Road Trip!

What started as a road trip from California to Iowa to Idaho to California had to be condensed due to gas prices. I estimated it would've cost $1500 in gas alone to make this triangle, so Tarl and I decided to go to Idaho this time and fly to Iowa in the fall. I grew up taking road trips to Iowa to see my extended family every other summer, so I absolutely love driving down an empty highway with nothing but amazing scenery all around. My favorite thing to obseve is the changes in the geology as you go along. Here are a few snapshots of the trip!!

Montana and I stretching our legs somewhere in Idaho.

Tarl playing in Dad's Harley.

Tarl and his old roommate Rion with Baldy (Sun Valley)in the background.

Shooting with the Uncles....

.....wine tasting right after!

Zion..the only hike we could muster: it was 105!

Twenty-nine

29 and feeling the most fabulous I ever have...From about 17 to 24 I felt so horrible and depressed on my birthdays. I think I just felt that everything was slipping away so quickly and I wasn't accomplishing enough. Looking back I think it's because I wasn't doing what I really wanted to be doing. I was going through the motions of what I thought I should be doing, or more of what society wanted of "us": Go to college get your career going. What I really wanted to do was get out of Moreno Valley and experience life..whatever that may have entailed. When my 25th rolled around, I woke up and suddenly felt alive, like this was my time. I went skydiving on that day and that act truly symbolized how my life was about to change. I had been teaching fourth grade for one year, I had been in a serious relationship for four, and had lived in the same town for 21. Something inside me was about to shift drastically. That summer I ended my long term relationship. I had never been through any type of break up before, so the pain was almost unbearable and there were times where I didn't think I was going to be okay. I worked through one more school year, about to start my third when God literally gave me a sign to start living the life I wanted. I wasn't exactly sure what that was anymore but one thing I knew for sure: the life I wanted did not exist in Moreno Valley. I knew I wanted to go somewhere far enough away and somewhere where I'd meet people like me. I chose Mammoth Lakes in hopes to become a ski bum perhaps. I really wasn't sure, but three weeks later my Jeep was packed with my belongings and I left my home. That first leap was what I needed in order to break away from a financially secure career I was iffy about as well as the securities of the familiar. Now a few years and two states later I am in a place where I am free to be the me that I want to be.