i'd rather be flying: A Birthday of Fun, A Trip to Reno...and a Bunch in Between

Again, I have been neglectful. First off, I would like to give a shout-out to my good friend Catherine Robert who I worked with last summer here in Santa Cruz. She is one of the faithful readers of my blog and she is good about reminding me when I forget to update.

I stay so darn busy here. For some reason, it seems like I am staying much more busy than last summer and it is really hard for me to find time to sit down and update this blog. I will give you a slight synopsis of the last few days.

I turned 21 last Tuesday. I am happy to say that I didn't drink a drop on my 21st birthday. It was a great birthday though. Tarah, my good friend from Virginia Tech, is working at a CTY camp in Palo Alto about an hour from Santa Cruz. She rode the bus over on the morning of my birthday and me, Jordan, and Colton picked her up at the bus stop. We went to Denny's where I had gravy and biscuits (wahoo!) and then we showed Tarah around the campus here where we work. We then proceded to travel up the coast of California towards San Francisco. We stopped at some beautiful beaches and also a lighthouse. It was a great drive. We eventually ended up in San Francisco where we visited the Golden Gate Bridge. There are pictures from the trip below. After we left the Golden Gate Bridge, we visited Stanford (where Tarah is working) and Santa Clara University (where Jordan graduated from.) We also went to a mall where I got a pair of $31 Adidas shoes. It was great.

Camp ended on Friday. Our students from first session left then. I was kind of sad to see mine go. I had a good group of guys. As soon as the students were gone, Jordan, Colton, and I left for our journey to Reno, Nevada. By the time we fought traffic, it took us about 5 hours to get there. We got there around 10:30, ate at Jack In the Box, checked into our hotel, and then we walked around the city. I gambled for the first time. I lost $25 on the slot machines. Even though we were gone for only 24 hours, this was possibly one of the best trips I have taken in my entire life.

On Saturday morning, we got up and left Reno. Before we left, we bought matching t-shirts and hats. On the way back we visited Lake Tahoe. It was absolutely beautiful. We made it back just in time for our staff meeting at 6:30 here in Santa Cruz. It was a great time.

Now, I'm sitting here getting ready to tell my new kiddies to turn their lights out. Hopefully another adventure will happen soon. They are too much fun.

Lots of pictures are below.

Until next time, Zach will leave it at that.

The most beautiful lake I've ever seen