Day 15 LA to Hawaii Cruise Portside- Home

Day 15 LA to San Pedro CA, January 30th 2013

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We woke up to a beautiful day in LA. It was cool and bright. The push was to get us out of the rooms by 9Am so that they could completely reset the rooms for the next cruise. They would start boarding on their adventure to Hawaii around 12:30.

Sue wanted to check to see if something she had lost was returned to the lost and found at the purser's desk. While we were there with all of our drag off the ship stuff, I talked her into the formal breakfast. I had some great  lox, french toast and some sausages. The wait staff found a good place to store our stuff as we ate. Since we are premium card holders... meaning that we have cruised with Princess for a lot of cruises, we got to stay in the Wheelhouse Bar. Its the same one that we took the ukelele lessons in with the high back chairs and the couches.  It also had cookies and beverages available to us. Most of all it had the mini couches that Sue desperately needed to sit or lay upon. Sue found it much more comfortable to "lay out" on one than to sit in her chair at the ready for our color and number to be announced. Some poor people were stuck on bar stools waiting for the call. Sue did some shut eye and I pulled out my kindle. We were called to hit the gangway at 11:15. We waited on shore to go through immigration and customs. We sailed right through.

We had a great porter. He got us and all of our bags out on the curb from the gigantic warehouse area that our bags were gathered. When I looked for a our Expedition truck in the parking lot it was exactly where I thought I put it, and I paid the parking charges with a credit card and pulled up to the loading dock. Our porter appeared again, he was helping others get their bags out and loaded. He helped me get the suitcases (the two giant ones) up on the top of the seat inside, so that the manual wheelchair could occupy the luggage area of the truck with the back seat pushed forward. The power chair got into its position after the lift had swung out to accommodate lifting the tail gate up. The lift worked to get the power chair up and we made sure that all bags made it in the truck and that we didn't leave one at the port.

We headed out of San Pedro, which is on the other side of the bridge from Terminal Island and Long Beach. We got on the 110 and sailed though LA without many stops and starts. From the 110 we merged into I5 around Burbank and headed north.

We got some late lunch/dinner at the stop near Buttonwillow that had a popies it was a first for us, we felt it was strange paying for our food... since for over 2 weeks it was provided at no charge on the ship.

We stopped again at Harris Ranch to use the restroom and get some snacks. I got a couple of pieces of Harris Ranch Beef jerky and Sue had a cheese pocket from the bakery and a fruit tart. Harris Ranch is almost exactly 100 miles from home. We pulled into Merced at 5:00pm. It was dark.

The kitties were so happy to see us.