A Quick Vacation with Scott & Miss Laurie

Hi Everyone –  

Here we are half way through the month of November and Miss Laurie and I are starting to feel the effects of our long flying season.  We have been busy getting equipment ready for our trip to Leon, Mexico next month, with the Coke balloons.  

We thought we’d have some fun and just get out of town for a few days, you know, eat a few burgers, see some cool things, just take it easy, and, since Flat Stanley hasn’t been out west before, we thought he might enjoy exploring Las Vegas and then hopping over to Los Angeles to see what is going on over at Disneyland. 

Keep an eye on these pages, we’ll put images up every evening… 

We wish you were here with us!

Stanley Takes A Quick Vacation

Good Morning Everyone –

 Its time to take a few days away from the office, and, when our friend Steve Schmader, President of the International Events and Festivals Association asked us to bring one of the Kellogg balloons to Los Angeles for a demonstration flight, we thought ... Perfect! 

Miss Laurie and I figured that since Stanley had never had a chance to visit here in the West, that we would make the drive ourselves. 

Now, kids, you have to understand, that the desert west is not what most of you are used to seeing, especially if you live in North Carolina. Most of you are used to driving down the freeway and seeing lots of buildings and things along the way. 

Between Boise and our first stop in Las Vegas, we drove through hundreds of miles of nothing. In fact, there is one part of the drive that has a straight stretch of roadway that goes almost one hundred miles without any kind of turn! Oh yeah... no freeway here.

Our trip to Las Vegas takes us through flat country as well as mountains. The highest pass we went through on our trip was 8,000 feet above sea level. It was all very, very beautiful, as the area has already had its first snow fall.

Pretty cool isn’t it. Very cold and windy up there too. The mountains behind Stanley and Miss Laurie are about thirty miles away. Here is a closer look in the image below...

Out in the high desert you never know what you’re going to see next, but its always something cool. In the picture below, about a half mile off the road, still, in the absolute middle of nowhere, we happened across a heard of wild horses. Thats right, they live out here in the desert and we call them “Mustangs”.  It is very unusual to see them this close to the road, so we felt pretty lucky. After we passed them, we noticed a waterhole about a mile farther down the road, so we assume that they had been in close for water.

Even though we were a half mile away from them, when I stopped to get this picture, they took off on a dead run, away from us of course...

Strange things happen out here in the desert. As part of our trip, we have to go through an area of the desert that the government uses for some of the special things it does, it is called “Area 51” (Your teachers will try to explain it to you)  At any rate, as I was saying, sometimes strange things happen out here ... we stopped to make sure we were on the right highway and I’ll be darned if Stanley didn’t jump right out of my hands to be in the picture with the sign ...

Onward to Las Vegas, you know there are some very interesting things about Las Vegas.

 Everything is very big here. In fact, so big that you quickly lose “perspective” on size. Your mind just accepts what it sees as normal. Take the “Luxor” hotel for example, it is the second largest hotel in the world. It is shaped like a pyramid and has almost 5,000 rooms that people stay in each night. 5,000 rooms!  Its so big, that you could park nine (9) Boeing 747 airliners inside it.

Another interesting thing about Las Vegas is that all the big hotels in town are based on different countries or places around the world. It is called “theme” decoration. What country do you suppose Luxor is “Themed” after??? 

If you said Egypt, you are right!

 Las Vegas isn’t the best place for kids to visit. Its kind of a playground for grown-ups. There are not a lot of places you can take a camera either ... so we had to get inventive about how we took some of these pictures...

We saw Rome and  France and even New York... pretty interesting place.  Time to beat feet for Los Angeles... some important things to show you on the way... here we go... back out into the desert... Go West young Stanley, Go West!

Here we are on the way to LA, in a place called “Baker” California. Baker is the gateway to a place called “Death Valley”.  There isn’t anything out there. Its so hot, nothing will grow at all. Sometimes, during the summer temperatures reach as high as 150 degrees. 

Speaking of temperatures, Miss Laurie and Stanley are standing in front of the worlds tallest thermometer in Baker. It stands over 125 feet tall, that is taller than our Tony The Tiger balloon.  

Hi Boys and Girls, Miss Laurie here, you know we travel a lot, and when we travel, we always have to “Go Out” for meals. Scott has a few favorites, but his most favorite place to eat in the world is In N Out Burger. He once ate them for 19 straight days... I didn’t! 

Scott thought Stanley should be introduced to In N Out Burger as soon as possible, so the very first one we came to....

Man That's Good Food!!!  (Stanley can’t wait until tomorrow so we can have another)

Next Stop – Los Angeles

Well, Miss Laurie and I know exactly where you want to see “Flat Stanley”… in the Happiest Place On Earth, Disneyland. So I’ll get right to it… here he is…

Here is Stanley and Miss Laurie standing at the entrance to Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. Sure is pretty, decorated for Christmas… 

So far, Stanley has been a real good kid since he’s been with us. But, we did have a little problem with him while we visited Disneyland.  The little guy ran off and scared Laurie and I to death… pretty important to stay with your parents when you get to a place like this, no matter how bad you want to look around and explore… 

We looked everywhere for him and you won’t believe where we found him… can you find him too?

There are so many things to see and do in Disneyland that its hard to know where to start.

You can take a ride on the Disney Rail Road or just wander around the park looking at flowers and some of the cool statues. 

Here in Disneyland, you see your favorite Disney characters everywhere, Stanley got to spend a few minutes with several of them…

Here he is with Minnie, and Goofy and Miss Laurie, everybody sure looks happy!

We took lots of pictures at Disneyland, the original, first Disney Park… I mention that because our friends at Harrisburg Elementary usually get to go to Disney World instead of Disneyland… Disney World is cool, but this is where the magic began…

We’ll share more pictures at Disneyland in upcoming stories… yes Stanley did get to meet Mickey, but we’re saving that for later… 

Miss Laurie and I don’t go to far from home without a hot air balloon. On this trip, we took some time to do an inflation at the Anaheim Convention Center Marriott, for the IFEA Convention. That’s the International Festival’s and Events Association.  

Communities from all over the world that have festivals or celebrations are members of this organization. We introduced everyone that came on-board the basket, to Stanley.

No trip to “Sunny Southern California” is complete without a quick stop at the beach. It was getting pretty late in the day so the picture is kind of dark, but we wanted to be able to say that Stanley had visited the Pacific Ocean.

If you look just over Miss Laurie’s shoulder, you can see a couple dots in the water…

Surfer’s!  The sun had just gone down and they were still out in the surf playing. Sure looked like fun!

It’s time for us to hurry back to Boise and get ready for our next trip…

To Mexico!