The Triumphant Return of Week o' Vacationing: Day 1 - Hitting the Road

So, 2 years ago, I had a 10-day period where I went to St. George, Park City, and Yellowstone. This year I only managed to get 2 destinations in during a 9-day span, but I also went to work for 2 days, and drove to California and back, and I came home feeling like I had definitely played pretty hard, so I felt like this series of posts was deserving of the W-o-V moniker.

Starting early on Sunday morning, August 28th, Brandon and I loaded up my car and swung by Julie's house to pick her up to begin our lightning-fast trip to California and back. (Lightning-fast for me. I think Julie's done even quicker trips).  We spent the morning cruising down to St. George, arriving in time to eat lunch before hitting a 1:00 sacrament meeting.  As a kid, I remember my dad always wanted to drag us out of bed super early for road trips. I'm sure in part that's because then we would sleep quietly while he drove instead of fighting over who was on whose side of which line. And partly because he just likes to get up super early (he grocery shops at like 4 am on Saturday mornings).  But its been my experience that those morning hours on the highway just fly by so much quicker than the afternoon ones.

After church, we hit the road again and things went smoothly til we hit Vegas and started seeing highway signs warning us of heavy traffic between Vegas and LA.  And it was pretty crappy for a while.  For about half and hour, just past Vegas, we were doing about 20 mph.  And then things picked up a bit, but it was still stop and go for much of the next 3 or so hours.  Like driving at rush hour on the freeway, only no one on the freeway is exiting because there's absolutely nothing between Vegas and most of the way to LA.  We made a pit stop in Baker, but otherwise just kept powering on through.  Brandon and Julie kept me good company with the highlight being playing some "Cash Cab" on Brandon's iPod Touch.

We made it to California around 9 that night I think, sat down for dinner at a place called Coco's, then drove over to Val's and got beds set up and called it a night.