Category: 2012

For our last day in town – or to be more accurate, out in the desert – Justin’s mom and stepdad thought it would be fun to take a little road trip down the stretch of Route 66 that runs near their house. The historic highway runs from Chicago to Santa Monica and someday I’d love to drive the whole way to see all the interesting curiosities it has to offer. It isn’t maintained as well as it used to be and some spots are bumpy and beat up, but that just adds to the adventure… Sometimes the journey is the destination.

We hit the road pretty early so we could stop for breakfast at an internationally famous diner. The restaurant served as the location for the 1987 German film Bagdad Cafe. If you enjoy slightly strange and eccentric movies, it’s definitely worth watching. And if you enjoy greasy diner food, this place is definitely worth visiting. Believe it or not, it draws tourists in from all over the world, especially Europe.

After we placed our order, I got up to wander around and do some urban exploring. It’s not every day that this Midwest girl is on a former California movie set, so I had to check it out!

They keep a guest book for visitors to sign, domestic and international. The little diner has hosted so many guests through the years, they’ve gone through a stack of books!

There’s even a geocache in the Cafe! Justin’s family introduced me to the high tech game of hide and seek, and we always seem to find a few with them whenever we visit California.

After our breakfast adventure, we jumped on the road again and drove out to Amboy Crater.

From the parking lot, it was about a mile hike out to the crater.

After a steep climb, we were greeted by the view of the beautiful hidden meadow. There’s also a geocache hidden here, and Justin posed proudly near it, before we cleared away the rocks and uncovered the treasure.

Things were going really well… We’d had a great hike out to the crater, a safe climb up, and found the geocache hidden within. We decided to climb all the way up to the ledge and take in the view from on top of the world. As we started up the trail, Justin spoke the fateful words: “Be careful, the rocks are loose. Don’t slip!”

A few seconds later, I took a step, lost my footing and went down hard. I was lucky enough to land on a jagged lava rock, which slammed into my left thigh. It hurt so bad, I couldn’t even scream – it knocked the wind out of me completely. 

Witnessing my very ugly and uncoordinated fall from a distance, Justin ran down the hill and his mom ran up to make sure that I hadn’t knocked myself unconscious. Except for a few small scrapes on my hands, there was no blood – just a throbbing pain in my leg. I sat there for a few minutes to catch my breath, and when I was able to speak again, I announced that I was done climbing for the day. They could carry on without me and continue to the top of the crater, but I would not be joining them.

Justin refused to let me quit, so I reluctantly stumbled to my feet and limped up the remainder of the path. When we reached the summit, I was so glad he’d forced me to my feet. The view was breathtaking! I had to have a shot of our triumphant group on top of the crater, so I set up the camera and crawled over before the self timer counted down. Don’t let that smile fool you, I’m in intense pain in the shot below, but it was worth it.

It was a 360 degree view of amazing! On a railroad in the distance, Justin spotted a train with over 100 cars. We figured it was just over a mile long, and it’s still barely visible in the shot below.

When it was time to make the climb down, Justin decided to be daring and walk the entire perimeter of the ledge of the crater. The path got pretty narrow in places with a steep drop, so it made me nervous to watch. I only looked up twice as he made his way down the far side.

When we arrived back at the car, I threw an ice pack on my leg to slow the swelling that had begun. We hit the road again and made a quick pit stop for some ibuprofen. A few pills later, I felt much better.

We continued on to the Kelso Dunes. When I stepped out of the car, I declared that I would hike as long as the pain in my leg allowed, but I had no intention of climbing all the way to the top. 

As we hiked up the dunes, the stunning beauty of landscape kept my mind off the pain, so I kept going.

When we were about eighty percent of the way to the summit, I decided that since I’d come this far, it would be silly to stop now. So we took a little break so I could rest for a bit and then continued to the top.

We made it! We conquered the Kelso Dunes! The view was unbelievable… well worth pushing through the pain and all the sand that ended up in our shoes!

Winter is a great time to wander through the desert – the temperatures are tolerable and most of the dangerous critters that live there are hibernating. We spent a sunny day exploring the sights of Joshua Tree National Park and enjoying the desert’s quiet time of year.

California is famous for many things – one of them is earthquakes. And you can’t mention California earthquakes without bringing up the San Andreas Fault. No one knows when the next big one will strike, we only know that it will, and this particular fault line will probably have something to do with it.

