adventure

Annalie and I, by some luck, were able to fix our schedules to get four days off in a row at the same time. We decided we needed to get the heck out of Utah and hit the road. So we went to the redwood forest!

We researched it all for a while and planned to go halfway every day. It sounded better on paper than in real life. I'm not sure we thought about just how much driving we would have to do. But we did it anyway.

We took my car pretty little car and I drove the entire time. I love my car and like driving it. Plus, Annalie is a scary driver. 

We left our house around ten or so and drove on through the boring nothingness that is Nevada. Seriously boring. Actually, the moment we hit the Oregon state line, the outdoors were a lot more beautiful and nice to look at. 

Oregon was so pretty and nice. The only two things I didn't like were the slow speed limits (max was never above 55) and how you can't pump your own gas. Weirded me out. Other than that, I think I want to live there some day. The first two interactions we had with strangers from Lakeview, Oregon were very pleasant. A lady was welcoming to us at her nursing home turned hotel (true story) and a couple people at the local Safeway let us use their Safeway card to get hefty discounts. We walked around the town for a while and decided to buy groceries for dinner so we could eat our veggies. We brought it to the hotel and microwaved it. It was yummy.

We woke up at 5:30 and got ready, ate the continental breakfast, and tried to be on the road as close to 6 as possible. Another long day of driving was in store for us. But the drive was gorgeous and we loved it. We made it to the forest around 2 or so. I was so sick of driving and needed to get out of the car, so we drove down a little road, got out, and did an easy 3 mile hike. 

Now, for those that haven't heard, about four weeks ago or so I started getting severe pain in my right leg after running. It kept getting worse and I recently found out that it's a stress fracture. So, I did this hike on a broken leg. It was too pretty to care. 

We got a little turned around when we came out of the trail not back at the parking lot we were parked at. We got turned around and I was totally going to ask someone which way was north but then we remembered that I had a compass on my phone! Wahoo! So I used that nifty gadget and we walked back to the car, single file line, along the road. 

We went for another little walk up a hill to look at the beach trail. So pretty. 

We drove through a tree! It's some privately owned place. We paid $5 to go through and take pics. The attendant at the pay station was funny. She was an old lady who obviously loved to talk and didn't get a lot of people to talk to. She told us a story of how a whale got caught in the river last year and they never did get her out. I love talking to old people. Call it a gift. 

We deciding to really find the ocean and walked along the shore. We got brave enough to dip our feet in. We kept inching closer to the water until a large wave creeped up on us and got us all wet. It was freezing cold!! But so peaceful and lovely. I love the waves and the smell and the subtle humidity in the air. We could have stayed forever were it not for the cold. 

We checked into a hotel and then I got cranky and hungry so I made Annalie go to dinner with me. We went to a nicer place and ordered almond crusted halibut with raspberry sauce. It was incredible! So amazing. We left satisfied and went to sleep that night after watching 19 kids and counting on tv.

We woke up the next morning and talked about the day. We felt like we did everything we could in the redwood forest while I had a broken leg. We wanted to go to crater lake but then discovered it was snow covered and would require chains and 4 wheel drive. So we googled a bunch of stuff and decided to go to Lava Beds National Memorial. It had a bunch of caves and was only a half hour out of the way of going home.

So I drove. And drove. And drove. We got there about 3:30 and borrowed flashlights from the ranger stations and went into two caves. The first was lit and easy. The second, called Valentine Cave, was also "easy" but had no light and got pretty low in some places. My flashlight ran out of batteries so I used my phone's flash for light. It worked out pretty great. 

I ended up really hurting my leg. The unevenness of the ground and the darkness and almost crawling we had to do was really not good for my leg. We turned back and made it out with a minute to spare before we had to turn our flashlights back in. I popped some ibuprofen.

There were so many other caves to go into but without light it would be impossible so we drove back to Lakeview for the night. 

We ate at a Mexican Place with the spiciest salsa I've ever had. It was good. I iced my leg and went to sleep.

In the morning we ate and packed and headed on the road again, this time to home. The drive was long and boring as we headed into Nevada yet again. We ended up playing cards for a while. (I'm a great knee driver.) We stopped in Wendover for lunch/dinner and made it home by 6. I was exhausted and worked the next two days. 

It was a fun trip. We spent most of it in Oregon, most of it in the car, and but mostly had fun. 

We hardly fought, which is good, and talked about everything. We love my Sirius radio. Most heard song was "Thrift Shop" by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis and also "Carry On" by Fun.. 

I'm glad we went even though it was too fast and was way too much driving. It was great to just leave for a while, not think about work or anything, eat good food, and get out of utah. I hope to go on a bunch of trips this summer. I've got a lot of plans!


p.s. I've been trying to add photos to this post for days but it's not working.... maybe later!

