Adventures to California

Our sojourn to the beautiful California country was exciting and relaxing.  Monday we drove, ate at IN-N-OUT for my first time ever, and slept pretty dang close to the beach.  Tuesday we cruised around California, went to the beach, ate at Nancy's (Derek's Peruvian grandmother), and slept over at Barry's (guy that Derek taught and baptized).

MONDAY:  

Unfortunately f

or Derek, I have to pee... a lot.  So we stopped a good bit.  We started reading the Hobbit.  The view through Utah was really pretty, but once we hit Nevada, nothing.  There's nothing too special to Las Vegas.  It's just a big city in the middle of no where full of traffic.

Ventura County (where Derek spent the most of his mission) was beautiful.  Orange grove

s, beaches, mountains, awesome views, wonderful scents (at least through the orange groves).  

IN-N-OUT Burger was really good.  For those who don't know what it's about:  The menu is very simple, but you can dress up your sandwich in an

y creative ways you want.  Derek and I had ours "Animal Style"- with grilled onions and pickles.  Mmm.

Sleeping on the "beach" was an adventure.  Not much privacy.  Cold.  Full of rabbits who wanted our chocolate.  It was fun.  Putting the tent up in the dark was exciting and slightly scary, but luckily I have my big, strong, fearless husband to protect me.

(just to let you know, at the moment, Derek is running around the living room pretending like he's Wolverine.)

TUESDAY: 

Tuesday morning as we woke up in our never-so-private camp

 spot, we decided a nice, warm shower would be awesome.  Luckily they had running water, but unluckily, the warm 

water costed us some quarters of which we did not have.  Let's just say our showers were really short.  Once we got packed up

, we headed up to Santa Barbara, California to see a missionary who Derek was close to...Elder Stowell (Stippert, if you will).  
After the visit, we stopped to walk around through downtown at the outdoors mall that was awesome and would have been even more awesome if I had a lot of money to waste on expensive things.  Mom would have had so much fun.  We actually went to find some sunglasses for Derek but had no luck.  

Carpinteria BEACH!  How fun and beautiful.  And we only saw one woman whose swim suit was appalling.  We walked on the beach a lot, then drove around beautiful Ventura, Derek pointing out significant places from the mission, and ate lunch on the beach.  It was so cool to see ocean on one side of the interstate and mountain on the other.

On the way to Nancy's for dinner, we drove through some 

orange groves, strawberry fields, and flower fields.  It was so pretty and it smelled wonderful.  So we stopped on the side of the road and bought some fresh strawberries, and let me tell you, they were the most incredible strawberries I've ever tasted.  I didn't

 know strawberries could taste so good.

Dinner was wonderful!  It was Peruvian, of course, and it was so good.  I though it was going to be spicy, but it wasn't at all.  I want a recipe.  Visiting with Nancy and her family was really fun.  We learned a lot about some new finds in South America which was cool to learn about.

I'm sure there was a lot of stuff in between that was fun, but it was about all the same.  We drove and walked and looked a lot.  It was fun to just take in all the beauty.  So, we spent the night at Barry's and stayed up until late talking to him.  That was fun.  :) It was nice to sleep in the next morning also.

So, this is all we'll meniton right now.  I'll type up our adventures in Disneyland soon.