Saturday, April 20, 2013

Road Trip Birthday Style

Matt’s birthday was a couple weeks ago and I’d asked him weeks before what he wanted to do. His response was something to the effect of “Eh, I don’t know.” Of course it was. The guy who never wants for anything married the girl with no creativity when it comes to planning things like birthday celebrations.

So with no ideas from him or me I figured we’d end up just doing dinner and a movie or something. 42 opened that Friday and he’s definitely a baseball guy. It seemed pretty likely we’d end up at that after a steak somewhere.

That was until I started writing again every day. When I blog I like to play Pandora or iTunes or some other music. It’s my favorite way to get inspired. Why I didn’t just think of that for planning Matt’s celebration in the first place is beyond me. But then I clicked to shuffle and the Barry Manilow station was still selected.

And then “Just Once” by James Ingram came on. I started laughing immediately and had a full twelve-year flashback of all the road trips we used to take. In the early days neither of us had a CD player in our cars let alone an iPod dock (um, yeah it was 1999, wtf was an iPod?). So when we traveled we were at the mercy of the local radio selections.

It’s pretty safe to say we heard our fair share of James Ingram over the years. And damn if I won’t car dance to just about anything. So when it came on that day I knew a birthday road trip was in order.

We ended up coastal, in Ventura. Enjoy!


Matt wanted to veer off the highway by way of Eagle Mountain. What, no tumbleweeds?

Sadly however we were denied access and had to take that long lonely road back to the freeway.
We drove for about 190 more miles and hit two walls...


A wall of traffic and a wall of smog. Welcome to Los Angeles!


Random road trip adventures are so us. Eating his birthday dinner in a diner while on a road trip is also so us.
Matt had biscuits and gravy and I had a corned beef reuben.
Both pretty good but I wouldn't say they were worthy of this...


Though the '50's be-bop wall-mounted jukeboxes were pretty cool.
Exhausted from the eight hours in the car we made out way back to the hotel and crashed.
  
And nothing would keep us from the beach the next day!
Up and out early we rode the PCH up to Santa Barbara and cruised around taking loads of photos of interesting architecture and the ocean.

Despite it being April the coast felt more like June gloom than sunshine spring.
But we didn't care, it was all about having some salty wind in our hair, seaglass hunting, and relaxing.


Couldn't be a better spot to stop and have some lunch.
Sadly we couldn't stay too long after that, our drive back was still looming ahead.
So we packed up and I assumed that would be the end of the photos...

Boy was I wrong! When the clouds finally cleared all we could see was the mountains in the distance.
And then I started seeing some dust around the wind farm.
And then we started seeing some dust cross the road.
I wasn't too nervous, we'd been through dust storms in Phoenix.
Everything was cool...right?

Nope, not so much. I've not driven in weather so freaky ever in my life.
This is SO US!
Now I know why they say you shouldn't drive in a dust storm.
I'd prefer not to do that again.
It cleared up just in time for the sun to set and the stars to come out.


And the lazy moon laying on her back pushed us all the way home.


Posted for April 2013 A to Z Blog Challenge R is for Road Trip

14 comments:

Launna said...

Wow, I am glad you got inspired to take a road trip...

It looks like you had so much fun, minus the dust storm.

And WOW, Los Angeles is smoggy... ewww

Kathy Cannon Wiechman said...

Thanks for the vicarious road trip. Hubby & I love to take them, & I enjoyed sharing yours.
Kathy @ Swagger Writers

Joan said...

Love road trips. It's been way too long!

Kathe W. said...

this was BIG fun to ead and I love your pics- especially the dont dance on tables sign! ReallY? Just makes one want to break the damn rules!
Happy Weekend!

#1Nana said...

The dust storms are scary when on the road. I've seen those pileups on the news!

Linda Myers said...

Phoenix to Santa Barbara. Quite a drive!

Jak said...

This sounds really awesome! It has been way way way too long since having a random road trip. Those were some of the funnest times back in the day with my friends.

That sounded like a great birthday :) Even with the dust storm. Though, my brief stay in AZ never exposed me to one, so I can't say how scary they are. Driving through one may not be the best.

I also listen to music as I write. I have individual playlists per project.

The very subject of road trips makes me think of two songs: "Open Road Song" by Eve 6 & "Great Escape" by Guster. If you've not ever heard them, I would suggest giving them a quick listen and let me know what you think :)

I barely have more than a 1/4 tank of gas in my car, and would end up stranded in the middle of no where attempting your road trips lol

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

With the way we road trip even the dust storm was fun!

Yeah LA was pretty nasty but I've seen it even worse here in Phoenix at times.

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

So much fun to get out & see the world isn't it Kathy? Enjoy your next trip!

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

Yeah it'd been ages for us too. So much fun :-)

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

Thanks Kathe! I can't say I was even contemplating getting up on the tables regardless of how much fun the music was haha

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

Yeah we kept seeing reports in Phx but never felt it was that bad because the worst always happens further south from us. Now I know what those people experience & it was pretty freaky!

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

I was happy to see my chiropractor that week let me tell ya!

Jenn Flynn-Shon said...

I love that song by Eve 6, never really a Guster fan so I don't know that one but I'll try track it down & check it out. Love road trip so any open road type song sounds good to me!

Yeah we save up specifically to do road trips these days. In the old days when gas was under $2 we had a lot more fun traveling the country. Now its less random & more planned. Still fun though :-)