Family Trip

Well, now that It's been a few months, I thought I'd tell y'all about my family trip to Santa Cruz/San Francisco!

 

We talked my dad into renting a van for the occasion, the best idea we had. Mom, Dad, Ryan, Connor, and I were in the van and riding in style. I got the back seat. Captains chairs, in the middle, went to the boys. We started out driving on Tuesday in the morning and drove to Reno.
I actually read a book on the way. Chronicles of Narnia. Quite an accomplishment for me since I hate reading.

At first glance this picture is adorable.
But what really happened was that
Dad wanted to hold the Old Lady's
hand while crossing the street.

We got to Reno, and quickly figured out that unless you were there to get drunk or gamble, there was not much to do there. We walked around a little bit. Met up with family, ate dinner at a buffet, and got our rooms at Harrah's. Lowy, Kevin, Jon, and little Kent met up with us late that night. I got to share a room with Lowy, Jon, and Kent. Jon likes to sleep in his underwear and yell "Mindy, don't look!!" haha.
We got up, got ready, and went to Denny's for breakfast as a family. So much fun. I have the best family in the world.
We got back in the car and drove on to California. Ryan drove for part of it and didn't even kill us.
One of the funniest parts of driving was how fancy our van was. Two tvs, plugs for an X-box, dvd player, satellite radio. Lots of buttons and fancy things. Well, at one point we were driving in front of Lauren and Jon and my dad says, "Should I deploy the tacks?" As he reaches for a button, my mom says, "Don't! There's a baby in there!" We erupted in laughter for a long long time.
We made it to Santa Cruz and drove to our KOA cabin.

Our first view of the beach.

That cabin was made for 6 people to stay in it. And even that was pushing it. Of course, there were 9 of us! It was interesting, to say the least, to fit us all in there when we didn't have all of the beds out.

The bathroom was as big as
this mirror. True story.

We met up with family and tried to make some plans for the next few days. We drove down to the beach and got to play in the sand and watch the ocean for a little while.
I love the ocean. There is something so peaceful and calming about it. The sand is nice and soft and warm, the ocean makes soothing noises, the waves lap against you. The water was freezing! But we ran around and Kent got his first experience with the sand. He loved it.
We went back, ate dinner, and made a campfire.

Dad and Kevin had a "jiffy pop"
competition. Kevin won.

So cute.

Something I totally love about our family is that we all have gotten to the point where we like to go to sleep early, around 9pm, and wake up early. Around 6. It was great that we all ran on the same internal clock.
Mom and Dad got the master bed, Lowy and Jon were on the fold out bed, and kevin and ryan got the bunkbeds. Connor and I had air mattresses on the floor, underneath the kitchen table. We had to move some chairs outside to make room for us.
We found out really soon just how severe Connor's snoring problem has gotten. It was awful. We were miserable trying to get to sleep. Around 11 or so, Jon got up out of bed, told Lauren he was going to sleep in the car, and as he was leaving he said, "Connor, you suck!" SO funny.
We did get some sleep. Connor said he slept really well. We gave him a really hard time about it all day. We kept saying, "Every time I yawn today, Connor, I'm going to hit you!" We ended up taking a vote and he spent the next two nights sleeping in the car. Mom and Dad were a little mad that we banished him like that, but we did not feel bad one bit. He snores like crazy.