Now, I’m just a kid from the Midwest who didn’t have to worry about surviving such a disaster in my part of the country while growing up, so I’ve always found earthquakes eerie and fascinating. Standing on the mountain top and gazing out for miles across the valley, I felt completely powerful and completely vulnerable at the same time, but it was amazing. It was also really windy!

My mom is one of those people who believes that one day a giant earthqauke is going to break the state of California off the North American tectonic plate completely and send it crashing into the ocean. She’s also afraid of heights and ledges. So Justin and I couldn’t resist having a little fun at her expense and posing for an artist interpretation of what it would look like if the big one were to hit at the moment we stood on the edge of the fault line where it’s most likely to hit. As you can see, it’s pretty dramatic.

Our last stop of the day was a place in the park called Rattlesnake Canyon – named in honor of it’s population of, you guessed it, rattlesnakes! Fortunately, the little buggers were hibernating when we came through, so we were able to wander around in only a minimal amount of danger.

Justin climbed to the top of this huge rock formation and yelled down to me that the view was worth the climb, so I scurried up to join him.

He was right! The sun had just set behind the mountains and all the colors seemed to glow. I can see why the rattlesankes prefer this spot!

The day after Christmas, we hopped on a plane and left Detroit just before six inches of snow were dumped on the Motor City. The storm caused all kinds of trouble and canceled flights, but luckily, we were safely on our way to LAX for our annual California adventure by then.

Our first stop on the trip was Calico Ghost Town. As the name suggests, it’s a real life ghost town left behind from the days of the California Gold Rush. These days, it’s more of a historical park with tours of the mines, restaurants, saloons and some souvenir shops.

We wanted a reason to get out of the country for election day, so we used Justin’s birthday as an excuse. (Before I get any complaints about shirking our civic duties, I should mention that we both absentee voted before leaving the States.) We escaped to the Caribbean – to the island nation of Turks and Caicos – or as we called it, Paradise.

We stayed on the island of Providenciales, or Provo, as the locals call it. We spent our first couple of days just relaxing and walking along the beach in Grace Bay.

Our second day there was election day back home and we watched the coverage on the news, courtesy of our resort’s satelite stations. As the polls closed on the East Coast in the U.S., we took a sunset swim in the sea. 

The next day was Justin’s birthday, so we had to do something special. One phone call later and mission accomplished – we had an evening of horseback riding booked with Provo Ponies.

Now, Justin grew up riding horses, so to him, this was old hat. But I had never ridden a horse, aside from a few pony rides at petting zoos as a kid (which, let’s face it, don’t count). So I was pretty nervous. And it didn’t help the matter that Justin prepped me for the experience by giving me a speech about everything that could possibly go wrong… You know, the horse could try to buck you off, it could decide to lay down and roll over with you still in the saddle, or it could decide to just gallop away with you along for the ride. He assured me that “that probably won’t happen”, but I wasn’t convinced. So when they asked if I wanted a riding helmet, I said, “Yes please!”

But I had nothing to worry about. These horses were so well trained that even a complete beginning rider like me couldn’t screw up.

If horseback riding on the beach sounds fun to you, take my word, horseback riding in the ocean is better! Here’s Justin on Thor and me on Diamond in the waters of the Caribbean Sea.

We had planned to spend our final day sailing and snorkeling, but the captain of the ship canceled the tour at the last minute. It was too late in the day to book anything else, so we decided to drown our sorrows in rum punch at Da Conch Shack. This little beach bar is the perfect place to forget about the real world…

While sipping our rum punch, we were joined by a potcake. She happily posed for a photo in exchange for some pets.

Although it was our Plan B, it was a pretty good way to spend an afternoon. We had front row seats to watch the tide roll in and all the rum punch we could drink. And of course, we couldn’t come to Da Conch Shack without trying some conch! We had conch chowder, conch salad and conch fritters followed by beer from the Turk’s Head Brewery.

We took one last walk on the beach and bid a fond farewell to Turks and Caicos. 

Don’t worry, we brought back as much Bambarra Rum as legally allowed!

For part two of her senior portraits, Jennifer wanted something different and a little more edgy. The first thing that came to my mind was the Graffiti Alley, which is either loved or hated by the citizens of Ann Arbor. Always evolving and always interesting, I find it fascinating and I’ve always wanted an excuse to shoot a session there. So I suggested the location to Jennifer and we got together again on a chilly afternoon. It was absolutely freezing, but she took it in stride. Take a look!

When we were finished in the Alley, we still had some daylight left, so we walked down to the Law Quad. Home to the historic academic buildings that comprise the Law School, the Law Quad is one of the most beautiful spots on the University of Michigan campus.