Post-Christmas Vacation

We wanted to do something fun during our winter break so we went to Paramount Ranch, which we had never heard of before.

It was fun!  Here are some facts from the website: (You can skip this and go straight to the pictures if you're bored)*

When Paramount Pictures leased the ranch in 1923, they began an era of film production that continues today. You can experience the area where Bob Hope starred in Caught in the Draft (1941) and Sandra Bullock had a leading role in The Lake House (2006). In the 1950s, Western Town was created for television shows, such as The Cisco Kid. More recent television productions at Paramount include The Mentalist, Weeds, and Hulu’s Quickdraw (2013-2014).

This real-life motion picture set is altered slightly with each production, yet retains a Western motif.

In 1927, Paramount Pictures purchased 2,700 acres of the old Rancho Las Virgenes for use as a "movie ranch." For 25 years, a veritable who's who of Hollywood practiced their craft at Paramount Ranch including director Cecil B. Demille and actors Bob Hope, Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert. The diverse landscape was the real star of the show. It offered film makers the freedom to create distant locales such as colonial Massachusetts in The Maid of Salem (1937), ancient China in The Adventuresof Marco Polo (1938), a South Seas island in Ebb Tide (1937) and numerous western locations including San Francisco in Wells Fargo (1937). The art of illusion was mastered on the landscape.

The golden era of movie making at Paramount Ranch came to an end when changes to the studio system prompted Paramount Pictures to sell the ranch. Paramount Ranch found renewed life as a film location when William Hertz bought the southeast portion in 1953. An ardent fan of movie westerns, he built a permanent western town utilizing Paramount Pictures' old prop storage sheds. As a result, television companies began producing westerns at the ranch such as The Cisco Kid and Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre. William Hertz sold the property in 1955. The Paramount Racetrack opened a year later, and some considered it one of the most challenging in the U.S. Although it closed 18 months later, after three fatal accidents, the racetrack was featured in The Devil's Hairpin, filmed in 1957. Most of the track still winds through the grasslands of the park.

Paramount Ranch was used as the setting for the television show, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

In its sixty plus years of film history, this site has posed as Tombstone, Arizona and Dodge City, Kansas. It has stood in for the rolling hills of Montana and the dusty streets of Laredo. Movie-goers have been fooled into mistaking it for the Royal Gorge of Colorado, the Ozark Mountains, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Tom Sawyer's Missouri. Producers have even passed it off as 13th century China, colonial Salem, and the island of Java.

The streets were also filled with the numerous Hollywood stars who made movies here at Paramount Ranch, including Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, Alan Ladd, Burt Lancaster, Roy Rogers,Kirk Douglas, William Holden, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Fred MacMurray, Charles Laughton, Glenn Ford,Robert Cummings, Basil Rathbone, Charles Ruggles, Cornel Wilde, Eddie Bracken, Joel McCrea, Ray Milland, Walter Brennan, Claude Rains, Robert Preston, James Garner and Warren Beatty. Actresses who worked along side them at the Ranch included Lucille Ball, Barbara Stanwyck, Marlene Dietrich, Jane Russell, Helen Hayes, Susan Hayward, Paulette Goddard, Betty Hutton, Rhonda Fleming, Polly Bergen, and Diane Keaton.

There were far too many movies made at the Ranch to list here, but some of the more notable ones included: "Paleface" (1948) and "Son of Paleface" (1952), "Gunfight at the OK Corral" (1957), "Fancy Pants" (1950), "The Virginian" (1946), "WhisperingSmith" (1948), "The Forest Rangers" (1942), "Miracle of Morgan's Creek" (1944), "The Perils of Pauline" (1947), "Geronimo" (1939), "The Streets of Laredo" (1949), "Buck Benny Rides Again" (1940), "Ruggles of Red Gap" (1935)," "Gunsmoke" (1931), "The Plainsman" (1936), "Hopalong Cassidy Returns" (1936), "Wells Fargo" (1937), "Union Pacific" (1938), "The Adventures of Marco Polo" (1938), "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (1938) and "Reds" (1981).

Since 1980, the site has been part of a national park, and has been reduced to 436 acres in size. But the ranch itself has survived, and the Western Town was rebuilt in 1984, and is still frequently used for Western filming.

Many classic TV westerns such as "The Cisco Kid," "Gunsmoke," "Have Gun Will Travel," "The Rifleman" and "Bat Masterson" were shot here, plus more recent TV series such as "Charlie's Angels," "CHIPs" and "The Dukes of Hazard."

(A second movie ranch is located across the valley, in the northern hills near Magic Mountain. Once owned by Gene Autry

(We've driven past it, but haven't gone close.  It says it is privately owned.)

*Here's the town!

There are some trails around it too.  We walked along a short little dusty trail and got a great view of the town below.

Then we drove 5 min. down the road to the visitor center.  It was kind of boring, but it had a nice movie telling all about the ranch. Most of the information is what I have above.

Short and sweet, but still fun.  And it was a beautiful day!

