Spring Break-a-thon

If you don't like travel-blogs, stop reading. You've been warned.

SO this is the story of my Spring Break. As I stated last year, teachers LOVE Spring Break. And I decided I was going to make the most of mine.

Adventure 1: Holi Festival

If you go to Color Fest, I recommend the vegetarian food at the temple. I also recommend wearing some kind of bandanna to help you breathe during the mayhem. This is my 3rd year attending, and the party just keeps getting bigger.



Adventure #2: Moab with Kelly


24-hour-ish trip , and my first time ever checking myself into a hotel. Nothing but the best for us, so...

Behold! The Apache Motel. We knew it had to be the best because John Wayne stayed there while filming one of his movies in the early 50s.

The people there were very proud of that fact.

Moab is Moab--regardless how short the trip. Running around in the rocks is good for your soul.

Kelly vs Boulder. The rock never stood a chance.

Adventure 3: Cabin trip to Idaho

48-ish hour trip. Snowmobiled into the cabin over Conference Weekend. Listened to Conference on the radio. Had to bust through snow drifts in my truck on the way in.

Russ in geared up to go for a ride.

Adventure 4: California

Week-long trip of sheer awesomeness.

We visited the Natural Science museum in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. They had a very impressive octopus. They also had half the city of San Francisco squeezed into one building. Afterward, we went adventuring around the gigantic park.

While we were in Rocklin, Russ's sister Kiernan had her baby. It's a girl! She's amazing! Congratulations, Kiernan!

Russ's dad managed to procure some tickets to the Sacramento Kings game.

I took this picture from our seats. We were in the 2nd row on the floor. Incredible! Also, for the record, it's impossible to tell how big those men are in real life. The Kings played the Rockets, and Yao Ming is a giant man. A giant, giant man.
Apparently, the Kings aren't very good.

They lost.


To keep the religious cultural experiences coming, we attended Russ's Aunt's Seder dinner. I had never been to a Jewish celebration before, and I thought it was wonderful. There was food, and stories, and friendly people, and candles, and they even taught us a song about a goat that your father bought for two zuzim. Very educational. Very awesome.

Keeping in line with the more traditional (for me) holiday of this time of year, we tie-dyed easter eggs at Russ's sister's house. We later used those eggs to make an easter egg hunt for Kiernan and Russ's grandparents.


We also drove back down to San Francisco to meet up with Bryant and Kelly.

We went on a real adventure. We rented bikes down near Pier 39 and rode them the 8 miles up and over the Golden Gate Bridge.

At first, I considered myself a bike-warrior.

Russ was smarter than me, and had to teach me how to use the gear shifts on the bikes. I started to get nervous when I realized that we were running out of time. If we didn't make it to the dock in Sausilito by 6:30, we would miss the ferry boat, and have to ride our bikes all the way back to San Francisco.

This is how I felt about the idea of riding my bike for 16 miles.

I was tired--and whining incessantly under my breath--but the view from the top was pretty awesome!

For the record, we made it to Sausilito in the nick of time. I experienced a moment of sheer panic as I was flying down the steep downhill toward Sausilito and I could see the Ferry pulling up to the block down below. If I would have missed the boat, I probably would have just plopped down on the dock and burst into flames. Either that or spent the night hanging out with the crazy guy and his guitar-playing Dachsund who were sitting on a nearby bench.

Spring Break is over. Russ's family was incredibly kind to host us, and feed us, and let us swim in their swimming pool, play their piano, hold their baby, borrow their car, and feed their chickens. It was over too fast.

And I didn't want to go back to school.