Anniversary & Graduation Vacation

After my graduation we spent a week down in Salt Lake City saying goodbye to friends and family and tying up all the loose ends before we moved to Nevada. Then we drove to California for our CRUISE!!

That was our boat - The Carnival Splendor - it was HUGE! I couldn't believe how big the boat was when I first saw it! There were 13 floors above water that we could access, and we couldn't imagine how many more were underwater in order to keep that thing from tipping over!

Our cruise was a week long and we visited Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, and Cabo San Lucas in the Mexico Riviera. Our first night X got a little sick because our dining room was in the "aft" of the ship and it was rocking a little more at the back of the boat, but we were able to get her a sickness patch and move our dining location to the center of the boat and everything was smooth sailing from there.

Our dinners were crazy good; we always had tons of options to choose from. Each night we were able to choose an appetizer(s), main course(s), and dessert(s)! It was a great opportunity to try something new, or a little bit of everything. And they always had live music!

This is the filet mignon that X got on one of the "elegant nights" (where everyone gets/has to dress up for dinner). Some of the other dishes we enjoyed were lobster tail, ribs, salmon, shrimp, red snapper, and of course the pizza and ice cream that were available 24/7.

Each night we had a fun towel animal waiting to greet us after dinner. Here were some of our favorites:

Our ports of call were AWESOME! X and I had both been to Mexico before so we already knew of some of the things we wanted to see again, but there were also new things that we decided to try out.

Puerto Vallarta

We did the "Extreme Canopy Zip-Line Adventure" in Puerto Vallarta. We'd heard from several people that this was something that we wouldn't want to miss out on, so we decided to buy tickets through the cruise line to make sure we had our seats reserved (note to self: never buy tickets through a cruise line in the future - on shore its almost half the price and very available).

The excursion started with a 15-minute boat ride to this small beach and dock. Little did we know we still had a lot of ground to cover in a variety of modes of transportation. You can tell we had no idea because we are still smiling.

The next leg of our journey took part in these Mercedes Benz trucks that drove us wildly up the side of the mountain. We were still smiling in this picture because the truck hadn't left yet, but we soon discovered as the driver left that he must've forgotten we were in the back of the truck because we were bouncing all over the place. Luckily the seats were heavily padded!

Once we reached the destination for the beginning of our adventure, we got all dressed up in our gear, but we noticed that we didn't see any zip-lines. They told us to sit on these benches and wait for our next ride. In this picture we finally saw what we were taking up the rest of the way... MULES! As you can tell in this picture, X and I were less than enthused. :) All joking aside, it really wasn't that bad. The truck ride up the mountain was fine, and we enjoyed ourselves on the different legs of the journey. We weren't allowed to take our cameras on the adventure, but they had their own photographer and she just happened to take that picture when neither of us looked very happy.

Here we are on our mules. My mule was really slow (a combination of the fact that he was really old and he probably didn't like what he was carrying). I didn't know this at first, so I waited for X so we could ride up together, but her mule ended up darting past me and I rode up the rest of the way alone at the back of the pack. The worst thing was that mules are very gassy animals, so being at the end of the line I got the full wind of all the other mules in front of me. So glad I waited! :)

These were our guides on the adventure. They were so crazy, and they made us all laugh.

Here we are on the 1,000 foot long zip-line 200 feet above the ground!

Here's us repelling down the side of a WATERFALL! What an experience!

Here is us doing a 100 foot free-fall repel next to another waterfall.

And here we are racing together on the last zip-line. I totally won!

We had such a blast on our adventure! Even though we probably overpaid for our adventure, we still had so much fun and would totally do it again!

Mazatlan

Both X and I had been to Mazatlan before, but we were excited to go back and relive some of our favorite memories from our childhood visits.

We went horseback riding on the beach in Mazatlan at the same place X went when she was younger. We loved riding in the surf and enjoyed all the Mexican sun!

We also went parasailing while in Mazatlan. I love X's facial expression as she is taking off!

Here is a video of me taking off. One thing I like about the parasailing in Mazatlan is that they let you take-off straight from the beach! It made it really easy to take these pictures.

Here is a video of X landing. You get to land right back on the beach, but you have to be careful of bystanders on the beach. Watch the last couple of seconds on the video and pay close attention to the lady in blue running/ducking for cover!

Cabo San Lucas

Our shortest time ashore was in Cabo San Lucas since the cruise ship had to start heading back that evening to make it back to California on time.

We decided to go on a snorkeling tour for the day and really enjoyed swimming with the fish! Our snorkeling guide brought some crackers that the fish really liked to eat, so when we stood by him as he crushed up the crackers we literally had hundreds of tropical fish swimming all around us. It was totally surreal!

Cabo San Lucas was our last port of call, and we headed back to California for debarkation. Many of the people we met were headed back to work after the week-long cruise, but we still had more vacationing to do! Heh heh suckers!

After we got off the ship, X and I drove to a nearby beach and spent a little more time on the beach. The water was much colder here than it was down in Mexico!

After a while the wind began blowing pretty hard and we felt like we were in a sand storm! The sand hurt pretty bad so we decided to leave. We drove to our next hotel near Anaheim, CA where we stayed for the next 3 days!

We visited Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure the first two days in Anaheim. We soon discovered that mid-May is THE BEST time to go to California. It's not super hot, and most people are still in school so we never had to wait in line very long!

X's favorite ride is Tower of Terror. As you can see I don't much care for this ride. ;)

We also enjoyed making funny faces (similar to the one we did here) on rides where they take your picture.

Disney's California Adventure had all sorts of construction going on near Paradise Pier. We found out that it was for a new water show called Disney's World of Color. It looks like it is going to be AWESOME! They were supposed to have it up and running by the time we were there, but they were still running tests when we visited. We were sad that we missed it, but we look forward to the next time we visit so we can see all the new stuff! Here is a video of all their upcoming plans:

We are definitely excited!

We also visited Knott's Berry Farm on our last day in Anaheim. They have a few more "thrill rides" than Disneyland has to offer, and we thoroughly enjoyed those.

They also had this crazy horse-riding roller coaster where you get to sit on these horses as you ride! The ride was alright, but it was definitely a unique coaster experience!

After 3 days in Anaheim we drove up to my aunt's house in Ventura where we stayed the night and were planning to drive the rest of the way to Nevada the next day. But... at the last minute we decided to go to Six Flag's Magic Mountain!

Magic Mountain has some of THE craziest thrill rides I've ever been on. Of course I've never been to another Six Flags park or to Cedar Point (someday I will, someday), but we figured that we might as well go since we didn't have any real plans for the weekend in Nevada, and since it was probably the best time of the year to go with the smallest crowds. And it turns out we were right!

X2, the world's first 4th dimensional roller coaster, was something I was excited to ride again. We had come to Magic Mountain with my family back in 2008, but the lines were terrible and we spent most of the day waiting in line (including a 3-hour wait for X2)! We were thrilled to see that the wait for X2 was only 15 minutes pretty much the whole day!

Magic Mountain also has a ride called Tatsu, which is a flying roller coaster (where you are lying down during the ride to get a sense of "flying").

This video I took (sorry for the bad sound and video quality) shows how the seats on Tatsu rotate 90 degrees into the "flying position" for the entire ride. You can extend your hands to feel like you are really flying!

After a fun day at Magic Mountain, we drove the rest of the way to Nevada, and are staying at a local motel until our house is ready for us to move in!

Overall we had such a blast on vacation and on our cruise, and we are looking forward to doing more cruises in the future. The only thing we'd change is to have friends come with us next time so that we have more people to do stuff with. So if you are interested, leave a comment and we can start planning our next adventure!