So, this past weekend, I went on an awesome road trip with some friends in my ward. Here in Utah, we get the 24th of July off of work/school for Pioneer Day, so we decided to celebrate... by leaving Utah and going to the beach!
One of the guys in my ward lives in Covina, CA, which is only a few minutes (ok, more like an hour, but still....) from the beach, so he offered to let us all stay at his house. A group went down Wednesday night, stopping in Vegas along the way. That's the ones who could get Thursday off of work. I was one of the unfortunate half that couldn't get work off on Thursday. Also, I was the one with the car. So, come Thursday night, I gather up my things, and throw it all in my trunk, along with all the rest of the people who are riding down and their things, and we set off at about 9:30. Yes, that's 9:30 in the PM. From Provo it's a 9+ hour drive to Chad's house in Covina. And yes, we drove through the night. That was an adventure in and of itself, tell you what. When we got there, (about 6 in the morning, local time) I shuffled into the house and promptly fell asleep.
A couple hours later I woke up to waffles cooking in the kitchen. Let me just say right now that Chad's family is rockin' awesome. His mom made some of the best homemade food ever, and his dad was just cracking jokes like the whole weekend. Anyway, so we all get up and eat some food, and by then I was about ready for a nap again. (remember, I'm running on like 2 hours of sleep) So I took a nap, and then we all headed out for the beach. We all had a blast at the beach, playing in the sand and the water. Honestly, I don't think I'd ever gone 'swimming' in the ocean before. I mean, I know I've been to the beach and at least waded into the water, but I'd never gotten soaked and ridden waves. Tell you what, it was a rush! I'm not a big fan of the salty water in the mouth thought. We also built an entire city of sand buildings and then knocked them down, Godzilla-style. After that, we played a quick game of ultimate right there on the beach. Running in the sand was really tiring, so that didn't last too long.
After more chilling on the beach, we headed back to Chad's and on the way stopped at In-N-Out for some classic California cuisine. When we got back, we cleaned up from the beach, and then we all sat down to Avatar in Blu-Ray on Chad's awesome HDTV. That is definitely the way to experience that movie. Pretty much everything is better in Blu-Ray, I've decided. I'll admit, I dozed several times during the movie, but hey, I was tired!
Saturday, we got to sleep in (yay!) and then Chad's mom made awesome homemade egg muffin sandwiches. They were pretty much the breakfast version of heaven. After that, we headed out to the LA temple to take some pictures. It's one of the prettier temples that I've seen, and I think Chad said it's also one of the biggest. On the way back from there, we stopped at another burger joint called Tommy's. At this place, everything they serve comes with chili on it. It was way intense! Then we came back and rested, chilled, napped, etc. Honestly, we kind of all turned into little kids again. Chad's nieces and nephews were over, so we got to play with them, and we all just sat in a circle and threw a ball around for like an hour. It was great! Later, we had a barbecue, with amazing burgers, chips, watermelon, the works. After that, we played duck, duck, whatever. How it works, is instead of saying 'goose,' you say another animal, and then the two that are running around the outside have to be that animal as they're running. It was great! We had unicorn, penguin, velociraptor, and my personal favorite, amoeba. Later that night we went to a neighbor's place and swam for a bit before we all decided it was time to call it quits for the evening.
Sunday morning we got up and went to Sacrament meeting early, then after that we headed out about 1. We got back into Provo a bit before 11, so not too ridiculously late. Also, my car hit a milestone of mileage on the way back. My car hit 177777 around Scipio, Utah. I tried to take a picture, but we were on the freeway, and all I had was my phone, and it was dark, so it really didn't work out at all. Oh well, I saw it happen, so that's cool.
This summer I've discovered that I really do like road trips. I figure I've got to enjoy them while I can in college. When you get married, they're not called road trips anymore. You still do them, but then they're called visiting family, or vacation, but with kids, it probably just seems like work. Then again, maybe that's just me being cynical, which has been known to happen from time to time. The moral of the story is, I'm sure this won't be the last road trip I go on with friends. :)
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