So here I am sitting in LA the night before my internship begins...it's been a pretty good past few days, so I'll recap the 29 hour road trip that I had with me, Cody, and Tell Me Garmin (aka G-Unit aka GPS Girl). I've got some photos but I haven't uploaded them yet so I'll post them when I get a chance later in the week.
Day 1Left my house around 8AM to go and pick up Cody from Champaign. I got into Champaign close to 10:45, but I had to go and exchange my defective GPS for one that was working properly. Anyways, Best Buy literally has the worst customer service in the world, and long story short, I ended up getting a cheaper GPS after an hour of dealing with their customer service. Finally picked up Cody and left Champaign for Oklahoma City around noon.
The drive wasn't too bad cause we took turns driving about 5 hour shifts. It took 10 hours to get into Oklahoma City. Neither of us have an Ipod radio connection thing though so we listened to the radio for 10 hours and heard the same songs over and over again. Fun fact, tolls on Oklahoma highways are 3.50!!! Luckily, we only had to pay it twice. And 14.50 if you're a truck. I'm never going to complain about having to pay 50 cents on Illinois tolls ever again though.
Anyways, we got into Oklahoma City around 10 PM and just chilled in the hotel and went to sleep.
Day 2Woke up and got to eat a nice breakfast buffet for free. We went up to the concierge services too on the 14th floor (which is only accessible to really cool people), but they didn't have any alcohol at 10 in the morning so we just got some bottled water, and were off for our 12 hour drive for the day!
Nothing too exciting during the drive. We both ended up driving close to 6 hours each. Because of the time change (we gained 2 hours), we got into Flagstaff, Arizona at 8PM, watched the end of the Lakers game, and then went over to Denny's to eat dinner. This huge crowd of like 50+ high school kids came in (must have been graduation night), but that's not really that relevant now that I think about it.
We had some extra time so we drove around and ended up driving on Northern Arizona University's campus (we were actually trying to find the Grand Canyon but ended up in a trailer park thanks to Tell Me Garmin, so we ended up on the campus instead). Back to the hotel and bed for the night.
Day 3Woke up around 10 and headed out towards LA! Friday's drive was only 7 hours. We ended up driving through the Mojave desert and sorta freaked out because we were running low on gas without any gas for another 50+ miles or so (according to G unit). Word of advice, fill up your tank before driving through the desert because there is literally nothing out there. NOTHING. Also, did everyone know that Texas is actually bigger in square feet than California???
Stopped at Popeye's for lunch, and then arrived in LA close to 5PM. I moved my stuff into Ken's uncle's place, and then we went out to dinner with Cody's aunt and her friend, Graceanne, at this restaurant called Catalina Del Rey, close to the beach. It was really good Italian food, and we had a beer in what is supposedly the U.S.'s smallest bar. Pretty cool!
Day 4Big day. We did a lot of stuff on Saturday, even with LA's never-ending traffic.
Then, we went up to UCLA, and walked around for a few hours (photos to come). The campus is seriously awesome, and WestWood Village (kind of like U of I's Green Street but 10X better) was pretty sweet too. We ate a BBQ chicken pizza at CPK and then headed over to Venice Beach. (Well actually, we drove up to Burbank first and drove around Warner Brothers which in hindsight might not have been worth it because we literally drove 25 minutes on the crowded freeway to circle a building, but still cool hahaha).
Venice is sweet. First experience on the beach in LA. There weren't any people jumping on glass, but still plenty of crazy people to see. After Venice, we went and drove around on USC's campus (or around it because they have a fence around their campus).
Afterwards, we headed back to Cody's aunt's to watch the Lakers game. Then, Cody was leaving real early on Sunday morning, so I went back to Ken's uncle's place to crash for the night. First time by myself in the big city.
Not gonna lie, it was really weird going from having one of my best friends with me in a really big, foreign city to being completely by myself, but I've tried keeping myself busy the past two days. (Sort of, not really unless grocery shopping and looking for the beach count).
Anyways, that was a really long post, but hope that kept you entertained for the past few minutes. Now I'm off to bed. I've been looking forward to tomorrow for the past 2 months!
Venice Beach-Look at that water!
Venice Beach-This is one crazy place.
UCLA-Tennis is a pretty big deal here. That's me down there playing tennis. :P
