle and Frontierland, then went back to a store in New Orleans Square to buy this awesome Shag Haunted Mansion limited edition shirt:

How cool is that? I also stopped back at a store on Main Street for a different shirt for Colleen (the original one she wanted was nowhere to be found). Thankfully, they still had the size she wanted – I think it was the last one in the whole joint.

The fast pass was burning a hole in my pocket, so I decided to go back to DCA before heading out for the day. The information desk had no suggestions for an indoor, sit-down restaurant, so I went over to the Grand Californian Hotel and ate at the buffet served in the Storytellers Cafe. It wasn’t super great food, but it was comfortable, warm, quiet and away from the hustle and bustle of the parks.

After dinner, I used the fast pass, jumped on the tram back to the parking area and hit all of the freeways again in reverse order to get back to Venice. Fun times!

A week ago we packed up the family in the car and headed north to Duluth to visit the water park at the Edgewater hotel. It was just a quick overnight trip on a school night, so the place wasn’t very busy. That was a good thing, since it’s smaller than the Mall of America water park (or any of the Wisconsin Dells spots). Still, it was a very nice place and the kids had a great time.

We stopped at Tobies on the way up and had dinner Sunday night at the Duluth branch of Hell’s Kitchen. I had this (with chicken):

Baked Penne Pasta tossed in a creamy garlic sauce, topped with mozzarella cheese, oven baked til golden. Includes French bread & whipped butter. $10.25 Add vegetables $1.25, Italian sausage $1.75, grilled chicken $2.25, chopped shrimp $4

Nice food, cool atmosphere and great service, but a little pricey.

On Monday, we visited the original Grandma’s in Canal Park for lunch before heading back home. The Godfather sandwich there is still one of my all-time favorites.

This week I had the chance to travel to California again – this time for meetings in Santa Monica. I flew the “new Delta” both ways – out in Delta equipment and back in an old NWA plane. LAX terminal five was actually very efficient and the air travel part of the trip was surprisingly stress-free for a change.

The weather was, of course, perfect out there – sunny and near 80 both days. I stayed at a quaint little motel on Main called the Sea Shore Motel. It was an easy walk to the beach and about a mile from the pier.

I had good food all trip. For dinner, I ate at the World Cafe, which was a block down Main from my motel. The sirloin and au gratin potatoes were excellent and I couldn’t pass up “David’s Housemade Butterscotch Pudding” for dessert.

For breakfast the next day, I had the jerk chicken omelet at Swingers Diner Santa Monica, followed by lunch at Fritto Misto. Turns out this is the same Fritto Misto as the location in Hermosa Beach that I’ve been to several times. The spaghetti carbonara was to die for!

I planned to walk out on the pier, but ended up walking along the beach south of the pier and looping back to the motel early. I wasn’t that familiar with the area and the lighting at night wasn’t the greatest – I’ll have to explore more during the day next time.

There was also a familiar sight near the pier – the big blue Kooza tent that was in Minnesota this summer is in town through December 20. It was great hearing the music again as I walked past…

It was almost a month ago, but I never got around to writing a post here about Colleen’s 40th birthday trip to Los Angeles. Some of the pictures have been up on Facebook for a while and now there are a bunch in the 7MM photo gallery too.

The kids spent the week in Grand Marais with my parents, so it was just Colleen and I on this one. We flew Sun Country to LAX, arriving late Monday night. The usually wonderful Emerald Aisle at National had only mini-vans available at that hour, so we spent the week driving around in this thing.

We stayed at the wonderful Belamar Hotel in Manhattan Beach the whole trip and had a great third-floor room with a balcony overlooking the pool. Even for a boutique hotel, their prices were very reasonable and the service was top-notch.

Each day of the trip started off with breakfast at the incomparable Uncle Bill’s Pancake House in Manhattan Beach. I’m pretty sure I could start the day there for the rest of my life and be happy about the decision. Make sure and try the potatoes stroganoff…

Tuesday was Hollywood day, which included stops at the Grove, the LA Farmer’s Market and an afternoon taping of the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson show at CBS Television City. It was really interesting watching them tape the TV show, as everything happened out of sequence in a studio that seems much, much smaller in person. Jeff Foxworthy was the guest that day. We stopped for dinner at the Hollywood branch of Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles, then drove by the Columbia Records building before driving down Sunset Boulevard through Beverly Hills and Bel Air on the way back to the hotel.

Wednesday was beach day. After breakfast at Uncle Bill’s, we walked along the Manhattan Beach pier and the Strand before driving down to Hermosa Beach. We did a little shopping and had lunch at the Good Stuff restaurant located across from the pier. We spent a little time in the hotel courtyard before driving down to the Redondo Beach pier for dinner at Kincaid’s Bayhouse.

We checked out of the hotel early on Thursday and had breakfast at the usual spot. From there, it was a relatively painless freeway commute to Anaheim for a day at Disneyland. My brother and his wife (who work for Disney in Florida) were kind enough to get us two tickets to the parks as a birthday gift for Colleen. The main park was open from 8AM – 9PM and we were a little worried about crowds when we found out it was both Laker’s Day and Grad Night. Everything turned out fine, though, and we got to do almost everything we planned on.

Colleen got a birthday button from City Hall when we first arrived and people wished her happy birthday all day long. We tried to get dinner reservations at the Blue Bayou, but they were booked. We ended up waiting for cancellations and did get in after waiting about an hour. That secretive Club 33 door tempted me the whole time we waited, so I asked for membership info at City Hall when we left.

We hit all of our favorite rides and popped over to the California Adventure side to go on the new(ish) Monsters, Inc. ride and the Tower of Terror. Other new things on the Disneyland side included the Finding Nemo submarine ride and new Mark VII monorails. There were some changes in It’s A Small World (that we didn’t much care for) and the Tiki Room was back to the original version (which we loved). We caught the fireworks, which started while we were on the Matterhorn, then drove back to the airport for a red-eye flight back home.

Welcome to 40, Colleen!

As we’ve done the past few years (could it really be 9?), the family packed up the car early on the Fourth of July and drove to my aunt and uncle’s cabin, which is located just outside of Luck, Wisconsin, on Bone Lake.

The crowd was a little smaller this year – our immediate family, mom and dad, grandpa Smith, my aunt and uncle and their daughter (who just got married last month). Add in three dogs, fireworks, lots of great food, jet ski rides and perfect weather and you get a very enjoyable holiday outing.

The lake had more boats on it this year (around eight) and the water levels were really low – I’d say maybe down a foot overall. The neighbors across the bay launched really loud mortar shells all day. That was fun at first, but the novelty quickly wore off. I’d love to hear one of those suckers go off in the city, though.

Traffic through Lindstrom, Taylors Falls and St. Croix Falls was decent and we stopped at Eichten’s Cheese shop, Rainmaker Fireworks and the Milltown Drive-In in Milltown, Wisconsin, on the way up.

The drive home was uneventful – no speed traps this year. We got home in time to set up a bonfire in the driveway, watch the Eagan fireworks and set off our own display that we purchased at Rainmaker.

Pictures are now up on Facebook and in the private section of the 7MM photo gallery (the password has changed – email or call me if you’d like it).