On Saturday morning, my alarm clock woke me up at 6:30. I rolled out of bed, grabbed some clothes, ate breakfast, and was out the door by 7:00. It took us ages to get to the airport, but the drive was relativly pretty: a magnafied moon setting bhind us, and and the sun rising in front. Once past security, we sat at the gate and waited to board.

The plane flight was georgous: in a relativly unclouded sky, I saw the rockies spread out under me, and watched as they melted into the sun-baked salt flats and plateaus of Utah and then Nevada. We flew over (possibly) Zion National Park, as well as Lake Mead and the Hoover dam.

Once the plane reached LA, it was rather easy to get off, get out and to catch a shuttle to te rental car agency. From there, we drove off to the La Brea Tarpits. The museum was very well done; far more interesting than I thought it would be. Did you know that out of the thousands of skeletons they have found, there has never eveer been a raccoon?

We then took a long, winding route through Beverly Hills (which, to my suprise, are actually rather mountainous.) and stopped at the house of my aunt Mary. They have a really nice house looking over the valley and with a garden full of azaleas, bouganvilia, and lemon trees. After visiting for a while, we were back in the car and off to the Universal Hilton- situated, to my amusement, on Buddy Holly Drive. I swam in the outdoor pool for a while, then dress and went downstairs to the party. It was loads of fun talking to the Relatives, accompaned by good seafood: sushi, sashimi, lobster, crab, and alarmingly, a raw oyster bar.

The next day, we got up, packed and left for the Getty, stopping on the way to take some pictures of the ocean. The Getty is very pretty, and had a section of pictures from the 30's to the 60's taken by famous photographers that I'm sure Jasper would have loved.

At 1:00, we left and got to the airport just in time. LAX is so badly organized! It took us 45 minutes to get through security, leaving us only a few minutes to get to the gate. As we flew home, the Pilot talked aboth the landmarks we were flying over, including Santa Catalina, the Hollywood sign, the Salton Sea, the San Juan Mountains, and the Grand Canyon. We were home, barely 34 hours after we had left. Quite the whirlwind trip, IIDSSM.


Pictures, from top to bottom:
The plane heading east, the moon setting over Long's Peak on the way to the airport, another picture of the getty and gardens (taken from standing just in front of that yellow rose below), a complete mammoth skeleton at the La Brea Tarpits museum, another picture of the Hoover Dam, a fountain at the getty, obvioustly based on the gardens of The Alhambra, and seagull at the beach, seconds before my shoes were swamped by a sudden rush of seawater.