Toddler transportation from Montana to Southern California

Thanks for coming back for the second installment of Roadtripping with Twins. The first look into the insanity of toddler transportation can be found on this post. We've just recently completed our second major roadtrip, this time to southern California. The Highlander rallied the 2364 miles and 36+ hours travel time (roundtrip) with no problems. This time we were armed with less baby gear (see pack'n'plays etc) but an insane amount of toddler distractions. Coloring books, movies, crayons, reading books, dinosaurs and an army of babies littered the back seat.

I can proudly say that I can now recite Mickey Mouse's Christmas Carol (1983) verbatim after listening to it 52 times. But I take a little pride in the girls old school taste in cartoons - Scooby Doo and Smurfs are favorites as well. The roads were clear of snow until we hit the San Bernardino Mtns, we're we had apparently dragged in the cold and snow with us. We checked in with my sister's family and began a years worth of catching up crammed into a week. The cousins were thrilled to see one another and had a blast.

We headed down into the LA valley murk for some sightseeing and fun for a day. The Los Angeles Zoo and its 1100+ animals held the kids attention for a few hours. The highlights seemed to be the loud Guenon monkey and the incessant requests to find and look at the llamas and horses. Strange, you would have thought the kids had seen enough horses and llamas here in Montana. Avoiding the stream of traffic that flows out of LA everynight we decided to try and soak up some ocean time. Santa Monica Pier has many shops and rides, along with a plethora of entertainers (think Venice Beach on a smaller scale). We were sucked into the tourist allure of Bubba Gump's with some tantalizing shrimp.

The remainder of the week we watched as our 4 toddler's friendship grew. Finger painting chaos, princess outfits, Santa visits, a Nutcracker ballet and candy shop pillaging made the week fly by. We also hit the weather right in the desert and soaked up some 70's around the pools in Desert Hot Springs. And of course no SoCal trip would be considered a success without multiple In N' Burgers. I even squeezed in a run to the best burrito in all of America, Rosa Marias (5 frozen burritos were smuggled back into Montana).