Derailed Thoughts

After about five days on a vacation, I start to get grumpy. Vacation is a great thing and all, but after you eat too much of it you just don’t want anymore. I feel ready to work again, ready to meet some new people that I’ll be able to see again when the day is over. Therefore, I’m excited and happy to be home.

That being said, though, this last family vacation was a blast while it lasted, and I was grateful to grow a little closer to my family.

Mom and Maegan flew to California to start their vacation a week early, and Dad left on Friday to road trip the whole way. Ryan and I got to go the fun way–We started our Saturday with a flight into Oakland, picking up the BART (Bay Area Rapid Train… I think. Or Big Awesome Railed Trucks.) to San Francisco. We killed a few hours wandering around the city–got some pizza, took a trolley to the Pier, and taxied our way down to the train station. We took the Caltrain to San Jose, where our Dad happened to arrive within 5 minutes of us (behold our awesome planning skills). The rest of the trip to Monterey was a beautiful road trip in a white Nissan hampster ball (that sums up my thoughts of long car drives). What a cool way to get to California, though!

Monterey is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Although you quickly run out of things to do in Carmel (Tetris against my sister became a quick favorite… I won), nothing can compare with spending a little time watching the waves crash on the shore. The beaches of Monterey are one of God’s masterpieces, and there is something powerful to be felt there. My favorite place in the world, as a matter of fact, is a little rock just south of bird rock. While spending a little time with my dad, I found out that one of his favorite places in the world happens to be a mile South of mine–another rock high above the beach, on a cliff surrounded by cyprus trees.

Anywho, enough about Monterey. When we finished up there, we went to the most holy-cow-stinking-awesome-yay-happy place on earth: Magic Mountain! I’ve never been happier to stand in lines for ten hours straight. They have the craziest roller coasters ever! Watch this video of the Tatsu coaster–you ride the whole thing strapped with your back to the track, feeling like you’re flying at 90 MPH over the park. Amazing. If you get bored, you should look up the X2 as well– a roller coaster that spins you 360 degrees while you go around corkscrews at 60 MPH. So much happiness.

We finished up our trip at Lake Arrowhead, CA for two days. My mom’s entire side of the family was there, and it was good to get to see them. Honestly, by this point I had eaten so much vacation that I was grumpier than Chris Flint after bedtime. So all I can say about there is that it was really really really high to the point that looking down the mountain made me need to change my pants.

Well, that’s the trip. I guess the coolest thing that happened the whole time was just getting to know my family better. My brother and sister are finally turning cool. Neat!