California Part 2- Six Flags Discovery Kingdom & Jelly Belly (and a Fire)

Part 2 of our California vacation is the detour we took between my aunt's house in Fresno and my cousin's house in Redding  

Tuesday: Today, we got up early to head to Vallejo, CA.  Since we already have season tickets to Six Flags theme parks for this year, we decided to visit Six Flags Discovery Kingdom.  This is a very different Six Flags from what we are used to.  It is part theme park (roller coasters), part zoo (lions, elephants, birds, and other animals in habitats to look at), and part Sea World type park (dolphin and sea lion shows).  While we had wished there were more rides we could have ridden as a family, there were lots of great rides for the girls and many big roller coasters for Bryan and I.  We finally found a roller coaster we could have ridden as a family, but by the time we got to it, the park was closing and that ride had closed. We really enjoyed both shows we watched: Drench! (a dolphin show) and Cirque Dreams Splashtastic (a cirque show with a little dolphin involvement).  The only negative we experienced at the park was extremely poor, slow service at lunch with lukewarm, overpriced food.  We also made the mistake of Daddy and the girls riding the water raft ride too late in the afternoon.  As the sun started setting, the temperature really started dropping, so the girls got cold!  We searched every gift shop we passed for sweatshirts for them, but could not find any in their size.  Overall, we did have a great time!

Taking a nap on the way there:

Emma:

Ella:

Drench!

Bugs Bunny Play Area:

Cirque Dreams: Splashtastic!

Freezing girls sharing daddy's shirt:

Tuesday Addendum: While we were in a gift shop at Discovery Kingdom during the middle of the afternoon, I noticed a missed call and text message from my brother.  When I called him back, he told me something I never would have imagined- our parents' house was on fire.  I immediately stepped out of the gift shop to be able to hear better.  At this point we didn't know much: firefighters were on scene and the fire appeared to be contained to the north end of the house.  Bryan called his parents, who quickly headed over to send us a few pictures and try to find out more information.  So, while our girls were playing in the Bugs Bunny area, I was looking at pictures of my childhood home with firemen sitting on the roof.  My parents flew home on Wednesday, while we continued with our trip.  I'll post pictures and more about this in a later post.

Wednesday: This morning we tried to find a place to put our feet in the bay without driving too far in the wrong direction before heading away from the water, but all we ended up doing was finding a run down industrial district that had us making sure the car doors were locked.  So, we went on to the Jelly Belly factory for a tour.  An interesting tour with free samples, Yeah!  We went to Chick-Fil-A for lunch, planning on letting the girls burn off some energy in the play area before driving on to Redding, but unfortunately the play area was closed for repairs.  So, we asked some local people where a nice park was nearby and went there after lunch instead.  It was a great park, with lots of fun equipment.  I think our favorite was an angled, spinning pole that we all took turns playing on.  After the park, we drove on to Redding.