The next day was our Santa Cruz day. We spent the morning taking a ride on a train through the redwoods. It wwas a lot of fun. I love spending time with my family. Most of my cousins and aunts and uncles got into the caboose of the train. We were funny and loud. It was a pretty ride. At some points the train would go really slow and we thought we were going to get stuck on the hills, but it went well.
We drove down to the boardwalk afterwards and put on our swimsuits and played at the beach. The water was freezing cold, but it looked like too much fun, so me, Ryan, and Connor went into the water and played for a long while. We eventually got out and ended up burying Connor, Ryan, and Jon in the sand. Kent had a blast crawling all over the sand and playing.
After playing and getting some sun, we walked along the shops at the boardwalk. I bought a sweatshirt. We ate deep fried oreos and twinkies.
We went back to the KOA and went into the pool for a while to wash out some of the sand we had up in our crevices. Haha. We took showers, had another fire, and spent a while with our cousins talking and laughing about the gipsies that were in a campsite up the hill. "Gipsied!" was the quote of the trip, said by Kevin. Our cousins got a kick out of that. They also got a kick out of how the Crocketts turned in for the night at 9 again.
Friday was San Francisco day! The day we had planned months before and were so stoked about. We left the KOA and drove up to the city for a few hours. Ryan drove like a champ. We made it to the city and eventually found this shady parking garage. (Oh yeah, we didn't have enough seats for everyone, so we made Connor lay down in the trunk of the van! hahaha.) The parking garage was full, but the attendant let us park, telling us to leave the keys so he could move it out of the way of other cars if he needed to. It sounded a little weird, but they do that in Korea all the time, so we did it. Ryan accidentally made the car alarm go off in the garage. Talk about LOUD! ha. We left the garage and walked to the pier.
ALCATRAZ was next! Oh my goodness, I still can't get over how amazing of an experience Alcatraz was. Quite possibly the best thing I've ever seen. Riding the boat over was fun. It was a cold morning, so we were all sporting our sweaters and jackets. We made it to the island and after a brief orientation, we walked up to the cell house and got our walkmans for the audio tour.
It was amazing. It was so awesome to see where prisoners so many years ago lived. And I guess I've never really known anything about prisons, so to be able to see it first hand and imagine what it must have been like was incredible. I loved the stories of the inmates and the escape attempts. I loved seeing the bullet holes in the ground and the pictures of the scary people. I loved walking into the cells and imagining the loneliness of solitary confinement. The tour led us all over the cell blocks and outside to the exercise yard and up to the cafeteria. My family loved it all as well. Kevin said, "Don't you kind of want to root for the prisoners and want them to escape?" So true. It was such a neat experience.
We walked around a little bit more and then headed back to San Francisco on the boat.
Hunger struck. We took out our little map and decided to go up to Pier 39 and fisherman's wharf to find some food. We ended up eating at this amazing little place with some great chowder and sourdough bread bowls. So yummy. We then decided to make the trek to Ghiradelli square so we could get some chocolate. We just didn't really realize how far of a walk that would be.
We saw some pretty cool stuff on the way. A guy painted gold like a statue, street performers, bands, weirdos, markets. I love walking in the city with tons of people. Reminds me of Korea.
We finally made it after walking for what seemed like forever. The shop was PACKED with people. We each ordered an icecream and waited. It was delish. Kevin wanted to steal the cups they came in. But we didn't. We walked on a back street back to the parking garage. Grand total was 4 miles walked. Doesn't sound too bad unless you add in that we had a baby (or two....) in the group.
Our car was there and not stolen! Jon drove us home. I got to say, I don't know how anyone did vacations without google maps on a smart phone. I gave directions the entire trip to all of the drivers, even my dad. We did use the map that Mom insisted on buying and bringing a time or two, but my good old iPhone saved us.

Packed car. Connor in the trunk! Ha.

We got home that night and ate a family dinner with all of the extended family. I smiled and nodded like I could relate when my cousins talked about their kids and husbands. And I talked with the younger cousins who are still single and haven't popped out a kid yet. And it was fun. We took a few pictures, and then, in good old Crockett fashion, we were in bed around 9 or so.
Saturday morning we woke up and had to watch Lowy, Jon, Kevin, and Kent pack up. It was sad to see them go. We still had a lot of fun without them, but it would have been way more fun if they stuck around too.
The rest of us decided to go berry picking at a local field. It was a cold and overcast morning. I think I wore a long skirt and a sweatshirt. COLD. We picked blackberries and strawberries. I think we would have picked for hours and hours had we not had to have paid for what we picked. It was fun to pick them and they tasted AMAZING! We stopped by the shop and had some strawberry rhubarb pie. That was also amazing.
After that, we made our way to the beach to get in some more hours of quality beach time. It was still really cold and muggy out when we got there. I spent a good deal of time just digging and looking for shells. Cousin Jenny came with us too. She and Ryan took a nap. Connor and I ended up taking a long walk on the beach. It was so peaceful.
THEN the sun came out! And all of a sudden the beach and the waves and the water were so irresistible! We walked back to our spot quickly and run up to the car to grab our suits and suit up!
Ryan, Connor, and I then entered the (FREEZING COLD) water and stayed there for about 3 hours. It felt like 15 minutes! It was a blast. We had a boogie board and after that broke (ha) we body surfed the waves, yelling and screaming! Our favorite thing to say was "SHEE-HAW!" Don't ask. Also, my personal favorite, "Son of a beach!" haha.
We yelled and screamed and ate a bunch of sand and salt water and finally decided to get out. We packed up our stuff and left the beach. What a wonderful day.

Sunburned.

We snuck back into the KOA we were at and hurried to use the gipsies' showers. That was nice to be able to shower. We got back in the car and drove a few hours to Stockton and stayed the night there. On the way we stopped at the Garlic fest and had some pizza at a local joint. It was amazing pizza. Cloves of garlic on the pizza. YUM.
As we sat, waterlogged and tired in our hotel room that night, Ryan and I started to prank call Mom and Dad's room. Then Ryan ordered a chocolate shake. And Dad said, "Sure." and gave us his credit card to go out and find some chocolate shakes! Woot woot! We got some at burger king.
After a Sunday morning continental breakfast, we headed back into the car and drove over to Yosemite National Park. It was crowded. And hot. And we were sun burned. I'm sure Dad wasn't too happy that we were all just lazy and tired and didn't want to do much. He was willing to let us rent horses or go hike or go on a boat or something. But we were lame. We did stop at a gorgeous lake and sat there having lunch. Dad kept daring Ryan to swim out to the middle of the lake and tell a "Columbus" joke to them. (What bus killed thousands of native Americans? Columbus.) Ha.
I ended up having to pee, so we had to leave the lake and drive on.

