Maddy and I both have a love for California. So when our friend Blake moved out to San Diego, we were obviously going to visit him. The only question was when. Well, Maddy works for Sporting Kansas City, and they had a game against LAFC on August 11th in Los Angeles. This was our time! We booked our flight out to San Diego with the idea of road tripping up to Los Angeles for the game. But once you’re already committed to a road trip, why not add more destinations, right?!
After the amazing game on the 11th was over, (we won!), we started our drive out to Joshua Tree. We arrived at our hotel around midnight or a little after, set our alarms for 4:30am, and quickly passed out. It was my idea to be out in Joshua Tree National Park for sunrise. Everyone else was on board, but when our alarms went off that early, it almost didn’t happen. Thankfully our friend Harrison jumped (more like crawled) out of bed, and said we’re doing this. We packed up, jumped in the car, and were on our way into the park. We were a little later than we had planned, but we still saw the beautiful sunrise as we were climbing our way up my favorite boulder. This was my third trip out to Joshua Tree, my third trip up that same boulder, and the third time that our incredible Earth took my breath away.
I was so excited to share this experience with my best friend and adventure partner. Maddy and I had already planned on having a photo shoot while we were out there, and it had been a while since she was in front of my camera. We had so much fun falling back into old habits, and I even got Blake to join in on the fun too. I was so worried that everyone would think I was crazy and that it wasn’t worth all the struggles we went through to make it there, but of course I was just being silly. We all had a great time on the road trip, in the park, and on our adventure back to San Diego.
On our road trip back, I wanted to take a detour to Salvation Mountain, which I’ve been wanting to visit ever since I watched Into the Wild. On the way there we passed the Salton Sea, which was another item on Harrison’s bucket list that he wanted to visit. We made it to Salvation Mountain, which Harrison and I were thoroughly fascinated with, while Maddy and Blake were totally creeped out. I didn’t take pictures of any of this, as I just wanted to be in the moment and experience everything. And experience I did. I am so thankful that these friends of mine were willing to go on this crazy adventure of a road trip, as I will always remember all the weird but wonderful shit we witnessed.
