There is a God and he/she loves me!

So allow me to setup this story:

Because of busting my ankle a few months ago, I missed an important field trip for one of my classes. My professor believed it was prudent that I should go and make it up. The free time I would have to make it up before I planned to head home was this weekend. The location? Point Lobos State Reserve, just south of Monterey, which is roughly 2 hours away.

I tell my roommate Bre about this last week and she tells me about a friend of hers that lives in Monterey. She said she’d go down with me on Friday night, and we could stay at her friend’s place. Excellent! That means I get to wake up on Saturday, drive about 15 minutes to check out all the geology I need to see and head home!

It turns out, the last substantial meal I had eaten was right before we left our house to drive down there. Once in Monterey, we went out for a few drinks with some of her friends and then came home. At about 9AM on Saturday, I woke up, packed everything up and hit the road! Bre was going to hitch a ride back with her friend that afternoon. That worked out fine, since I don’t think she’d want to tag along while I looked at rocks for a few hours.

I did notice that I was quite hungry and figured I’d just grab a bite to eat at some food place on the way there. The problem was that I didn’t find any food places! Oh well. Time for some geology! After spending roughly 3 and a half hours there (Beautiful place! More on that later!), I decided to head back towards San Francisco. The only problem? How do I get home? I didn’t feel like spending the whole day driving up highway 1, which winds all over the place. So I took the first major highway I saw that headed east. I figured it would eventually have to cross the 101. Besides, I’ve never been to Salinas, time to check it out! (Unbeknownst to me at the time, Highway 101 crosses right through Salinas. Score!)

The whole time I’m driving, I start to realize just how hunry I am. It’s now about 3pm, and I hadn’t eaten anything in nearly 15 hours! Some of you might be wondering how I’m still alive by this point.

I started thinking about my favorite place to eat in the world: In ‘N Out! Unfortunately, the closest one I was aware of was in San Francisco. No problem! I’d just hold out for another 2 hours or so and eat there. It would be like a celebration of sorts!

Finally, the highway I am taking winds through Salinas. I was passing all sorts of fast food restaraunts, but nothing tickled my fancy. It was all about In ‘N Out. I briefly wondered if Salinas had an In ‘N Out, but figured that they were way to cool for this city. Driving a little further, I came upon a sign that pointed to an entrance for highway 101! Excellent! I figured that I should get gas before I leave though.

As I am filling the car up with gas, I take a second to lean back, relax and take in the scenery. I look up to find that right across the street, there was an In ‘N Out burger! I nearly came to tears! It was like it was meant to be. It is for that reason alone that I now know for a fact that God exists. Oh yes!

Anyway, Point Lobos was a pretty awesome place. While hiking on a trail and looking down at my map, I turn a corner to stumble across a young deer munching on some grass. That was pretty awesome to see. I had passed up some parents hiking with their kids a few minutes earlier. So I just sat down and waited for them to catch up, that way they could see the deer as well. I have to say that definitely made my day! Awesome.

I have one last thing to do for school before I can head home. We collected 36 minerals this semester in out mineralogy class, and we have to write out some detailed information on each mineral that we collected. Not too difficult, but quite time consuming. As soon as that is done, I plan to drive back down to Southern California. The current plan looks like I may be driving down sometime tomorrow evening/night. Depending on how I feel though, I might delay it one more day and drive down on Tuesday morning.

I’m coming back up around January 13th I believe (I was leaning towards the 10th, but it looks like I have an orthodontist appointment to do on the 12th. Doh!). School doesn’t start for us until January 31, so that leaves a whole lot of time to do something. I was personally contemplating a road trip to check out Crater Lake (if we can get up there? It might involve snow showing… hmm) and then perhaps driving up into southern Washington to check out Mt. Saint Helens! Yes, a road trip of geology/volcanology. It really will depend on weather conditions though. Evidentially, my friend Phil was having a similiar plan for a road trip in January and wants to drive up to Seattle! We will definitely have to collaborate.

Anyway, time to go write up a few more minerals before going to bed. All most there, I just need to sprint to the finish!