slow ride, take it easy

day 52!!!!

PACIFIC OCEAN WE MADE IT!!! i almost cried at the sight of the opposite ocean. i cannot believe we are finally here! although it isn't our ultimate "goal" or "destination" i suppose it is a destination within itself. the sense of accomplishment, however small the feat may seem, was great. and i am proud of myself. can you imagine that? i would like to list things that have and have not happened. but i will not. for fear that these things may or may not happen because of said list. maybe i will make one at the very very end, whenever that may be.

so we are spending the night tonight in costa mesa, ca, in an old rv that no longer runs. it is cozy and i am happy to be sleeping for free, which is harder in practice than it sounds. tomorrow we head to LA where we will be staying with olivia's mom. very excited for that as well.

last night we camped in the joshua tree along with our swiss friend jan, who we have been affectionately calling "juan" for the past two days. joshua tree was so beautiful and the fact that we didn't get eaten by rattlesnakes or coyotes makes it even better. i saw the most giant bunny i have ever seen! and we saw lots of quails and when they sat in the joshua trees it looked like a scene straight out of a dr. seuss book. those birds were always in a hurry! drove through miles and miles and MILES of nothing desert to get to joshua tree. it was weirdly beautiful but as the needed on the gas fell lower and lower i began to grow tired of the vast nothing. even saw the ground on both sides as WHITE sand but with huge cracks in it because it was SO DRY. now we are in a place with moisture in the air! saw condensation on the cars this evening and had a silent internal smile knowing my nose would stop hurting FINALLY. it already has, in fact.

what else?! the road goes on and on and on, it seems. and we are just trucking on, i suppose. tomorrow our direction turns to NORTH. wow! for the first time yet on this trip i will be consistently driving north for days and days and days. weeks even! i am hoping the coast air will cure this strange rash type thing that has broken out only on the underside of my left forearm. its very strange and VERY itchy. if anyone ever wondered if you can bathe in calamine lotion, i am here to answer wholeheartedly "yes"

i would love to include some pictures in this here post, but, whaddayaknow, i am only 51% complete on my flickr. and i dont realllllly want to wait. so! you will just have to visit on your very own. can you manage that? lots of nice stuff there: OUR HAUNTED HOTEL (can you believe we survived that?!), the hoover dam, las vegas, joshua tree, and some stuff from today even. don't you want to see the pacific ocean??!?

goodnight to you, my trusty readers after all these months.
much love from the left coast,
bianca