We really didn't want to head south in July. We wanted to spend the summer months roaming the northern states while the weather allowed but we knew we had to get down south to collect our things from the accident that we had in storage. So we drove south, stopping along the way to break the monotony of the I-5 at the Alvord Desert and seeing some friends in Yosemite. We finally made it to Palm Springs and it was a scorching 120 degrees, a temperature so hot we could hardly do anything outside of the air conditioned house. We decided to dip over to LA and see some friends and get to some cooler temperatures before we set our course north. We stayed with one of our best girls Allie, her dog George and her fiancé Brendan in Venice, leaving the trailer parked in the desert.
Our problem with LA is that it is entirely too sprawled. Every time we go we forget that even though a lot of our friends live there, they end up being an hour away from where we stay. One time Jill accidentally ended up taking a two hour Uber pool to Pasadena for a date she agreed to before finding out where Pasadena was. We tried our best to fit in as much time with familiar faces as we could, especially because we were in town for Jill's birthday AND our first 4th of July.
We accidentally celebrated Jill's birthday the night before her actual birthday and ended up being too hungover to function on her big day. We went down to Long Beach and saw Travesura play and spent the night doing some long overdue drinking and hanging out with Jeff (one half of "we're really doing it"). We were supposed to raft the Colorado river with him this year and blew it so we got to hear all about his trip and come up with our next plan (which will involve a raft and the Mississippi). We drank all night together and started celebrating at the stroke of midnight (so we didn't exactly miss her birthday). We ended up at a house party with a fire, taking an Uber at 4am to Taco Bell only to find out they were out of Chalupas and we were still an hour away from where we were staying. We spent the next day dead, falling off Allie's couch at 3pm and dragging ourselves to the beach in hopes of being cured with some success.
Before our accident Jill had been sculpting a Mount Rushmore hat for our big "Hey we moved to America finally" post but we crashed before we could take the photo. We had pulled the hat from the wreck and kept it in storage and even though all the faces fell off, Jill brought it back to life. We were able to meet up with our very talented friend, Ryan Schude at Elysian Park before the 4th so we could take this photo. It was a long time coming but well worth it (thanks Ryan!).
We couldn't come this far and end up so close to Tempe, Arizona without saying hi to a few special pals. As much as we cursed the fucking heat we had to make the drive, plus it meant we could finally head up to the Grand Canyon afterwards (it was closed last time we tried to go). We went and stayed with our friend's Chone and Tanner and realized it was basically too hot to do anything there too. We made a pool in the back of the truck trying to cool down and took it to Walmart. Drank a bunch, hung out on the roof, shot at stuff with a BB gun, the usual Arizona hangouts that make coming to town so special.
The heat was killing us though and our friend Chelsey said she had somewhere a little cooler she wanted to take us and we knew to listen so we headed out of town and headed towards the Chiricahua Mountains.