Spring Break trip to California and Nevada! - Trip Planning

The sunset from my room at Hilton San Diego Airport/Harbor Island

The family was planning a trip to California to see my nephew and his family in San Diego in 2020.  Unfortunately, COVID changed those plans.  We were hopeful that we could make the trip in 2021, but even after a year, COVID was making this plan doubtful again.

Around December, Southwest had some great fares going to LAX.  A bit out of the way, but for $176.96 r/t per person, that was hard to pass up.  Apparently I should have waited two days, because the fare went down to $130.96 r/t per person!  We also had a decent itinerary.  Since it was Southwest, I rebooked and we got the flight credit.

Well, things change with COVID, and in January, I received an e-mail that our itinerary changed, and not in a favorable way.  We went from arriving at 6:20 PM to 10:10 PM, the return flight remained the same.  Another thing was that at the time, arrivals into LAX and nearby airports required a 14 day quarantine, which wouldn't be helpful for our trip.  With the change in itinerary, if you don't like it, you can change to nearby airports without a fee.  This was great, as there are several airports in my area (DCA, IAD, and BWI) and around Los Angeles (LAX, BUR, LGB, ONT, and SNA).  In addition to this, ONT and SNA didn't have a quarantine requirement.  Orange County/Santa Ana seemed the best option, so I made the change to fly there from DCA.  We took a meandering flight out, with stops in New Orleans and Denver, but we didn't have to change planes.  Our flight back had a connection in DAL (before it was just a stop in AUS, no plane change).

We still had to deal with hotel bookings and rental cars, with the rental car being the biggest concern, given the supply issue.  And not only were we going from Santa Ana to San Diego, we were going to drive to Las Vegas for four nights.  I booked two nights in San Diego at the Hilton San Diego Airport/Harbor Island, then we drove to Las Vegas, with two nights at Flamingo and two nights at Delano.  We then drove back to Santa Ana and stayed at the Hilton Irvine/Orange County Airport, conveniently right across the street from the airport.

We basically had one full day to spend with my nephew's family, in hindsight, we probably should have planned one more day, but we still had fun.  And Las Vegas was fun, as always, well, for the most part.