Road Trip
I went on a short (2 day) road trip a few weeks ago with a friend. It ended up being really fun, and kind of hilarious! I’ll explain why, with pictures.
1. Driving through Yuma, Arizona in the middle of the day in summer isn’t exactly the smartest idea. It was 117 degrees outside. Basically, it was like being in a sauna, fully clothed, without all of the teak benches, lovely steam and cold shower afterwards. Not exactly refreshing. This building was cool though. You see lots of old bombed-out buildings along the highways in the Southwest, as the pretty much never decay.
2. Just in case it wasn’t already hot enough, there’s sand dunes to prove that you’re in the desert. I think it might have been even hotter here. A public service announcement to all of my dear readers: don’t wear sandals in hot sand. It seems like a good idea, but then the hot sand rolls over your feet and literally burns your skin. Seriously.
3. Hanging out with little kids who are just seeing the ocean for the first time is immensely gratifying. Although I’m pretty sure that I was also that excited.
4. It’s also nice to be able to get a few pictures of my friend and her son, for posterity’s sake. This is one of my favorites from the whole trip.
5. Did I mention were were on Coronado Island, in San Diego? If you look really closely, you can see the tops of the submarines. Yes, they were so close that I could have swam out to them (something I wouldn’t recommend).
6. My hair is wild and has a mind of its own, and this picture proves it. Also, I love building sand castles.
7. So here’s where the hilarious part comes in. My friend is moving to Germany, so we were driving to San Diego to drop off her truck so it could get shipped halfway across the world. She had arranged to rent a car to get back, but when we showed up at the car rental office, we were told that in fact, we would not be able to take the rental car across state lines. Great. Lots of chaos, taxi rides, and scary trips into the unsavory part of the city ensued, and in the end, it was cheaper and easier to rent a moving truck. So we drove back across the desert in an empty moving truck. A big one, at that. Luckily, at all of the Border Control checkpoints, they thought it was funny, so we proceeded unmolested. I think we were so hysterical, they were just trying to get us out of the way.
8. The sunsets in the desert are ALWAYS amazing. I didn’t photoshop this at all. That’s what it actually looked like. And In-n-Out? Also amazing. For anyone who doesn’t live on the west coast or has never been, I highly recommend it. I don’t even eat fast food burgers, and these are the best.
It was quite the adventure! Got home at 3am only to have to get up at 7 to make a flight out of town, but totally worth it.
