Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Memorial Day Road Trip

Friday was my last day of work until the middle of July, and in order to celebrate, I decided we ought to go on a road trip. However, we didn't really feel like doing much planning, so we decided to just get in the car and drive. We had a general idea of where we were going (East, and visiting the Saltan Sea at some point) but aside from that, we were really open.

Will sent an email to our parents detailing the trip, so rather than re-creating the wheel, I'll just quote the email. He included links and everything!

The trip was really fun. We ended up having Mexican food in Palm Springs, looping around the Salton Sea, staying overnight in an almost-border-town called Brawley, and then driving back through Anzo Borrego state park.

The Salton Sea area is a very strange place... there are tons of abandoned towns and houses, ruined beaches, and dead fish line the shore. Nearby Slab City is an abandoned military base inhabited by drifters, with one man's painted mountain becoming a lifelong obsession. Brawley was a tiny farm town with a surprisingly nice Best Western and a great diner in the middle of nowhere called Brownies. On our way back we drove through a surprising desert town called Borrego Springs, which is what people say Palm Springs was like 30 years ago. It was designated as California's first International Dark-Sky Community so it is really popular with astronomers. Then we ascended a pretty steep mountain that reminded us a lot of the Northern coast of CA and also driving up Haleakala volcano in Maui (so we were well prepared). We passed by picturesque Lake Henshaw on our way back to southern LA, and then we finished off the trip in Irvine at a microbrewery!
Here's a map of the trip, in case one of your Strengths is input, and you need to know more.

Some of the things we saw included:

Lots of palm trees in Palm Springs, and then palm tree nurseries in the middle of the desert as we kept going east.


Salvation Mountain, also in the middle of the desert.


A diner with some surprisingly awesome chicken fried steak.


And some pretty great views.

All in all, a really fun Memorial Day Weekend!
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