1000 Miles

A couple of weeks ago Micah and I got the crazy idea to do a road trip with our nine month old baby. It actually happened on accident. We had planned to take a weekend trip to Las Vegas at the end of June to visit my grandma, Zianne’s namesake. A couple days before we were scheduled to leave Micah remembered that he had Thursday, July 3rd off from work the following week, giving him a lovely, long four day holiday weekend. We began brainstorming how we could spend our extended 4th of July weekend and soon the word “California” was bouncing around our conversation, which is always our #1 destination if we need a quick getaway. For Micah, California means surfing and for me it means time with girlfriends, and we both like to go there as often as we can. But then it seemed silly to drive all the way to Las Vegas one weekend and then all the way to Cali the next. It didn’t seem worth it in time or gas until we thought, “What if we just made it one big trip?” And so we did.

Micah was able to work a half day on Wednesday, so that afternoon we headed across the desert to my grandma’s house in Vegas. My dad was also visiting her at the time, so it was a fun little family gathering. The next day we took off to California and stayed with dear friends in Rancho Cucamonga for two nights, which included our 4th of July festivities. On Saturday, we all trekked out to the beach at San Clemente for the whole day, where another one of my girlfriends was able to meet up with us for lunch and sunbathing. That evening we headed down south and stayed the night in San Diego with friends, where we were greeted with homemade fish tacos upon arrival. On the way down the coast, we stopped at a few state parks to scope out camping spots on the beach. Micah is scheming a little yearly beach camping tradition in coming years and I’m fully on board.

Zianne did great on the whole trip. It was fun to bring her to visit friends and family, and it was her first time experiencing the ocean. She is such a flexible little traveler and actually did better in the car as the trip went on. Her few whines were easily appeased with Ritz crackers, although her formerly clean car seat will never be the same…

Before we left on this trip, we did the math and discovered our total journey would clock in just over 1,000 miles. We questioned our sanity for a second and then decided to go for it. As we drove that flat, sandy stretch of desert highway on our way back from San Diego on Sunday afternoon, we had smiles on our faces. As we chatted about  our whirlwind five day adventure, we decided it was totally fun and absolutely worth it. Best thousand miles I’ve traveled in a long time.