Time to Catch Up! (Part Two)

August and September were a busy time for my band, PoorWater, but I still managed to do some travelling around. 


Payson:


At the beginning of August, Bill, Devin, and I headed back up to Payson to get out of the heat. We spent about half of our time trying to tackle the evil jigsaw puzzle from HELL. It was an 1,000 piece picture of an alpine lake surrounded by pine trees under a giant blue sky. Basically, the entire thing was blue and green. With little bits of brown. Blue, green, and brown FOREVER! At one point, Devin and I tried to film the endeavor, but his camera battery died. Aside from puzzling, we also went hiking up the creek in our awesome new water shoes and went exploring around Bear Canyon Lake--the lake that I WILL kayak!

 Devin and Bill getting shots of the "slide rock" waterfall near the cabin.

 Another waterfall farther down the creek. This was always my favorite when I was a kid.

If you look closely, you can see the charred trees on the top of the mountain left over from the 1990 Dude fire.

 Bear Canyon Lake

 A nest for a large bird at the top of a tree. It didn't look like an eagle, so we weren't sure what it was.

 Mario anyone?

 That's a pretty big pine cone!

 I'm not sure what these are. Eggs?

 This pretty little glen on the side of the lake. If I was a bear, I would hang out here.

Bill's awesome picture from that day. He's entered it into a contest for AZ Highways :)

 This interesting stream that leads up to the lake.

 Contemplating crossing...

Got a little captain in you?

 Hmmm... apparently the bears do hang out here.

Double rainbow!

Tucson:


About a week later, I headed down to Tucson to see my other cousin Michael be inducted into med school. It was totally fun to hang out with the cousins and the next day they came up to see our show!

Michael with my aunt and uncle.

San Diego/ L.A.:


A couple weeks later, Devin, James, and I decided to take an impromptu trip to San Diego and L.A. Well, originally we were just going to go to L.A., but all the hotel rooms were booked. We found out when we got there that they were all booked for an adult industry convention. Of course! So, instead of staying in L.A., we decided to stay overnight in San Diego and then spend the day in L.A. 

We stopped at Dateland for some date shakes. Mmmmmmm....

My Honda Fit get's 300 miles per tank, so we got all the way to here (the middle of nowhere) before we had to stop for gas.

Sunset in the hills by San Diego.

We stayed at a nice hotel off of the beach. It was awesome! Then we went to see some really bad bands play at a small dive bar. They were so bad that we left halfway through to go eat some tacos (mmmmm...). I was totally cracking up at one of the bands whose singer purposely put his microphone up too high and screamed up into it while playing. He looked kind of like this:

Or at least that's what I pictured...

The next morning, we went to Pizza Port and ordered three pizzas. Let's just say we had enough food for dinner and left overs the next day. After that, we headed out to L.A. We drove on the freeway FOREVER. It was a never ending traffic jam. 

 We saw this on the freeway and James had to make sure we took a picture of it. I guess they make awesome fast cars. I'm totally out of the loop on this one...

 Hmmm...Hollywood seems a lot less seedy on t.v. 

The Capitol Records building

Now, the real reason we went to Hollywood was to look at awesome equipment. The first place we stopped was at a custom guitar shop so Devin could try this:

It is very pricey and very cool with a long waiting list. You can read more about it here.

While Devin was trying it out on his guitars, James and I went on an interesting expedition to find ice and a cooler for our left over pizza. That proved to be a bit more difficult than we had anticipated. After I used the most horrifying bathroom ever (it even had graffiti on the changing table) and James accidentally knocked things off of the shelf one aisle over, we decided Walgreen's wasn't the way to go. We instead broke some traffic laws (the roads in Hollywood are really confusing) and ended up at a grocery store. Bill wanted me to tell all of you right now that he is jealous he didn't get to go on this trip. 

After this, we headed over to the Professional Drum Shop. It was totally awesome. We talked to the owner who seemed to know every rock and jazz drummer ever and he gave me a free shirt. James was jealous! Then, we headed over to the Guitar Center, Carvin Guitars, and Sam Ash on Sunset Boulevard. That was really cool, I just wish they had electric cellos ;) . We headed home soon after and stopped in a gas station parking lot to eat some amazing cold pizza.

Oregon:


Last week, I went on a trip to Oregon to do some sight-seeing and hang out with Angel. We went to Crater Lake National Park, the beach, and spent some time in Portland.

Check out that dragon fly!

 Shipwreck Rock at Crater Lake

 Volcanic spires on the outskirts of Crater Lake National Park.

 There's still snow on the mountains!

  

Crater Lake from one of the surrounding mountains.

 The lake up close.

 I'm not sure why the rock was green.

 I guess it used to be an informational plaque, but now it's become a place for everyone to carve their names.

One of the far shores of the lake, highlighted by the sunset.

 We weren't sure if it was fog or a forest fire until we saw the signs that said: "Natural Forest Fire Do Not Report."

 It made for a cool sunset picture.

 Wizard Island

The last bit of light.

 Fog covered sand dunes near the beach.

 The first lighthouse in Oregon.

 One of the many rivers that leads out to the ocean.

 Out in the distance is the shore of the ocean covered by fog.

You're a tiger baby! Rawr!!!

 Another lighthouse.

 River rocks that have been washed out to the beach by the tide.

 Angel!

Angel in front of some cool sea caves.

Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!

Some classic Lauren and Angel pictures :)

Alas! I see a pirate ship on the horizon!

       A progression of a water spout that comes through the rocks at high tide. At highest it went up about 10 feet.

  

On Saturday night, Angel met up with Vijay and Isabel, who we've known since U of A. They brought along  their friends, Michael and Melissa.

 

Leopard print heels. YES!!

 Night out on the town in Portland.

Angel and Isabel

 Angel, Michael, and Isabel.

The next morning, Angel and I decided to go shopping downtown. We had no idea where we were going, so we just wandered around until we found cool stores. 

 Hmmm...rain? I haven't used my umbrella since like December.

 We stopped for lunch at this yoga studio that was also a restaurant. Raw vegan was a new experience for us!

We found this really cool import store.

I'm not sure what the socks were about...

 High tea! 

I'm glad we're all caught up! Check out my next blog update on everything that's been happening with my band!

To see Time to Catch Up! (Part One), click here.