Let the adventure begin!!
Car packed, balloons in the back seat, John Denver ready to play and a camera. (Well, we packed some other stuff but I think we could've survived without it.)
We didn't really have a plan or a place to stay and we didn't really know where we were heading. Our dear friend Laura, that now lives in San Francisco was going to stay at a beautiful spot south Oregon/North California for the weekend... so why not go see her?
Laura lived in Seattle for over a year and after that, she moved to San Francisco. We miss her, our adventures together, our singing and having each other in this little place in the world that we call ''home'' but far away from home.
I am not a planner, and if you are Spanish, chances are you are not either and probably know what I am talking about. So even with no plan, we had the best time, because we don't need much to be happy, just each other, the sun and a nice comfortable car.
We welcome you to follow our journey of our 3-day weekend trip with balloons!
When you'll see the picture below of the car on fire, you are going to ask yourself, whaaat happened????? Before I explain it all: No, it wasn't our car.
We decided to do part of the drive overnight to get there in early the morning and not waste a day driving. It was about 2am and all the sudden smoke started coming towards us, blocking our views so we quickly decided to pull on the side of the road.
Thankfully nobody was inside the car, the owner got out on time when the car started catching on fire. Colin took this breathtaking picture. Overall scary but thankful nobody got injured!
Photo credit: Colin Christianson
No more incidents the rest of the drive, and we finally made it to Whiskey horse Town!!
We made it to our 'Tita' and to Whisky town lake with this amazing Mazda CX-5, latest model thanks to DriveShopUsa. This car made our trip delightful! Very comfortable, very easy to drive and is the perfect size for roadtrips! This car is big enough to pack all our stuff (and the balloons) but still small enough to drive around different places.
We all agreed that the car was comfortable, right Alicia? :P (She will agree, since she slept like a baby in the back of the car for almost the whole trip!)
I am probably not the only one that when goes on a roadtrip brings a coffee mug + chargers + snacks + phone + maps + cd's... and the list goes on. I believe everything is indispensable, but I always want to find a place for everything in order to travel comfortable. I find that a lot of cars are not designed in that mindset, or at least not for Eli's style. This Mazda was great for that; it had a place for cups and water bottles, a surface for cellphones and chargers, wallets and keys. This might seem meaningless to other people, but for me makes a difference, specially when traveling with other people, since the stuff multiplies x 3.
Reunited after 2 years!!!
We camped in one of the campgrounds in the area, here you can see a little behind the scenes of us setting up the tent. Who said setting up a tent wasn't fun? (It's the little things...)
Behind the scene timelapse.
We heard somebody say: ''there's a free kayaking tour early in the morning''... so ready we were at 9am sharp the next day, with tired eyes but ready to enjoy three hours of relaxing kayaking on a warm sunny morning!
Oh, and the best. THE FRUIT sold in the middle of the road. Oh, my! It was like candy. So we were there every day, the best treat.
And not long after..... ZzZzZz...
After the best 2 days with this girl, we had to say goodbye and Alicia, Colin and I packedour Mazda and we headed back to visit the mountain.
Oh, we needed a cowgirl picture before leaving....
As we were driving up to Mount Shasta, Colin noticed part of this memorial stupa from the road. We, of course, stopped and spent there a good hour. We found out later that it was built in honor of H.E. Khempo Yurmed Tinly Rinpoche. If you want to know a little bit more about this piece of art, you can read more in this article.
It was very relaxing, inspiring and breathtaking.
And.... we finally made it to the magic mountain! Bringing the balloons with us on this road-trip brought so much joy and good laughs. They were the highlight of our trip for sure and
We hiked, we kayaked, took naps on the beach, watched the sunset, traveled with balloons, barbecued, ate fresh local strawberries and cherries, visited the magic mountain, practiced Buddhism, we had a place to sleep and we saw a car in flames.... not bad for not having a plan!
Let it gooo!
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