Mom and Dad and Half Dome

We drove for what seemed like forever and almost stopped at a super creepy town for the night. Instead, we kept driving and stayed in Eli, NV. Quite an interesting place too.
Monday morning we got up and drove home. Good times.

Took this by using the timer on Mom's
camera. Impressive.

This trip was so fun. SO FUN. I loved almost every moment of it. (I did not like Connor's snoring.)

Dad and Ryan, in adjoining hotel rooms,
doing the same thing. 

I love my family. All of them. I have the best parents ever, the funnest siblings. They were the best part of this trip. The only thing missing from this perfect trip was Davy, Nat, Camden, and Alli. Other than that, perfect! Loved it.

san diego!

this weekend i finally did it. i went to the beach! remember this post when i said i'd kill someone if i didn't go to the beach? well.... now everyone can sleep soundly at night knowing that i won't be killing them anytime soon.

sarah, brittni, and i left early on friday morning to drive down to san diego. it was so much fun. hi-lights of friday:
4 hours of sleep, rocking out to the biebs, dedicating songs to eachother (me, sarah, brittni), stopping in vegas to buy sun glasses and go to the kate spade outlet (GORGEOUS shoes. mmm......), the jesus billboard, giving chelsey's phone number to some guys in a passing car, abruptly stopping on the freeway, sarah's awesome defensive driving skills, eating fruit and hiding it, weird ordering kiosk at jack in the crack, brittni driving stick, buying discount tickets from the guy on a bike at the 7 eleven.

we got to san diego in the evening and decided that we wanted to go see the ocean. but we didn't know where to go. so we drove. and exited on a street that sounded like it might go by the ocean. we stopped at a park and got out to look at the ocean. we found a cat. named him fernando. found some dinosaurs. basked in the glory of the ocean and welcomed the humidity to our skin.

we decided to drive around some more and found the "historic downtown" of san diego. so we stopped there (after finding parking that was cheaper than $25) and ate dinner at a fancy italian resturant. it would have been nicer if the waitress cared about us. but i guess since we weren't drinking, she didn't care about us much.

we left and went to sarah's aunt's house. she was nice. like, super hostess nice. her cousin, ann, was also awesome. we talked for a bit, but we were so delirious from lack of sleep that we had to go to bed to save our sanity. we were super giggly before bed.

saturday morning i woke up to a bird i like to call a "car alarm bird." woah, it was noisy. we lounged around and ate some good breakfast. i still have bruises from trying to crack an egg on my head........ ow.
then we sea worlded it up!!
hi-lights of sea world: shamu (i guess), the intense elevator, feeding sea lions, sea lion show, cirque de la mer (BEST show!), watching the douche off, playing "sea world bingo", random dance parties!, eating food, feeding a sea gull our lunch, sitting in the splash zone for the dolphin show, three rides breaking down right before we got on, screaming like little girls on the atlantis rollercoaster, penguins, making brittni laugh so hard before our "helicopter" ride, baby baluga, missing the fireworks (stupid tree), riding the sky ride, leaving very tired......
we drove home after a fantastic day and fell alseep.

sunday morning we woke up, showered, and went to church by help of google maps and sarah's cousin's directions. i liked the non-utah singles ward experience. so refreshing..... we ate pizza bread (so cool) at church and then went back to change and go
to the beach!!!

we got to drive over this cool highway to coronado "island." we found parking, after a while of wandering, and finally got to put our feet on the amazingly warm and welcoming sand.
hi-light of the beach: the warmth of the water (compared to utah lakes...), wave diving, boogie boarding, catching sand dollars (which i guess were still alive....), swimming farther out than anyone else, the lifeguard coming out to see if we were okay (haha), sarah chasing the sea-gulls that swarmed around our towels, tasting like salt, getting sand up my pants, almost losing my pants, taking pictures.

it was amazing. i loved it. all of it. the sun, the wind, the sand, the water, the waves. it was just a great beach day. :)

we went home and chatted with sarah's aunt, uncle, and cousin for a while about korea and the english language. then we drifted off to sleep.

monday (happy 4th of July!), we woke up at 5 and drove home. there was no traffic. :) so we made good time.

LOVED this vacation. it was perfect. and awesome. and needed. i also love road trips with sarah and brittni. they're the perfect road trip buddies, in case anyone was wondering.

YAY!

(for the pictures, check out my other post. i put the photos on flikr. seemed easier.)

san diego photos

mindycro's photostream on Flickr.

san diego photos