Happy Christmas!

We did, indeed have a Happy Christmas!

On Christmas Eve we warmed ourselves by the TV fire, 

(Chris turned on our own fire too)

Ate Indian take-out complete with homemade Naan and lassi,

 and had technical difficulty trying to capture the magic of our new PJ's 

On Christmas morning we had breakfast pizza because it was Chris's year--that's what his family had growing up.  (Next year will be my year--cinnamon rolls)

Elle wondered what she will have for breakfast when she has her own family!

Chris and I tried to start a new Christmas breakfast tradition years ago, but the berry pie and ice cream wasn't really practical, so we just borrowed the traditions from our families.

Santa brought Chris a Voltron toy, a bottle of Poo Pourri, and a 

Whatchamacallit bar in his stocking (be sure to click on those two links)

Chris has been on the hunt for a Whatchamacallit bar for about two months now.  No one seems to sell them anymore!  Santa had a very hard time tracking one down.  

I tried to find him one myself by asking the store clerk if they sold Whatchamacallits and he was like, "So, you can't remember the name of the thing you want....?"  

Me:  "No, it's a candy bar"

Him: "But. . . you don't know its name?"

He has obviously been deprived of the pleasure of this unique treat!

Some gift highlights:

A sweet picture from Elle:

Cute red shoes: 

A copy of my dad's funeral, which is very special. :)

A ukulele which Elle has been wanting for months.

A rice cooker which Chris has been wanting for years

And double copies of the complete set of the original Knight Rider which Chris and I unknowingly bought for each other!

Great minds, right?!

The best wrapping job ever:

(by me, thank you, thank you!)

I invented a new product for Chris: Lightswitch Identifiers.
We have at least three switches in every single room!  It is very hard to remember what each one does--especially in the dark!

I bought some little jewel stickers and square rhinestones to put on the switches.  The big circles are for the main lights, the small circles are secondary lights, and the squares identify the fans.

So far they work!  If anything, it will help train us which lights are what.

For dinner Chris cooked rotisserie turkey.
No brine for this bird!  Just salted the thing, stuck it in the fridge overnight, rubbed it with olive oil, and it was good to go!  It was very moist and had great flavor.

We had a lovely dinner with our friends. (and I forgot to take any pictures of them to prove that we really did have them over. . .)

Later that night Chris roasted up some chestnuts!

They were good!  Kind of like pine nuts.

And that's it! 

Pre-Christmas Family Vacation

Chris took some time off for the holidays so we could go on a family vacation!

It started off as a trip to Hawaii, then transformed into a 4-day cruise, but eventually turned into a trip to exotic..... San Diego!

It was a lovely day for a drive

It took a little longer than we thought it would to get there, but we finally made it!

By the time we got there it was dark and we couldn't think of anything to do, so we wandered around downtown.

It turns out that we did our BYU fan duty by stumbling across the "Battle of the Bands" for the BYU/Wyoming football game.  We had great seats, but the problem was, we were on the wrong side!  Not only could we just see the backs of the band members, but it was the wrong backs!  There were a couple BYU fans around us so it was OK that I was cheering for them, but we finally decided we should really go and join the rest of the BYU fans across the way.

Obviously the view was not very good.  At least we were among blue shirts!

It was chilly, so we decided to get some delicious ramen for dinner.

The next morning we got some HUGE delicious gourmet donuts.  It's hard to tell, but two of them are bigger than my whole hand!  Mmmm.  They were good!

We set off for a day at the San Diego Zoo!

We rode the tram which was super cool and kind of scary.

We saw HUGE Galapagos Island turtles

We saw the cutest baby orangutan 

And a giraffe posed for us

We finished the day with some mediterranean food including salt lassi and baklava!

(Elle is the cutest, that's why she's always the one featured in the pictures)

The next day we headed to Tijuana .  We checked out of the hotel and went in search of bagels for breakfast.  It turns out that it wasn't easy as all that to find some! First we looked up Noah's bagels, but it was 20 min. away.  We tried a little grocery store next, but they only sold meat and stuff.  Then we mapped to another bagel place and got turned around getting there.  When we finally got close to the shop we ran into a DO NOT ENTER zone because it was a naval base!  We got to see some cool Naval ships though.

We continued on our way until we found a Starbucks--because there's always a Starbucks somewhere. We had overpriced pastries then decided to skip Tijuana and just go home.



On the way we stopped at the very first California mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá.  No tours were available so we just walked around the outside for a bit.

Next, we headed to the Mormon Battalion museum.

The sisters missionaries did a great job on the cute little tour!

Next, we were on to the San Juan Capistrano mission

It was so pretty!  

It was fun to see the ruins of the original building (we did the audio tour)

And there was this really funky squid-looking plant

It was a great vacation!

Unfortunately, our 1.5 hour trip home took  2 hours and 40 min.  The map kept telling us there was a "13 min. delay" here, and a "30 min. delay" there and another "40 min. delay" later on!

But we made it home and lived to tell the tale!