Wow what a trip it has been! the last real post i made was several weeks ago when i was still in Texas but SOOOO... much has happened since then! its almost hard to get started. well i finished off the internship at river city community church (reallife.org) with a bang. the last week was a service week where we did different service projects around the church and in San Antonio. lots of work and labor including stuff from cleaning up the church campus, to distributing produce and food to local ministries, to trimming trees, scraping paint off a house, to laying hard wood floor... the list goes on. but that all came to a quick halt on Sunday when i said good bye to my new friends and family and hello to 1200 miles of road!
Sunday night around 10:30pm after gassing up i left San Antonio and headed to San Diego California, more specifically imperial Beach California where Tony Wiltse interned at a church. it was a long drive, the longest i have ever made! i drove through the night till morning where i stopped at a motel parking lot in new Mexico and slept in my car for about 2 and a half hours. i then got back on the road only stopping for gas and the occasional boarder patrol stops. this was my first experience in the west seeing sweet mounds/mountain/hill things and in the west part of Arizona nothing but boring ole desert. the first 20 miles was cool but it quickly became monotonous and boring. but shortly after that i made it to my destination about 6:00 Cali time. what a relief that was!
once in Cali i once again made another short road trip to visit a friend named josh stutzman near ventura California where i stayed the night and caught up with him. we had fun going long boarding, bike riding, getting yogurt, going to the ventura fair, and playing smash bros on 64.
After returning to the most generous peoples home ever, which is where tony stayed all summer i was able to enjoy a day to my self on the beach body boarding and what not till tony got home. ate dinner with the Host family and then quickly jetted off to meet up with one of our most amazing roadie friends from invisible children ever Sabrina. it was great to catch up with her and get to view a bit of the San Diego area i had not been.
by this time its Friday do to a recent death of one of the x roadies with invisible children one of my friends from Texas that i road to lobby days with Krystal and her friend flew into town so we were able to hang out all day sight seeing in down town San Diego. it was sweet awesome great time eating yogurt, and Ethiopian food, and then later visiting the invisible children roadie house which holds around 60 people. CRAZY!! but it was awesome to meet those guys and of course hang out with one of my other brothers Matt who is currently a roadie for IC. through Matt i have gotten to know some amazing people.
then on Saturday a group of guys from the roadie house joined me with their surf boards on the beach we surfed all day long it was amazing! we had a blast chasing waves and hanging out! we got some sweet food from this little nothing Mexican place i think we all got the California burrito which was amazing had all kinds of stuff in it but very delish! after the long day of surfing we were absolutely drained and ended up relaxing at Tony's house watching movies and eating pizza we even took a little stroll down by the beach. such a great day and such awesome people to hang out with and talk to.
Sunday was also a interesting day. i attended Tony's church and got to meet a lot of the people he worked with and experience a bit more of how life was for him this summer. its an awesome place and the people seemed great too. after church tony and chad the other intern were having a little get together down at the beach so i went and picked Matt and Tyler up at the invisible children roadie house and headed to the beach for more surfing and food. we were still soo tired from the surfing the day before and a bit stiff as well so it was rough out there. non the less we had a great time. we then started back to the ic roadie house just me Matt and Tyler (tony was having dinner with his host family) We decided to indulge in some in and out food which was pretty darn good. good fries good shakes and good burgers! we then made it to the house and sat outside and talked for a few hours which is always good.
Monday was a very chill relaxing day for the most part. i got up and around went to goodwill and then headed over to pick up tony from the church . we hung out the rest of the day not really doing much of anything a little packing untill the evening when we headed down town San Diego too meet up one last time with our ic friends. we met them at the Invisible children headquarters which was pretty cool. we ended up getting a tour around the place checking out how things are done and what not. it was awesome to see the actual headquarters. then we headed off to get Sushi! it was awesome so much to eat and great fellowship with friends. while we were there the film makers with and some other staff of ic showed up to have some sushi so we were able to hang with them for a little while then we headed back to the ic roadie house and hung out and talked for a bit. it was an amazing night full of fun and fellowship. it was hard to say goodbye but it is awesome to know that i Will get to see most of them again when they come here to bethel for a screening.
