Cross Country Roadtrip Day #2

Woke up in the morning and spent a little quiet time on the deck of Krystal's grandfather's house, just enjoying the view of the mountains surrounding Heber City.
Filled our bellies at the local diner, aptly named "The Hub" and ordered a scone which turned out to be more like an enormous funnel cake! Then we set out to explore northeastern Utah on our way to Wyoming. We visited the local crater in Midway that is open for scuba diving (unfortunately, it was closed when we passed through). We also enjoyed checking out the enormous houses and golf courses on the way to Park City.
The rest of the day was spent driving across Wyoming (on the I-80 and then up through Casper and then Lusk) and then on into the southwestern corner of South Dakota. Beautiful country. We decided that it would be a geologist's heaven! God is an amazing Creator.

Cross Country Roadtrip Day #1

Well we are off on our roadtrip to move across the United States. Loma Linda, California to Easthampton, Massachusetts. You can't get much further than that! We were so anxious to get started on our journey that we left Tuesday evening instead of Wednesday morning as originally planned. Stayed the night in Las Vegas and Hermione had her first taste of staying in a hotel. I think she got used to it...

Ate a tasty breakfast at The Hash House in Vegas, where we tried the party hash (pastrami, chicken, and corned beef) and were overwhelmed with the massive variety of jellies and jams! (I had watermelon and orange, Nathan had apple jalapeno and reg. jalapeno).


So with full bellies we headed towards Utah. Stopped for an amazing couple of hours in Zion National Park, took Jackson for a little walk, ate a picnic lunch, and got a stamp in my "National Parks passport" (I think this might be made for kids, but I really like doing it too!)

The rest of the day was spent driving and driving some more. Hermione started getting used to her new kennel too! We stopped for the night in Heber City, Utah which is just north of Provo. Krystal was kind enough to arrange for us to stay in the bunkhouse next to her grandfather's house. A great beginning to our trip.

Further adventures with friends in SoCal

So we are trying to experience everything that Southern California has to offer before we move to Massachusetts in 3 1/2 weeks. It's funny that we could have both lived here for over 8 years and still not visited all the must-see places.

On Friday we headed out to Venice Beach. I had an appointment with Du Japon Salon to get my hair cut and a wavy perm, but we started out by visiting a funky coffee shop on Abott Kinney Blvd. This coffee shop, Intelligentsia, looks like a modern laboratory. We shared a couple of tasty muffins and a pot of green tea. After breakfast I went to the salon and then we met my high school friend Yuko for a Thai food lunch. Spent a little more time wandering around Venice Beach, amazed by all the medical marijuana shops and the episode of Californication being filmed, and then traveled through crazy traffic to Disneyland. Fun times as usual with Trevor and Leah...we even checked out the newly renovated It's A Small World and watched the fireworks from the Storybookland boat.

On Saturday we woke up early and drove with Byron and Tracy to Ventura. None of us had ever visited the Channel Islands, so we had planned on taking the ferry to Santa Cruz Island for a day of hiking and adventuring. Unfortunately, Tracy had a terrible episode of seasickness on the ferry-ride over. So terrible. We were still able to hike on several trails with gorgeous views of the ocean, cliffs, and wildflowers. These same flowers (we think) gave Nathan and Byron terrible allergies. Nathan 's eyes got all puffy and red, his nose was running out of control, and he had hives all over his neck. We hiked out to Cavern Point and then along the cliffs to Potato Harbor. A tasty sack lunch followed and then we spent the remainder of the day cowering against different cliff-edges along the beach, trying to hide from the freezing wind! The ferry-ride home was fortunately much less eventful for Tracy, but we did see an enormous pod of dolphins and a humpback whale! Rounded out the day with a dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory (don't get the Chicken Marsala...it sucks...awesome waiter though who didn't charge us for the icky chicken...good customer service and a reminder to ourselves that you should JUST GET SPAGHETTI at a restaurant called "spaghetti factory") haha. Great weekend.


Intelligentsia

Yuko and me with full bellies from Thai food



Us with Byron and Tracy Poblacion
Potato Harbor

Cavern Point

Camping in Death Valley with Cory and Krystal

For a quick weekend camping trip we decided to head off to Death Valley since none of us that were going had ever been there. The ladies got to the camping area before Cory and I and so had the tent and a campfire already up and ready (which Cory and I agreed was awesome), but by the time that we showed up it time for a quick hot dog snack and off to bed. The whole weekend we spent checking out all the landmarks that make up Death Valley. We ran up and down sand dunes, checked out rock formations, looked down old mine shafts (that are everywhere by the way), explored the old Borax plant, drove 26 miles through Titus Canyon, and visited the lowest spot in North America which was located on the salt flats. We ate good, explored a lot, and all in all had a great weekend.

Road Trip to Massachusetts

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Joshua Tree

We invited Cory and Krystal to go hiking around Joshua Tree. It was
clear skies and beautiful but a cold enough wind that we needed our
coats. Sadly Jackson had to wait in the car since he wasn't allowed
past 100 ft. away from the road.

Up in the snow, boys day alone.

Valentines Day Gardening

GO DUCKS!!!

Christmas Time At Disneyland

We took our last chance before Christmas to go see all the lights, the
fireworks show, and to watch it snow on main street.