vacation: days 1&2 - driving & monterey

day 1 - driving (thursday 26 april 2007)

We started out as soon as Hidden was done with his last final. We left Provo at around 8:00PM (causing me to miss all of the 2-hour special of American Idol, grr). The drive was fairly uneventful. We cycled through drivers throughout the night/morning. I drove until we crossed the Nevada line, then passed out because I'm extremely adept at sleeping in moving vehicles. We made it through much of Nevada to Reno before I took my turn again, and I drove almost all the way through California before Hidden took over for the last 20 minutes or so (which I also slept through :P). After arriving in San Jose at Hidden's uncle's place (at around 7:00, if I remember correctly), we crashed on their air mattresses and floor and took naps for the rest of the morning. Although before we actually fell asleep, Salad had planted herself downstairs and was reading when Hidden and I heard raucous laughter coming from her direction. Salad, in her lack of sleep, had completely misread a word in her book: underfed. If you read "under-fed," give yourself a gold star. What she read was the past tense of "underf," meaning (now), to misread or mishear something. We were up again at around 12:30. One item of note at this time is that after awakening, Hidden and I were talking in the living room when a bird flew into the living room window. Bonk and a flurry of feathers later, we look out the window and don't see the bird until another bird flies in and starts feverishly pecking at it - it was stuck in the crosshatches of a chair on the porch. So here I am thinking that I'm seeing bird cannibalism before my very eyes, when the trapped bird gets free and I realize that was the point the entire time. Smart birds.

After that we went to In-N-Out for lunch (mmm...), went to Rasputin (a fantastic used CD etc store) and picked up some music and the first season of Duck Tales (woo woo!) on DVD (woohoo!), then headed to the Great Mall to try to find orange sunglasses and orange Converse hi-tops for Hidden (they had neither). We headed into downtown San Jose to pick up Salad's friend Vanessa and went out to Thai food for dinner (amazing). Then we rushed back to Hidden's cousins' high school to see their production of The Wiz. It wasn't bad, but didn't match up to Utah high school standards (I saw Orem High's production of Les Mis a few years back, and it was amazing). We did have a fun time trying to figure out if Hidden's cousin is straight (we don't think so) and making fun of some of the acting, though. After the play, we dropped Salad and Vanessa off (I think Salad was walking dead at that point) and Hidden and I visited one of his old friends from the mission. Hidden procured a car for Sunday and Monday so we could split up, and we went back to his uncle's house to sleep.

day 2 - monterey (friday 27 april 2007)

While we had originally planned to leave at around 6:30 to pick Salad up and head down to Monterey, Hidden's uncle talked us out of it, and we headed off at around 9:00 instead. We had a fairly uneventful trip down to Monterey, driving through some of Hidden's old stomping grounds and seeing all manner of fields of garlic, artichokes, and strawberries. Once in Monterey proper, we parked down aways from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Cannery Row, then took a walk along the sidewalk for a while. Because Hidden and I had previously been to the Aquarium and hadn't been horribly impressed (either by the things to see or by the exhorbitant price), we skipped out on that. We ended up taking a few minutes at the small beach there, wetting our feet in the extremely cold Pacific and taking a bunch of pictures. Hidden almost had his flip-flops stolen by the ocean, Salad got freezing cold saltwater on freshly shaven legs, and I was mostly boring. At one point Hidden was writing Salad loves Drex in the sand, but the water came and washed it away. Glaring, Hidden spouted off "Boo, you whore!" at the ocean. We laughed. A lot.

We finished up there, picked up some sunscreen so Salad wouldn't burn too bad (haha yeah right) and headed off to 17-mile drive. The drive itself is beautiful enough, but we were also able to see some of the notable things along the way. We went through most of the stuff there, then spit ourselves out at Carmel. In Carmel we grabbed some food to go from a diner, then planted ourselves down along the beach. Two plus hours later we headed back to the car and up to visit one of Hidden's convert families for an authentic Mexican dinner. We also slowly began to realize the power of the California sun, as Hidden got some sweet tan lines, Salad burned all over (we told the family that she was radioactive), and I got the worst sunburn I've ever had on my legs (I don't burn often or easily, but I guess my legs got the brunt of it this time - by now they're finally fading into a tan). Dinner was fantastic (tacos like what), and we headed back to San Jose for boba drinks (smoothies with giant tapioca pearls - they're an Asian thing that's been big in Cali and elsewhere with Asian populations but that are picking up other places, too) with Vanessa. Then we headed off to sleep and prep for the next day: San Fran.

EDIT: Flickr Pictures! http://www.flickr.com/photos/8151244@N05/ (I think that's how it works)