Life in the Cheese Drawer

what a long day! i think it seemed long because i was awake at 8 a.m. and only got 5 hours of sleep -_-
nate and i had about three hours to kill between checking out of our hotel and meeting up with my family, so we went to target and got some drinkage and snackage for the next few days. then we just headed out and drove around phoenix.
the warmth! i wore a tank top! the car windows were open! amazeballs!
well, we headed south and ended up driving through desert (obviously) just to take a look. i guess i didn’t realize there were mountains in arizona, but then i also didn’t realize there were mountains in california, so take whatever i think with a grain of salt.
then i saw a sign for a national monument, so we decided to check it out.

this is the casa grande ruins national monument. i didn’t know anything about it before and i still don’t know a lot about it, except that the people who lived here mysteriously were wiped out.
and while we were at the nps desk, we decided to just get the annual pass since we’ll probably visit at least 2 more parks, maybe 3.

it rained today! so everything was sort of muddy while were trekking across this piece of desert. and then my flip flop almost got stuck, and it got super muddy. (don’t worry; i made it out.)
then we headed back to phoenix and met up with my fam n friends, and we hung out for a good 5 hours or so at the hotel restaurant. expensive drinks here , that’s for sure.
but the view from my balcony is nice!

here’s a delayed day one (sorta) of vacay.
last night, nate and i flew out at 9:30, so i worked a full day of work and then went home to a very antsy nate. fed the cats 3 heaping bowls of food (don’t worry – charlie’s coming to catsit for a few days!) and took off.
seriously, this is the most boring day, but we had one very fun part of the trip out: we flew first class!
i’d never flown first class before, and it was cheaper than flying out thursday cattleclass, so we took advantage of that.
the seats were nice and wide, the flight attendant was very … attentive i guess? and the mixed drinks were free!!!
so i got a margarita right off the bat.
then they were a little heavy-handed on my bloody mary (and it was an airplane bloody, so not that great), so i decided to stop after that.
we also got an in-flight meal – a wrap, chips, and some weird, smoky applesauce stuff.

it was dark on the plane. well, it was night.
i also read the entirety of “a wrinkle in time” while on the flight and tried to nap.
oh, and we hit some turbulence. so our flight was a little late.
we rolled into the car rental place around 1 a.m. (that’s 2 a.m. central) and got a REALLY SNAZZY nissan maxima. totally excited to take pics of that. the entire roof is covered in sunroofs!
then it was 20 mins to our hotel, and we rolled in around 2 in the morning. and i woke up at 7:30. i’m going to be so tired today. BUT IT’LL BE WARM.
(oh, and i have to say, i shoved all my camera gear in my backpack carryon and OMG is it heavy.)