Finally on Tuesday me and Tony hit the road not know what our trip would look like or entail but only knowing that we were headed to the Grand Canyon! after a few hours more like 9 or 10 we finally made it to the grand Canyon and oh what an adventure that was! few words are available to describe the beauty and massiveness of this place. it was spectacular! we arrived just before sundown we walked around taking it all in and even doing some off the path hiking out onto the little fingers of land that stick out but don't have fences around them it was amazing. after the sun said goodbye and the stars again overwhelmed us with beauty we decided to call it a night. since we didn't want to spend money to stay in the grand canyon national park we decided to take the free route in the national forest that is like a mile a way. we pulled in down this long gravel road till we saw a sign that said we could camp anywhere beyond this point and found a little fire pit just off the beaten path. so we pulled the car up and made "camp" if that's what you want to call it. we only had one blanket that fits a twin size bed so we made the plan to lay the blanket out near the fire we made and then we would spoon and throw the rest of the blanket over us. welll that worked for a while till the cold crept in. so around 1:30 we got up and stoked the fire and warmed ourselves. we then scooted the blanket closer to the fire and crawled back in after sleeping a while and waking up to coyotes howling i finally got up around 3:30 and got in the car i was wayyyy to cold to try and sleep it out. shortly after i left tony followed.
we then decided the next day to take our time at the Grand Canyon and to spend the day there. so we spent some time at the main area in the morning and then got in the car and hit some look out places that were in the direction we were headed.
it finally reached dusk and we were headed through the desert and off to Utah. we fond out about this place called monument Vally so we decided that would be our place to get to that night and sleep. we got there at about 10:30 or so that night. there was a resort/hotel there after looking around and trying to see what was out there in the distance we went to bed aka seats layed back in the car. we woke the next morning to an amazing sight. what seemed like nothing the night before was amazing beauty that morning. we spent the morning there fixed our own form of breakfast and jumped back on the road.
the beauty of this trip back was how we didn't plan much we just knew we wanted to go to a few places and in between that it didn't matter. so we stopped here and there and eventually came across a man named Leroy he was trying to hitch a ride to the back which was on our way and about 40-50 miles down the road so we made room and Leroy joined our trek. after dropping him off we headed to the next town in Utah that was significant to us. it was where one of our friends Calvin worked the summer before. he had two jobs and one was at this little dinner in the town so we stopped got food and talked to some of the people who knew him and then hit the road once again. determined to make it to Denver Colorado that night we finally made it.
that night we stopped at this little park and again slept in the car. the next morning we took it slow and decided we wanted to make it to Des monies Iowa where we both had a friend. after breaking through the rest of the mountains in Denver area we quickly hit the flat lands of Colorado, Nebraska, and Iowa. after a long day of driving we made it to our destination.
our friend lives at the catholic worker house there and with plenty of room we found a soft place to extend our legs and sleep. it was great. the next morning we help out distributing food at this local church. and we were able to relax and enjoy some down time. that evening we went to our friends place of work at this homeless teen center and hung out there for the night till we went back to the house and watched a movie and talked. in the morning we went to her church and then headed off to some friends of mine from youthworks. they were only like 40 miles away and in the direction we were headed so we stopped in and saw them. they treated us to lunch and a tour of pella Iowa.
on the road again and this time its close to home. we decided that the best way to top off this trip would be to go to Chicago. that night we stayed with our old boss from youthworks in the city. we caught up and hung out that night and most of the morning. we caught up with Nat that day too and hung with him for a bit and eventually ended up giving another friend of our from bethel a ride to bethel.
before we even made it home we dropped our friend off at school. that could have been quite possibly the weirdest feeling ever. it was very serial. from there we went to Tony's house and dropped stuff off and i headed on down to my grandma's where i ended my trip at around 2am.
Over all this trip was amazing! it was just what i needed to end the summer.
