Blogifornia #4: Final Thoughts

Here is a picture of me thinking all of these oh-so deep final thoughts.
I’m cheating and writing this on the airplane, en route to my home AND native land. The country being Canada, the city being Toronto and the weather being cold. I am looking forward to two of those three things, and I can assure you after seven days of pure California sunshine, it’s not the cold.

I was sad to see the mountains, the desert, the gorgeous weather, the palm trees all disappear behind the cloud cover as our flight took off today. I got to see and do some amazing things in California. It was a perfect way to shake off the winter drag. I feel ready to face the rest of the semester. (The rest of my life? Different story.)
In spite of the fact that I was loving everything La Quinta offered, I was surprised about how much I missed the things I had left behind. My fam-a-lam, Costello, and my other roommate, (the artist formerly known as Rebekah Eden, over at Eden a la Mode). I missed the apartment with it’s tiny kitchen. Faces and people who had been nothing but Facebook updates and messages for the duration of the entire week.
It really makes me wonder as to whether or not I’d be capable of moving somewhere far away, like England or Los Angeles, away from everything that is familiar and loved. Who can say? I guess the point is that while SOME good things just have to come to an end, there’s a silver lining waiting on the other side just wanting to be acknowledged.

I’ll never forget the trip, what was seen and done, tasted and captured in photographs. I had a bunch of firsts for this trip, and those are always exciting, because they can turn into seconds or thirds.
I discovered that I don’t hate seafood. I tried a date shake. I hugged the prickliest tree I’ve ever met. I walked through the desert to an oasis, and saw huge gorgeous rock formations that had been around for thousands of years. I saw sky so big and blue, you could fall up and go swimming in it.
Maybe on my next visit.

New dream? Possibly.

Blogifornia #3: The Joshua Tree

Today rather than driving all over the valley and blowing money on stuff, we headed out to Joshua Tree National Park. It was awe inspiring and humbling. When you're in a big city it's easy to become a number, but when you're standing next to a palm tree that is probably hundred of years old and many times your age, you get a big sense of wonder about the world.
Let's just say I had a lot of life to think about today.
For the six hours of the entire trip I got psychotically shutter happy, and consequently came back home with over 160 pictures of the gorgeous, to die for desert landscape. Before this trip I had never seen the desert, let alone walked through one. It's exactly like you see in the movies. [Minus tumbleweeds. I saw no tumbleweeds...Sad!:(] I even spotted some signs of life including something that looked like but was not a chipmunk, a crow, and a desert fox. Possibly a coyote, but this thing looked downright foxy to me.

What really hit me was the fragile nature of the environment. The park is named after a Joshua Tree, which is a spiny tree that looks like this:
A Joshua tree will grow approximately one inch a year. In order for it to grow branches, it has to experience a decent frost, that sparks the survival instinct in the tree that literally makes it grow. On top of that, they have to be pollinated by a specific moth. The chances seemed to be totally stacked against this prickly thing, and yet THERE WERE HUNDREDS OF THEM. Many of them were well over 8 feet tall making them hundreds of years old.

It makes me think about the random chances and risks that are so common in life. What are the chances of things happening, vs. what are the chances of things NOT happening. Nature is tough, and it's going to outlast us all, bar nuclear war or human mutation.
I'm so over my head in the wave of all that California has to offer, from perpetual summer jogging weather to mountains and back again.

Sunglasses at Target: 13$. Epic accidental photo: Priceless.

Blogifornia #2: Slice of (Unreal) Life

There are MOUNTAINS on every horizon, palm trees, flowers, sunshine and tons of retired people who walk by without seeing it. He who is tired of California is tired of life. Making it short, I'm kind of in love. I will always be a proud Canadian, and I've always maintained there is a charm to the winter months. However, I have a scary feeling if I ever make it to San Francisco, I won't come home. EVER.

Yesterday, we hit up a local flea market, where I began gift shopping for my luvvies back home. Today we went to El Paseo, which is the Rodeo Drive of the Coachella Valley. Safe to say all we did was window shop. At Pottery Barn I fell in love with this:
I'm going to replicate this somehow, because while I loved the heck out of it, as we say in apartment 605, "I didn't 40$ love it." Forty dollars for a canvas laptop sleeve. Really, PB? Really?

After a crazy afternoon we ended up at Target, a low cost wonderland and soon we were frantically trying on buckets of items. So far it's been a shopaholic good time, but tomorrow we're heading out to nature in the form of a national park called Joshua Tree.

Rock easy, friends! Sorry this entry was so vague. I missed yesterday and I didn't want today to be overly long.

Blogifornia #1: Crossing Country

Today I went from the left of this picture, to the right of it.
That's right, it's launch day for my first (and last) ever reading week trip to California. This state has sunshine, mountains and of course, San Francisco, the city Harvey Milk turned upside down.
It could very easily be my favourite state, just based on the last factoid alone. It's a dream of mine to visit the Castro.(Sorry Texas. You still have nice boots.) San Francisco will have to be another trip.

I don't have much to say about today, but I thought I'd share one more photo with y'all.

I didn't apply any photo filters to that, at all. I think it's vintage looking. Love.
Also, they still have Vanilla Coke in the USA. WHAAAAT?